Real ranges for real jobs, what moves a number up or down, and how to tell a genuine quote from a $99 ad with the upcharges left off.
Prices reviewed and updated .
Nobody enjoys the part where you call four companies and get four different answers. The reason the numbers move around is not that anyone is guessing — it is that “a room” is not a unit of measurement. A 10×12 bedroom and a 20×30 great room are both one room, and one of them is four times the work.
So this page does two things. It gives you the ranges that actually apply in Aiken County, and it tells you what makes a job land at the top of a range instead of the bottom, so that when you get a quote you can tell whether it makes sense.
One thing worth saying up front: the ranges below are starting points for a phone conversation, not a checkout page. The number that counts is the one you are given after describing your rooms, and it does not change after the truck arrives unless the carpet turns out to be materially different from what was described — in which case you get told the revised figure and get to say no.
Typical ranges for residential work across Aiken and Aiken County.
| Job | Typical range | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| 1–2 rooms | $60–$120 | Room size, soil level, and whether anything needs spot treatment. A small bedroom and a large open living room are not the same room. |
| 3–5 rooms | $150–$300 | Where most Aiken homes land. Hallways and closets usually ride along with the rooms they connect. |
| Whole home, 5+ rooms | $300+ | Priced on the actual layout rather than a flat number. Open-plan square footage moves this more than door count. |
| Single room, minimum charge | $60 | The floor for a trip. One bedroom on its own costs the same as the minimum — add a second room and the per-room cost drops sharply. |
| Stairs | $2–$4 per step | More wear per square foot than anywhere in the house, and every step is hand-worked. Landings count as a step. |
| Hallways and closets | Usually included | Bundled with adjoining rooms on most jobs. A long runner hallway on its own is priced as a room. |
| Move-in / move-out | $150–$350 | Empty floors, heavier soil, and a deadline. See move-out cleaning. |
| Upholstery, per piece | $60–$150 | A recliner sits at the bottom, a sectional at the top. Fiber and cushion count decide it. |
| Area rugs | Quoted per rug | Size, fiber and construction. Wool and silk are handled differently from machine-made synthetics. |
| Commercial carpet | Per square foot | Quoted on measured area and cleaning frequency, not room count. See commercial cleaning. |
Ranges are for hot water extraction on standard residential carpet. Prices are the same across the whole service area — there is no travel surcharge for North Augusta, Graniteville, Beech Island or anywhere else in the county.
Residential carpet cleaning in Aiken is quoted per room. It is the convention customers understand, and for a typical house with normal-sized bedrooms it works out fairly. The catch is the one above: rooms are not the same size, so any honest per-room quote has a size cap sitting behind it. Ours is that a room over roughly 300 square feet is counted as two, and you are told that on the phone rather than on the invoice.
Commercial work is quoted per square foot instead. An office floor or a church hall has no useful room count, and the area is measurable, so the fairer basis is the one that scales with the actual surface. Frequency matters there too — carpet on a quarterly maintenance schedule costs less per square foot than a one-off deep clean, because there is less soil to move each time.
Where you will see square-foot pricing quoted to homeowners is on very large open-plan spaces and on restoration work. If a company quotes your house per square foot and the number lands close to the per-room ranges above, nothing is wrong. If it lands far above, ask what is included.
For reference, hot water extraction in Aiken works out to roughly $0.15 to $0.30 per square foot of carpeted area. Here is how that maps onto a house:
| Carpeted area | Roughly | Typical total |
|---|---|---|
| Under 400 sq ft | 1–2 rooms | $60–$120 |
| 400–700 sq ft | 2–3 rooms | $120–$180 |
| 700–1,100 sq ft | 3–5 rooms | $150–$300 |
| 1,100–1,600 sq ft | 5–7 rooms | $250–$400 |
| 1,600+ sq ft | Whole home, large | Quoted on measurement |
Carpeted area, not house size. A 2,000 sq ft home with tile in the kitchen, baths and entry might only have 1,200 sq ft of carpet.
Published 2026 US figures alongside what the same job costs here.
| Item | Aiken, SC | US average, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Per square foot | $0.15–$0.30 | $0.25–$0.50 |
| Single room | $60 | $100–$150 |
| Three rooms | $150–$220 | $195–$225 |
| Whole home, 5 rooms | $250–$350 | $200–$500 |
| Minimum service charge | $60 | $100–$150 |
| Stairs, per step | $2–$4 | $2–$5 |
| Pet odor treatment | $40–$100 per job | $20–$40 per room |
National figures from HomeGuide's 2026 carpet cleaning cost data. Aiken sits below the national range on most line items, largely because labor and operating costs in Aiken County are lower than in metro markets — not because a corner is being cut. The one line where we look higher is pet treatment, and that is a unit difference: ours is quoted per job, the national figure is per room.
These sit on top of the cleaning price. None of them are added without being agreed first.
| Add-on | Typical range | How it is priced |
|---|---|---|
| Pet stain and odor treatment | +$40–$100 | Priced by how many spots and how deep they went. Urine that reached the pad needs the pad treated, not the surface. |
| Carpet stain protection | +30–40% of the cleaning price | Applied after extraction while the fiber is still open. Priced against the area treated, not a flat fee. |
| Deodorizer | Add-on | A surface treatment. It covers odor rather than removing the source, so it is not a substitute for pad-level work. |
| Heavy soil / restoration cleaning | Quoted on inspection | Carpet that has gone years without cleaning needs extra pre-spray, extra dwell and a second pass. Not every carpet is worth it, and you will be told. |
| Furniture moving | Usually included | Sofas, chairs and light tables are moved and blocked. Beds, pianos, china cabinets and anything electronic stay where they are. |
| Water extraction, emergency | Quoted on site | A different job from cleaning. See water-damaged carpet drying. |
Add-ons are quoted before work starts, not discovered on the invoice. If a spot turns out to need pad-level treatment that was not visible from the description, you get the number and the choice first.
No line items appear for these.
Priced and agreed before work begins.
Illustrative jobs built from the ranges above, not customer records.
$180–$240
Living room, hallway and three bedrooms, cleaned annually, no pets. Hallway rides along with the bedrooms. Bottom of the range because the carpet is maintained and the rooms are standard size.
$150–$200
Empty floors, two bedrooms plus a living area, one flight of stairs at $2–$4 per step. Faster because nothing has to be moved, but the soil load is heavier and the deadline is fixed.
$290–$420
Five rooms plus a hallway at $250–$300, plus pet stain and odor treatment at $40–$100, plus stairs. This is the job where the $99 ad ends up costing the most.
A pricing sheet that says “per room” and stops there is hiding something. A 10×12 bedroom and a 20×30 great room are one room each and four times the work. Anyone quoting you sight unseen should be asking about square footage or at least about layout.
Carpet cleaned every year is a maintenance job. Carpet that has gone four years is a restoration job — more pre-spray, longer dwell, often a second pass. The interval you keep is the single biggest lever you control on price.
Polyester holds oily soil and needs a different pre-spray. Wool cannot take the heat nylon takes. Olefin wicks. The fiber does not usually change the headline price, but it changes how long the job takes and whether an add-on is needed.
Hair adds vacuuming time. Urine adds treatment. A house with two dogs and no accidents is a normal job; one cat that has been marking a corner for a year is not.
Stairs are hand-worked with a small tool, one tread at a time. Fifteen steps can take as long as a bedroom. Open-sided stairs with carpeted risers take longer again.
Truck-mounted extraction runs a hose from the vehicle. A ground-floor house with a driveway is straightforward. A third-floor apartment at the far end of a lot may need a portable unit instead, which is slower.
You have seen the ad. Three rooms, $99, sometimes less. It is not a scam in the legal sense — the company will genuinely clean three rooms for $99 — but it is a lead price rather than a job price, and the gap between the two is closed on your living room floor.
Here is how the arithmetic works. Truck-mounted extraction on three average rooms is between ninety minutes and two and a half hours of work, plus travel, plus fuel to run the machine, plus solution. At $99 that job loses money before the van leaves the yard. The ad is therefore priced to get a technician through your door, and the technician's job is to leave with a bigger number.
The escalations are always the same four, and they are worth knowing by name before anyone is standing in your hallway:
| The upsell | Typical add | How it is presented |
|---|---|---|
| “Heavy soil” surcharge | +$50–$150 | Applied because your carpet is dirtier than a “standard clean” covers. Nobody books a cleaning because their carpet is clean, so this lands on almost everyone. |
| Pet treatment, quoted on the spot | +$100–$300 | Often several times what the work is worth, and presented once the technician is already in the house and the furniture is moved. |
| Protector, presented as essential | +$75–$200 | A legitimate product sold as though declining it voids something. It does not. |
| Per-room size upcharge | +$40–$80 per room | The “room” in the ad was capped at 200 square feet. Your living room is not. |
A $99 booking commonly leaves at $250 to $400 — which was roughly the honest price for the job before any of it started. You did not save money. You spent an afternoon being sold to.
The other version is quieter. The $99 gets you three rooms cleaned with a bonnet machine or a portable unit rather than truck-mounted extraction — a surface clean that looks fine for two weeks, leaves detergent residue in the pile, and re-soils faster than the carpet did before. You did save money. You also bought a service you did not want.
None of this means a cheap quote is automatically bad, or that the most expensive one is honest. It means the number on its own tells you nothing. What tells you something is the room list, the method, and the answer to “what would make this go up on the day.”
Ask all six of everyone, including us. The answers separate the quotes faster than the prices do.
“Three rooms, $99” and “three rooms, $180” are only comparable if both lists name the same three rooms. Hallways, stairs, closets and walk-in areas are where the two lists usually differ.
Hot water extraction, encapsulation and bonnet cleaning are not the same service at different prices — they are different services. A bonnet clean will always undercut extraction because it cleans the top of the pile only.
Both are steps a cheap quote drops first. Without a pre-vacuum, up to three quarters of what is in the carpet turns to mud the moment water hits it. Without dwell time, the chemistry never works.
The honest answer is that some will not, and you should be told which before the machine starts. A quote that promises everything comes out is a quote that will find a reason to charge more.
“Heavy soil,” “pet treatment” and “protector” are the three standard on-site upsells. Get the conditions in writing before booking, not after the truck is in the driveway.
Divide each quote by the number of rooms actually being cleaned. That number is the honest comparison, and it usually tells you the two quotes were never far apart.
Carpet cleaned every twelve months — every six with pets — is a maintenance job at the bottom of the range. Carpet left four years is a restoration job, costs more, and often cannot be brought all the way back. The interval is the biggest lever you have.
The minimum charge and the travel are fixed costs. Spreading them over five rooms instead of one is why the per-room figure falls so sharply after the first. If the bedrooms were getting done in spring anyway, do them now.
Furniture moving is included, but an empty room cleans faster and cleans wall to wall instead of around a sofa. On a move-out job this costs you nothing and improves the result.
Most of what is in an Aiken carpet is dry sand, and sand is what wears fiber out. Slow passes with a working beater bar remove it before it does damage, and maintained carpet needs less work when the truck does come.
The rental sticker is not the price. Here is the whole bill.
| Line item | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Machine rental, 24 hours | $39.99 | 48 hours runs about $49.99. Most people need the longer window once they start. |
| Refundable deposit | $40 | Returned when the machine comes back on time and clean. Late or dirty is $40 either way. |
| Cleaning solution | $18–$36 | One bottle rarely covers a house. Two is normal for three or more rooms. |
| Upholstery tool, if you want it | $5.99 | Separate add-on to the rental. |
| Fuel and two trips to collect and return | $10–$15 | Plus the car space. The machine is heavy and it will be wet coming back. |
| Your time | 4–6 hours | Moving furniture, filling, emptying, refilling, and the return trip. |
Rental figures are Rug Doctor's published 2026 national rates and vary by location. Deposit is refundable, so the cash actually spent on a three-room DIY job is roughly $70–$95 plus half a Saturday.
On one small room, renting wins on cost and the result is acceptable. From three rooms up the math turns: $150 professionally against $70–$95 and five hours of your own labor, for a machine with a fraction of the heat and almost none of the vacuum.
That last part is what matters in Aiken specifically. A rental unit puts water down and recovers only some of it, so the rest sits in the pile and the pad. In August humidity that is exactly how a freshly cleaned carpet turns musty within a week, and how the smell comes back every time it rains. The full side-by-side comparison is here.
Each service page carries its own detail on what is included and how it is quoted.
| Service | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Carpet cleaning | $60–$300+ |
| Pet stain and odor removal | +$40–$100 |
| Upholstery cleaning | $60–$150 per piece |
| Area and oriental rug cleaning | Quoted per rug |
| Tile and grout cleaning | Quoted per area |
| Carpet stain protection | +30–40% of cleaning |
| Move-in / move-out cleaning | $150–$350 |
| Water-damaged carpet drying | Quoted on site |
| Commercial carpet cleaning | Per square foot |
Booking two services in one visit costs less than two separate trips, because the travel and setup are paid once. Carpet plus upholstery, or carpet plus tile, are the two most common pairings.
Offices, retail units, churches, medical suites and short-term rentals are quoted per measured square foot rather than per room, and the rate falls as the area and the frequency rise. A one-off deep clean on a neglected office floor is the most expensive per square foot; the same floor on a quarterly schedule is the cheapest, because each visit is removing three months of soil instead of three years.
Two other things move a commercial quote. The first is access hours — work that has to happen after close or before open is scheduled around your business, and that is normal rather than a surcharge. The second is method: a lot of commercial glue-down carpet is better served by encapsulation on a maintenance cycle with extraction once or twice a year, and that combination costs less annually than extraction every time.
Tell us the square footage, the traffic level and how often you want it done, and you will get a rate rather than a range.
A quote is only as good as what it was based on. Have these five ready and the range you are given on the phone is the number you will pay:
If something turns out different once we see it, you get the revised number and the choice before any equipment comes off the truck. Nothing is added to an invoice after the work is done.
Most Aiken homes fall between $60 and $120 for one or two rooms and $150 to $300 for three to five rooms. Whole-home jobs above five rooms start around $300 and are priced on the actual layout. Add-ons such as pet treatment or stain protection sit on top of those figures.
Residential work in Aiken is normally quoted per room, with a minimum charge for a single-room trip. Commercial work is quoted per square foot, because a measured area is a fairer basis when the space is open-plan. Either way, room size is what drives the number.
$60. That is the floor for sending a truck out, and one small bedroom costs the same as the minimum. The per-room cost drops sharply from the second room on, so it is worth adding rooms you were undecided about.
Almost always because they are not the same service. The $99 figure usually covers three small rooms with a surface method, no pre-vacuum, no dwell time, and a list of on-site upcharges for anything the carpet actually needs. Compare method, room list and included steps before comparing totals.
Yes. Stairs are priced separately at roughly $2 to $4 per step because each tread is hand-worked with a small tool. A standard flight of thirteen to fifteen steps can take as long as cleaning a bedroom.
Not usually. Hallways and closets that connect rooms already being cleaned normally ride along at no extra charge. A long hallway on its own, or a walk-in closet the size of a bedroom, is priced as a room.
Yes, $40 to $100 on top of the cleaning, depending on how many spots there are and how far they went. Urine that soaked through the backing is in the pad, and pad-level treatment is a separate job from cleaning the carpet above it.
Sofas, chairs and light tables are moved and blocked at no charge. Beds, pianos, china cabinets, aquariums and anything electronic are left in place and cleaned around. If you want a room done wall to wall, clear it before we arrive.
No. Downtown Aiken, South Aiken, Woodside Plantation, Houndslake, Cedar Creek, North Augusta and the rest of the county are all priced the same. There is no travel surcharge inside the service area.
No. Same-day and next-day slots are available most weeks at the standard price, and Saturday is a normal working day. Sunday is by appointment.
The quote you are given on the phone is based on what you describe. If the carpet is materially worse than described — heavy soil that needs a second pass, pet damage that was not mentioned — you will be told the revised number and given the choice before anything starts. Nothing gets added to an invoice after the fact.
Roughly $0.15 to $0.30 per square foot for residential hot water extraction, which is below the $0.25 to $0.50 range published nationally for 2026. Homes are quoted per room rather than per square foot, but the two work out to similar totals on a normal layout.
On a single small room, usually yes. On three or more rooms, usually not. A 24-hour Rug Doctor rental is about $40, plus a $40 refundable deposit, plus $18 to $36 of solution, plus fuel and four to six hours of your Saturday — call it $70 to $95 in cash before you have cleaned anything. Three rooms professionally cleaned starts at $150, and the machine is roughly ten times more powerful.
The price does not change with the season. Availability does — spring and the two weeks before Thanksgiving and Christmas book out fastest, so a specific date is harder to get. Booking a week ahead in those periods costs the same as booking in February.
Thirty days from the day it is given, on the rooms and conditions described. If the job changes — more rooms, pet damage that was not mentioned — you get a new number before anything starts.
No. Quotes over the phone are free, and there is no charge for looking at the carpet. The only number you are asked to agree to is the price of the work itself.
It depends on the household. Protection buys time to blot a spill before it becomes a stain, and it slows the rate at which sandy soil grinds into the fiber — which matters in Aiken. On a rental you are leaving in six months it is money spent for someone else. On new carpet with kids or pets, it usually pays for itself before the next cleaning.
Describe the rooms and their condition and you'll get a straight range on the phone — no inspection fee, no obligation.
Rather put it in writing? Email carpetcleaningaiken@gmail.com and we'll follow up.
