Three hours for a one-bedroom, one-bath home; six to eight for a three-bedroom, three-bath one. Those are the durations JAS publishes beside every rung of its deep-clean ladder, worked by a two-person team. Plan for the better part of a day — and expect condition, not square footage, to decide where you land.
Almost nobody publishes that column. Aggregators fill the gap with minutes-per-square-foot tables no operator could stand behind; local companies answer “it depends” on the phone. Here is the published clock, and what Miami-Dade adds to it.
The published clock, size by size
Typical durations per visit, from the table that publishes a starting price in each row. The canonical source is our deep cleaning in Miami page; the time column is restated here because that is what the question asks.
- 1 BR · 1 bath · 3 hr
- 2 BR · 1 bath · 3–4 hr
- 2 BR · 2 bath · 4–5 hr
- 3 BR · 2 bath · 5–6 hr
- 3 BR · 3 bath · 6–8 hr
Every row runs the same 42-item checklist, verified by photo, with a two-person team. What changes from row to row is not the list — it is how long it takes.
Where the hours actually go
Bathrooms and the kitchen are the heaviest part of any deep clean: a home with three baths takes meaningfully longer than one with a single bath, even at the same square footage. Two published rows show it — 3 BR · 2 bath at 5–6 hr, 3 BR · 3 bath at 6–8 hr. Same bedrooms, one more bathroom, and both ends of the range move. That is subtraction on the table, not an estimate of ours.
“The clock isn’t set by floor area. It’s set by how many bathrooms and kitchens are on the list.”
Why a per-square-foot timer is the wrong tool
National calculators love a minutes-per-square-foot figure because it produces an answer from one input. We publish no such rate: our ladder never asks for square footage. A 700 sq ft studio with a hard-working kitchen and one punished bathroom can run longer than a half-furnished 1,200 sq ft apartment. Timing a deep clean by area without counting baths is timing the floor, not the work.
Condition is the second hand
Size sets the baseline; condition matters more. Grease on cabinet faces, soap scum in grout and dust inside vents build up over months — the longer it has been since the last professional deep clean, the more hours the 42-item checklist takes. That is why the published durations are ranges: the same floor plan in two different conditions is not the same job.
What Miami adds to the clock
Humidity, salt and pollen
Humidity, salt air and year-round pollen mean buildup happens faster here than in drier climates — and buildup is time. Salt films slider glass, balcony railings and metal fixtures in a way a single pass does not lift; humidity turns grout and sills into surfaces you work rather than wipe. And the A/C runs twelve months a year, so vents never get an off-season.
Hurricane season, June through November
The calendar that matters here is not the one that says spring. The local reset brackets those months: before it, balconies get cleared and the tracks of windows about to stay shut get cleaned; after it, there is the fine grit that worked in through them while the house was sealed. Tracks and screens are the slowest square footage in a South Florida home.
The building, if you live in one
In a tower, part of the clock runs before anyone touches a surface. Buildings register vendors at the front desk, many associations require a certificate of insurance on file before a crew passes the lobby, and some assign the service elevator by reservation and time slot, on top of quiet hours. None of that changes the checklist; all of it changes when the checklist can start. What to send is in our apartment and condo guide.
Visit hours are not labor hours
A published 4–6 hour visit with a 2-person team is a clock on the wall, not a billing unit. Two people across a five-hour visit is ten person-hours — plain multiplication of two published figures — and that is not the same thing as a quote written as “three hours of labor”. Make every estimate say which it measures, and how many people it assumes.
A standard clean, on the same clock
The comparison that makes the number make sense is our own standard residential visit: 2–3 hours with a two-person team on 28 items, against 4–6 hours on 42. Row against row, a 3 BR · 2 bath home is published at 3–4 hr standard and 5–6 hr deep. Roughly double the time for one and a half times the list, because the added items are the slow ones — baseboards, door frames, blinds, sills, switches, vents, grout and the reachable areas under furniture.
The extras add time, not just cost
Appliance interiors, cabinet interiors and window cleaning remain separately priced unless your confirmed scope explicitly includes them — and each adds minutes as well as dollars. Inside the oven and inside the refrigerator are the most underestimated: hand work, done while the rest of the checklist waits. Decide on them when you book rather than at the door, so the duration you were quoted is the one that was planned. What each costs is in our deep cleaning cost guide.
How to plan the day around it
You choose an arrival window when you book — Morning (8am–12pm) or Afternoon (12–3pm) — and a person at JAS confirms the exact time with you; nothing is auto-assigned behind your back. For a job at the long end of the ladder, the morning window is the one that fits inside a single day. You do not need to be there: most customers leave a door code, a key, or a smart-lock invite. On eligible completed visits a CleanCheck report follows with checklist status and customer-safe photos, so you can see what those hours bought without having spent them at home.
How to make the next one shorter
Two things genuinely shorten it. The first is ten minutes of prep — clearing counters, floors and the surfaces the team would otherwise move first; what to clear is in how to prepare your home. The second is frequency: most Miami homes benefit from a deep clean two to three times a year, with regular cleans in between to hold the result, and a home on that rhythm arrives with less buildup for the next one to remove.
When the clock belongs to another service
Two jobs that look like deep cleans are timed somewhere else. A property empty because someone is moving is move-in / out cleaning, its own service and its own checklist, because cabinet, drawer and closet interiors come into scope. A renovation just handed back is post-construction, where fine dust in tracks and vents sets the clock. And no visit, of any length, is remediation: the Terms reserve the right to refuse service in cases of unsafe conditions (mold, infestation, biohazard).
Quick answers
How many hours is a deep clean for a 3-bedroom house?
The published table gives 5–6 hr for a 3 BR / 2 bath and 6–8 hr for a 3 BR / 3 bath, worked by a two-person team. The bathroom count separates those rows; condition decides where inside each range the visit lands.
Can you estimate deep-cleaning time by square footage?
Not honestly, and we do not publish a per-square-foot rate for it. The ladder asks for bedrooms and bathrooms because that is where the hours live. A small apartment with two heavily used bathrooms can take longer than a larger, emptier one.
Why is the duration a range instead of a single number?
Because size sets the baseline and condition matters more. The longer it has been since the last professional deep clean, the more hours the 42-item checklist takes. A single number would be a guess dressed up as a promise.
Do I have to be home for six hours?
No. Most customers leave a door code, a key, or a smart-lock invite and go about their day. On eligible completed visits a CleanCheck report follows with checklist status and customer-safe photos.
Will the next deep clean be faster?
Usually, because there is less buildup to remove. Most Miami homes benefit from a deep clean two to three times a year, with regular cleans in between to hold the result.
The short version
A deep clean in Miami runs 3 hours at the smallest published rung and 6–8 at the largest, on a 42-item checklist worked by a two-person team. Bathrooms and the kitchen set the baseline, condition decides where inside the range you land, and humidity, salt air and a sealed storm season are why the range exists here.
This guide is part of the JAS operating playbook — written to answer in public the question the rest of the industry prefers to answer on a phone call.