Slide a wardrobe out in a Bermondsey ex-council flat and the carpet underneath tells you where the family actually walked, a pale rectangle ringed by a darker band of trodden-in grit. We clean a lot of those carpets across Southwark, in the little two-storey terraces off the Old Kent Road and in the new towers going up around Elephant and Castle.
Last updated April 2026. Prices and local detail checked against our current Southwark bookings.
We clean carpets in Southwark with hot-water extraction from £36 a room, covering SE1, SE15, SE16 and SE17, with a re-clean guarantee.
That is the short answer. The rest of this page is the detail. What each room costs, how the machine actually works, why the borough’s water makes a difference, and the questions tenants and landlords here ask us most. We are Monster Cleaning Ltd (Companies House 9919639), a London cleaning firm trading since 2014. Carpets are one of the things we do every week of the year.
What carpet cleaning costs in Southwark
Here are the real numbers. A bedroom carpet is £36. A living room is £43. A through-lounge, the knocked-through front-to-back reception you find in a lot of the older Walworth and Camberwell terraces, is £61, because it is one long room and takes longer to do properly. A flight of stairs is £41. The whole carpeted area of a typical two-bed flat is £115.
Rugs go on size. A rug up to two square metres is £35, and a rug over two square metres is £51. We can take a rug away to clean and dry it flat, or do it in the flat where there is room to work around it.
No call-out fee. No surcharge for the new blocks at Elephant Park or for a walk-up flat above a shop on Walworth Road. The price you are quoted is the price you pay, and we quote it before a drop of water touches the pile. We do not run a fake discount that halves the price if you book by teatime.
If you are moving out and the agent wants the carpets done as part of the check-out, that is a wider job that usually pairs with a full clean of the place. We cover that on our end of tenancy cleaning in Southwark page, and the carpet figures above stand as the add-on rates.
The carpets we clean, from Bermondsey to Peckham
Southwark is several boroughs of carpet stacked into one, and you feel the change within a few streets. In Bermondsey, between the Old Kent Road and Southwark Park, you get rows of little two-storey Victorian cottages, the bedrooms carpeted wall to wall and a narrow stair run that takes the brunt of the wear. South of there, through Walworth, Camberwell and on into Peckham and Nunhead, the terraces get bigger and a lot of them are split into flats.
Then there are the estates. Walworth carries some of the largest council-built housing in the country, the long concrete blocks of the old Aylesbury among them, and that flat, hard-wearing carpet has soaked up decades of footfall down a single hallway.
And the new stuff is everywhere now. The towers rising at Elephant and Castle, the Elephant Park blocks behind them, and the riverside warehouse conversions up at Shad Thames and along Bermondsey Street, all loft-style flats with short dense synthetic pile and one good rug on a bare floor. That pile does not show dirt the way an old wool carpet does, so people leave it far longer, and a grey tide of street grit builds up in the first metre inside the door.
The old cottages and the new flats wear their carpets differently, and we set the job to the carpet rather than the other way round. A converted terrace tends to have an older fitted carpet over wooden boards, often a wool or wool-mix that rewards a gentle clean, and we watch the moisture so the boards stay dry and the seams do not shrink.
How hot-water extraction works
People call it steam cleaning. It is not really steam. Hot-water extraction sprays heated water and a cleaning solution into the carpet under pressure, agitates the pile, then a strong vacuum pulls the water straight back out with the dirt it has lifted. The carpet comes up damp, not soaked, because the extraction stroke takes most of the moisture with it.
That last part is the whole point. A cheap hired machine, or a tub of wet shampoo off the supermarket shelf, leaves the carpet wet and leaves detergent sitting in the pile. Detergent is sticky. It dries into the fibres and grabs grit off your shoes for weeks, so a DIY job often looks worse a fortnight on than it did before you started. Our method rinses and lifts the solution back out, so there is little left behind to pull in fresh dirt.
A DIY job often looks worse a fortnight on than it did before you started.
Before any water goes down we vacuum properly and look at the carpet in daylight, and stains get pre-treated by hand. A tough nylon in a hallway can take more heat and a firmer pass. A wool twist, the sort still down in some of the older Camberwell houses, gets cooler water, a gentler solution and a close eye on how wet it gets, because wool felts and shrinks if you drown it. Two patient passes beat one heavy one every time.
Drying takes a few hours. With a window cracked and the heating on low, most rooms are walk-on dry in two to four hours and fully dry by the next morning. We leave foam pads under furniture legs so nothing marks the pile while it dries. You can read the full method, and the other surfaces we treat, on our carpet cleaning service overview.
Southwark water and the marks it leaves
Southwark sits in a hard water zone. Thames Water supplies the borough at roughly 300 parts per million of dissolved minerals, which counts as very hard. You meet it on the kettle and the showerhead, but it acts on carpets too, just more quietly.
When a wet patch dries on a carpet here, whether it is a knocked-over drink, a pet accident or a slow leak from the flat above, the minerals in the water are left behind in the pile as the moisture goes. That hard, faintly gritty feel an old stain takes on is partly mineral. It also locks the spill in and makes it stubborn, which is exactly why dabbing a Southwark carpet with tap water so often sets the mark rather than lifting it. We clean with softened water, so we are not adding fresh minerals while we work.
The other Southwark factor is the building work, and there is no shortage of it. Between the long regeneration around Elephant and Castle and a steady churn of loft and side-return jobs in the terraces, fine plaster and brick dust travels. It drifts into carpet pile streets away from the actual site, and a domestic vacuum rides straight over the top of it. Extraction flushes it out.
And the borough is full of sharers. A houseful of tenants in a split terrace off Camberwell Road puts more footfall on one hallway carpet in a month than a family home sees in a year, and the lane down the middle goes flat and dark long before the edges do. We can lift those lanes a long way. A carpet walked threadbare, though, is worn rather than dirty, so we tell you which of the two you have.
Stains, rugs and stairs
The stains people ask about most are the everyday ones. Coffee, tea, mud off the paths through Burgess Park, makeup, and the dark greasy patch by the front door. Most of these lift well with extraction. Red wine and pet accidents need more care, the wine because it sets fast and the pet smell because it sits down in the underlay, where a surface clean never reaches.
A few marks beat everyone. Old bleach splashes have stripped the dye out and there is no colour left to bring back, and some dyes from cheap rugs bleed into a pale carpet for good. We have learned the hard way to look first and say so. Send a photo when you book and we can usually tell whether it is a routine lift or a no-promises job.
Stairs are slow, careful work and we price them honestly at £41 a flight. The carpet wraps the nosing and the grime collects on the front edge of every tread, so it is done on your knees, and a maisonette with two flights is two flights. In a Bermondsey cottage that narrow stair run is often the tiredest carpet in the place, and a clean run lifts the look of the whole flat.
Rugs we judge one at a time. The £35 rate covers a rug up to two square metres and it is £51 over that. Wool kilims, viscose rugs that mark if you breathe near them, jute that must not get too wet, and the polyester flatweaves everyone buys all want different handling. A decent rug is worth cleaning rather than skipping.
Some things we will not pretend to fix. Carpet lifted off its gripper, split seams, and water damage that has gone mouldy underneath are repair or replacement jobs, not cleaning jobs, and we would rather point you straight than take money for a clean that cannot work. If you are sorting the whole place at once, book the rooms together: have a look at our oven cleaning in Southwark and our domestic cleaning in Southwark.
Booking, parking and getting to you
Booking is simple. Ring 0333 555 2076 or email [email protected] with your postcode, the rooms you want done, and a photo of any stain you are unsure about. We give you a price and a slot. No long form, no waiting days for a quote.
We work weekends.
Parking is the bit worth planning in Southwark. Around half the borough sits under a controlled parking zone that runs through the working day, and a quirk worth knowing is that many of the newer conversions and the blocks around Elephant and Castle are car-free by their planning, so there is no resident permit to lean on at all. None of that is a problem when we know in advance. Where your street is permit-only we will ask you to sort a visitor bay, and where the van has to park off and we carry the kit in, we say so up front.
You do not need to drive to reach us, and most of our Southwark round is a short walk from a station. The Jubilee line runs through Bermondsey, Canada Water and London Bridge, the Northern line covers Borough, Elephant and Castle and Kennington, and Thameslink reaches Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye. A missing parking space rarely stops us.
A word on what to expect from us as a firm. Our Trustpilot score sits at 3.1 out of 5 across 128 reviews, and we are not going to dress that up. We have had jobs go wrong over the years, and the re-clean guarantee exists because of exactly that. If a mark we treated comes back once the carpet has dried, or you are not happy with a room, tell us within a few days and we put it right at no extra cost. That holds whether you are a tenant in a flat off East Street market or a landlord turning round a terrace in Nunhead.
We are based at 255 Upper Richmond Road West, SW14 8QS, and we cover Southwark as part of our south London round. You get a real person on the phone who knows the area, not a call centre reading from a card.
Frequently asked questions
How much does carpet cleaning cost in Southwark?
A bedroom carpet is £36 and a living room is £43. A through-lounge is £61, a flight of stairs is £41, and the whole carpeted area of a typical two-bed flat is £115. Rugs are £35 up to two square metres and £51 over that. We quote the price before we start, with no call-out fee across SE1, SE15, SE16 or SE17.
What is hot-water extraction, and is it the same as steam cleaning?
Hot-water extraction sprays heated water and a cleaning solution into the carpet under pressure, then a strong vacuum pulls it straight back out with the dirt it has lifted. People call it steam cleaning, but it is not really steam. It rinses the solution out as it goes, so little is left in the pile to attract fresh dirt, which is where a hired shampoo machine lets you down.
How long will a Southwark carpet take to dry?
Most rooms are walk-on dry in two to four hours and fully dry by the next morning. The extraction stroke pulls the bulk of the water back out, so the carpet comes up damp rather than soaked. Crack a window and put the heating on low and it dries quicker. We bring air movers for the bigger jobs in the Bankside and Bermondsey blocks.
Does Southwark’s hard water affect my carpets?
Yes, in a quiet way. Thames Water supplies the borough at roughly 300 parts per million of dissolved minerals, which counts as very hard. When a wet patch dries, those minerals stay behind in the pile and help set the mark, which is why dabbing a stain with tap water so often fixes it in place. We clean with softened water, so we are not adding more minerals as we work.
Will you get an old stain out completely?
Often, but not always, and we look before we promise. Fresh spills and everyday marks like coffee, mud off the park and grease usually lift well. Old dried-in stains, bleach splashes where the dye has already gone, and dye bleed from a cheap rug may not come out fully. Send a photo when you book and we will tell you straight rather than turn up and disappoint you.
Can you clean carpets in a converted warehouse flat near Shad Thames?
We do them often. The riverside conversions around Shad Thames and Bermondsey Street have tight lifts, restricted parking and a concierge to sign in with, so we plan the visit around that and carry the machine up where the van cannot get close. The exposed-floor, single-rug layout in those flats suits us, because a good rug is exactly the thing worth cleaning rather than replacing.
Do you clean rugs as well as fitted carpets?
We do. A rug up to two square metres is £35 and a rug over two square metres is £51. We match the method to the material, because wool, viscose, jute and a cheap polyester flatweave all behave differently under water. We can clean a rug in your flat or take it away and dry it flat, whichever suits you.
Do you treat pet stains and smells?
Yes. Pet accidents soak down into the underlay, so a surface clean leaves the smell behind and the animal keeps returning to the same spot. We treat down into the backing with an enzyme solution that breaks the source down instead of masking it. Tell us where the pet areas are when you book so we plan the time for them.
Is there parking for the van around Southwark?
Around half of Southwark sits under a controlled parking zone that runs through the day, and a fair few newer conversions are car-free with no permit available, so we sort a visitor bay or work the timing around it. If there is a walk from the van to your door we say so up front. Plenty of jobs are a short hop from a Northern, Jubilee or Thameslink stop anyway.
What happens if a stain comes back after the carpet dries?
Tell us within a few days and we come back and re-clean it at no extra cost. Some marks wick back up from deeper in the pile as a carpet dries out, and a second pass usually settles them for good. That re-clean guarantee applies to tenants and landlords alike, right across Southwark.