The obvious answer is as clean as you can get it. That mean different things to each customer. When I quote a job I try to imagine what it will take to restore it back to as new as possible. It often takes more work that I thought. As a customer, you have decide if you want a fixed price or do you want it as good as it can get. As a cleaner I look at the condition of the carpet and home to decide if it is worth the effort and cost. Customers often say do the best you can. To some that means they are willing to pay for your best work possible, to others it means they're not too picky and don't go too far with the effort. The carpet cleaner can not tell by looking at a carpet how much work it will be to restore it. So a carpet cleaning quote is for cleaning a job by how many square feet you have or some by how many rooms. That does not take into account how much more work it will take to make it perfect. So you have to decide if you want your carpet cleaned or you want clean. I generally assume when I go into a beautiful well maintained house that they want perfection but occasionally I will find one that only wanted the cheapest price, not cleanest carpet.
Spots and stains are worked on before cleaning but often need additional attention after the cleaning. Black filtration dirt at the baseboard is another issue that is not removed with normal cleaning. It is a time consuming process to remove. Many customers assume this will be removed with normal cleaning.
Whenever you had your carpet cleaned and it didn't come out that well don't assume that is as good as it can get. Even extremely dirty carpet can be cleaned. With the host cleaning system, carpet can be cleaned several times until it looks perfect (except for the damage the dirt does to capet when walked on for months.) Using steam cleaning to clean extremely dirty carpet pushes most of the dirt deep into the backing. The dirt the wicks up to the surface within the next month making the carpet look like it did before the cleaning. Unfortunately the consumer often thinks that they are responsible for the soil. I've heard people that had steam cleaning tell me why clean the carpet when we trash it in only a month. What they don't know is that the dirt is their old dirt wicking back up the month after cleaning. People generally wait until their carpet looks dirty before cleaning. The best thing for the carpet is semi annual or annual maintenance cleaning. This will allow your carpet to last until you get tired of it.
Spots and stains are worked on before cleaning but often need additional attention after the cleaning. Black filtration dirt at the baseboard is another issue that is not removed with normal cleaning. It is a time consuming process to remove. Many customers assume this will be removed with normal cleaning.
Whenever you had your carpet cleaned and it didn't come out that well don't assume that is as good as it can get. Even extremely dirty carpet can be cleaned. With the host cleaning system, carpet can be cleaned several times until it looks perfect (except for the damage the dirt does to capet when walked on for months.) Using steam cleaning to clean extremely dirty carpet pushes most of the dirt deep into the backing. The dirt the wicks up to the surface within the next month making the carpet look like it did before the cleaning. Unfortunately the consumer often thinks that they are responsible for the soil. I've heard people that had steam cleaning tell me why clean the carpet when we trash it in only a month. What they don't know is that the dirt is their old dirt wicking back up the month after cleaning. People generally wait until their carpet looks dirty before cleaning. The best thing for the carpet is semi annual or annual maintenance cleaning. This will allow your carpet to last until you get tired of it.