Where the dust actually is
At the end of a project the visible dust is the small part. The rest is in places that release it slowly over the following week: ceiling voids, cornice runs, the tops of door frames, curtain tracks and pelmets, extract grilles and trickle vents, light fittings, and the gap behind every radiator.
Open a window, run the heating, or simply walk across a floor, and some of it comes down. This is why a house cleaned once on the final day looks immaculate at handover and disappointing by the weekend.
Three stages, and why
Stage one, clearance. Debris, offcuts, packaging and protective sheeting out. Protective film off glazing, sanitary ware and ironmongery. Gross dust extracted. This is not cleaning so much as making the house cleanable.
Stage two, the builders' clean. Everything, top down: plaster and cement residue, paint spots, grout haze, silicone smears, adhesive. Inside every cupboard and unit. Appliance interiors. New ovens run through once and cleaned again, because the manufacturing residue burns off on first use.
Stage three, the final clean. Deliberately held back as late as the programme allows — after the dust has stopped falling. A full repeat of horizontal and high-level surfaces, glass and stone finished, floors treated and sealed where the specification requires it.
On a longer project an interim clean between trades is worth having. Keeping dust out of finished rooms is almost always cheaper than cleaning them twice.
What must not be used
A new finish is at its most vulnerable in its first weeks, and a great deal of the damage we are called in to correct was done by whoever cleaned before us.
No abrasives on new paint, new stone or original fabric. Paint takes weeks to cure fully, and a scouring pad on three-week-old eggshell leaves a permanent sheen change.
Nothing acidic near calcareous stone. New marble and limestone are often cleaned by well-meaning site staff with a general-purpose product and come out etched.
No wet wiping of construction dust. Plaster and cement residues are strongly alkaline, and wiping them turns them into a slurry that carries into grout, reveals and the grain of unsealed timber. Dust is extracted first, always.
Not a domestic vacuum. Cut masonry and screed release respirable crystalline silica. That needs an extractor rated to the construction classes under BS EN 60335-2-69, not a household machine that will push the finest fraction straight back into the room.
Listed buildings
Across our patch most renovation projects are in listed buildings, and the rule there is to agree in writing what may be touched before anything starts.
Original plasterwork, timber, glass and ironmongery are cleaned by hand, with no abrasive and no solvent. Where a residue will not lift safely, the right answer is to report it and leave it for a conservator rather than persist. Removing a two-hundred-year-old surface along with the paint spot is not a saving.
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