Residential window cleaning in Irvine means every visible pane inside and out, plus screens off the frame and washed by hand, tracks cleared, sills wiped and frames detailed. What changes from one Southern California city to the next is not the checklist. It is what is actually on the glass. Irvine runs on Irvine Ranch Water District, where local treated groundwater runs about 6 grains per gallon and imported treated surface water runs about 16, sits inland of the marine layer, and takes almost no rain for seven months of the year. Those three facts, more than anything else, decide what this job actually involves here, and the sections below explain how.
Quick answer
Residential window cleaning means a full clean of every visible window, inside and out, including screens, sills, and frames.
The checklist is the same everywhere. What is on your glass is not. These are the conditions that actually shape this job in Irvine. Each one is true here and false in plenty of other towns we serve.
Irvine runs on Irvine Ranch Water District, where local treated groundwater runs about 6 grains per gallon and imported treated surface water runs about 16. This is the thing almost nobody tells a Southern California homeowner: which water reaches your tap depends on your pressure zone, and the two ends of that blend are not remotely equivalent. Metropolitan's Colorado River supply arrives near sixteen grains per gallon. Eastern Sierra aqueduct water runs about six and a half. Local treated groundwater in some districts is nearer six. That is a two-and-a-half-fold spread inside one utility. The practical consequence is that two identical houses on the same street can have genuinely different spotting problems, and that a neighbor's advice about what works is not reliable here. Before we quote mineral restoration in Irvine we test the actual deposit on your actual glass, because guessing from the city name gets it wrong often enough to matter.
Irvine sits at the mouth of a pass or canyon, which is the worst place to be in a Santa Ana. These are offshore winds: they run from the desert toward the ocean, October through March, and December has more events than any other month. Gusts of fifty to seventy miles an hour are routine in the passes. Two things follow for your glass. First, the debris comes from inland, so the elevation that gets hit is the one facing away from the ocean, which is the opposite of what most homeowners expect and the reason the "clean" side of the house is often the dirty one. Second, and more practically, the peak of the wind season lands right in the middle of the rainy season, so a Santa Ana can dry-blast a house four days after a rain and undo the entire benefit of that storm. The scheduling answer in Irvine is not "clean in spring." It is to clean after the wind season closes out, in late winter, and again before it opens in early autumn.
Downtown Los Angeles averages 14.25 inches of rain a year and takes nearly all of it between December and March. What that means for Irvine glass is that from roughly May through November, nothing washes anything. Every particle that lands stays, and the layer builds continuously with no natural interruption. Front Range and Midwest cleaning advice assumes periodic rain doing part of the job for you; here it simply does not happen. That is why a twice-a-year schedule that works fine in a summer-rain climate leaves Irvine windows looking neglected by September, and why the highest-value single appointment of the year here is late autumn, after the dry season has finished loading the glass and before the first rain streaks all of it down the pane at once.
Irvine has jacaranda streets, and every May the same conversation happens. The purple is beautiful, and the sticky film that lands on everything under it is neither nectar nor sap. It is honeydew: aphids feed on the tree and excrete it, and it rains down continuously through the bloom, which runs from late April to mid-June. Two things follow. First, fresh honeydew comes off with water and almost nothing else needed, so timing beats chemistry here. Second, left on hot glass in full sun it cooks, and then black sooty mold grows on the sugar, at which point you have a biological problem on the pane rather than a film. The practical answer for a jacaranda block is not to clean in May. It is to clean in early July, once the drop has finished, and to hose the worst south-facing panes down in between if they are getting hit hard.
May and June are the two cloudiest months of the year on this coast, running about fifty-nine and fifty-eight percent sunny days respectively, and Irvine sits far enough inland that the layer burns off by late morning most days. Fog is not rain. It does not rinse anything. What it does is wet the dust already on the glass, hold it there through the morning, and then dry it into a mottled film when the sun finally comes through. That is why so many Irvine windows look worse in June than in September despite nothing new landing on them. It also changes how the work gets done: exterior glass cleaned into a marine layer dries slowly and unevenly, so we work the sun side first and come back to the shaded elevations, rather than cleaning the house in a circle and leaving streaks on the north face.
Every visible window in the home: interior and exterior surfaces, plus screens, sills, and frames. We don't skip the kitchen window above the sink, the basement egress, or the garage windows.
Screens are removed, washed by hand, and reinstalled. Bent screen splines are corrected; severely damaged screens are flagged for our optional re-screening service ($25–$45 per window).
Sills (the inside ledge) and tracks (the bottom channel where the window slides) are cleaned out of dirt, dead bugs, and dust. This is the part that DIY cleaning almost always misses.
Frames are wiped down, the painted or wooden border around the glass, including the corners where mineral deposits and pollen accumulate.
Pre-walk and final-walk: a Sonlight technician walks the home with you (if present) at the start to flag anything unusual, and again at the end to verify the work meets your standard.
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Our crew shows up within the time window, in branded trucks with $2M liability and workers' comp. The lead tech walks the property with you (if home) before starting.
Interior windows are squeegeed dry with hand-towels and finished by hand. Exterior is cleaned with a purified-water rinse system that prevents new mineral spotting.
We walk the home with you (or send photos if you're not there). Pay by card, ACH, or check. If anything looks off within 24 hours, we come back free.
Most Irvine properties land between $640 and $1020 for this service. That band is derived from real Irvine jobs, not a national average, which is why it differs from the number you would see on our page for a neighboring town. Here is how the job profiles break down:
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Custom estate homes with extensive glass on large landscaped grounds and difficult elevations.
Association-managed with extensive common landscape on purple-pipe irrigation, plus lake-facing glass that shows every deposit.
Hillside village with view glass over slopes and access that needs planning on downslope elevations.
Established village housing with mature landscaping and common-area irrigation reaching ground-floor glass.
Older Irvine stock with mature canopy loading tracks with organic litter alongside mineral.
Newest construction with high solar density and ongoing construction dust from adjacent phases.
See every neighborhood and the full local guide on our Irvine window cleaning page.
Colorado's mile-high+ altitude means UV exposure is 25-40% stronger than at sea level. Mineral deposits etch into window glass faster, and window seals fail sooner. Twice-yearly professional cleaning is the practical baseline, quarterly for west-facing exposures or homes near sprinkler overspray.
Front Range water averages 50–150 ppm hardness depending on city (Denver Water ~70 ppm, Colorado Springs Utilities ~125 ppm). The water is also slightly alkaline (pH ~8) which etches the silica in glass faster than acidic water of the same hardness.
Spring pollen (cottonwood, pine) and June cottonwood fluff are the heaviest contamination periods. Most Front Range homeowners book a major clean in late May or early June after pollen drops, then a second in October before the holidays.
Three times a year is the honest answer for most of Irvine, not twice. Schedule it around the rain rather than around the seasons, because there effectively are none here. The two appointments that do the most work in Irvine are late October, before the first storms mobilise a dry season's worth of dust down the glass, and March, once the Santa Ana season has closed out. A summer visit in between is worth it on any elevation that irrigation reaches.
Both, included. Screens come off the frame and are washed flat rather than brushed in place, and tracks are cleared dry before any water goes on the window.
Most 2-story Colorado homes (1,800–2,400 sqft, ~22–30 windows) take 2–3 hours with a 2-tech crew. Larger custom homes can run 4–6 hours. We'll give you a specific time window when we confirm the booking.
No. As long as we can access exterior gates, side yards, and any rooms you want cleaned interior, we're fine. We text you when the crew arrives and when the job is complete with photos. Most of our recurring customers are not home during the appointment.
Full service = interior + exterior + screens + sills + frames. Exterior-only = exterior surfaces only, no interior access required. Exterior-only runs about 65-75% of the full-service price and is faster to schedule. Most customers do full service in spring and exterior-only in fall.
Yes. We use water-fed pole systems that reach up to 4 stories, and rope-descent gear for taller buildings. There's no upcharge for height on a typical 2-story residential job, height pricing only kicks in for homes over 3 stories or with bosun-chair access requirements.
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