A stylish listing and a great location won’t save you from a bad review if the property isn’t properly cleaned. Cleanliness is consistently one of the top reasons Airbnb guests leave low ratings, and most of the time it’s not a major mess that triggers the complaint. It’s small, repeatable oversights that a rushed or unsystematic clean lets slip through.
Hosts who bring in Airbnb cleaning services London to handle turnovers tend to avoid these issues entirely, simply because professional cleaners follow the same checklist every time rather than relying on memory. Here are the seven mistakes that come up again and again, why they happen, and how to fix them.
TL;DR: The 7 Most Common Cleaning Mistakes
| Mistake | The Fix |
| Stray hairs left behind | Lint roller on fabrics, torch-check shower and drains |
| High-touch surfaces skipped | Dedicated wipe-down pass for switches, handles, remotes |
| Bathrooms look clean but aren’t | Scrub grout and drains, check for lingering smell |
| Kitchen details missed | Wipe inside microwave, check drawers, clean handles |
| Forgotten spots | Check under furniture, inside cabinets, on top of wardrobes |
| Understocked essentials | Restock toilet roll, soap, and bin bags every turnover |
| Rushed turnovers | Allow 3-4 hours between checkout and check-in |
1. Stray Hairs Left Behind
Finding someone else’s hair is one of the fastest ways to make a guest feel a property wasn’t properly reset. It happens in bathrooms more than anywhere else, on shower walls, in drains, and on pillowcases.
This usually comes down to a rushed turnover with no final inspection under good lighting. A quick fix is running a lint roller over pillows and soft furnishings, checking the shower and drain with a torch, and giving baseboards and corners a proper look since hair collects there along with dust.
2. High-Touch Surfaces Getting Skipped
Light switches, door handles, remote controls, and cabinet pulls are touched by every guest. Guests notice grime here faster than on a skirting board they’ll never touch.
Cleaners in a hurry tend to wipe visible surfaces and skip the smaller, frequently-touched items, especially electronics they’re worried about damaging. The fix is a dedicated pass at the end of each clean specifically for these surfaces. It only adds a few minutes but it’s often the difference between a clean that looks fine and one that actually feels sanitised.
3. Bathrooms That Look Clean But Aren’t
A bathroom can appear spotless and still smell musty or leave a guest unimpressed. This usually means the visible surfaces were wiped but the grout, drains, and fixtures behind the obvious areas were ignored.
The fix is going past what’s visible: scrub the grout lines, clear the drain properly, and make sure there’s no lingering smell once the door is closed for a few minutes. If a bathroom still smells when you walk back in later, it hasn’t actually been cleaned to standard.
4. Kitchen Details That Give It Away
Guests rarely cook a full meal, but they always notice if the microwave has splashes inside, if there are crumbs in a drawer, or if appliance handles are sticky. These are small areas that get skipped when a cleaner is focused on the obvious surfaces like the counter and hob.
Wipe inside the microwave, check drawers for crumbs, and clean appliance handles and fronts, not just the worktops. These take an extra five minutes but they’re exactly where guests look when deciding if a kitchen is genuinely clean.
5. Forgotten Spots Guests Always Find
Under the bed, behind furniture, inside the fridge drawers, on top of the wardrobe. These spots get missed because they require moving something, and a quick turnover skips anything that takes extra effort.
Previous guests’ belongings turning up in these spots is a particularly common complaint, and it tells the next guest the property wasn’t checked properly between stays. Build a quick check into every clean for under furniture that can be moved, inside drawers and cabinets, and on top of anything tall enough to collect dust unseen.
6. Understocked Essentials
This isn’t strictly a cleaning issue, but it affects how clean a property feels. Arriving to an empty soap dispenser or no spare toilet roll makes guests assume the place hasn’t been properly looked after, even if the cleaning itself was thorough.
Check and restock toilet roll, hand soap, and bin bags as part of every turnover, not as an afterthought. Keep a clearly labelled cupboard with backups so nothing runs out mid-stay either.
7. Rushed Turnovers Causing Everything Else
Every mistake above tends to trace back to the same root cause: not enough time between bookings. A standard two-bedroom property needs three to four hours for a proper clean including restocking and a final check. Squeezing that into ninety minutes for a same-day turnover is where corners get cut.
If you’re running tight same-day turnovers regularly, it’s worth looking at how that timeline actually works in practice. Our turnover service guide covers how to structure check-out and check-in times so cleaning doesn’t get compressed into a window that’s too short to do properly.
Why These Mistakes Keep Happening
Most hosts assume bad reviews come from difficult guests or bad luck. In reality, the cause is almost always a missing system rather than a lazy cleaner. One turnover goes well, the next one is rushed, and the standard varies depending on who’s cleaning and how much time they’ve got.
The properties that consistently score well on cleanliness aren’t necessarily cleaned by better people. They’re cleaned against the same checklist every single time, with enough time built in to actually follow it.
How to Stop These Mistakes Happening
A simple system fixes most of this. Work through one room completely before moving to the next, rather than jumping between rooms. Finish with a dedicated high-touch and hair check across the whole property. Restock essentials as a fixed step, not something you remember if there’s time left. And give every clean enough time, three to four hours for a standard two-bedroom, rather than squeezing it into whatever gap exists between checkout and check-in.
Our Airbnb cleaning guide for hosts breaks this down into a full room-by-room checklist if you want something more detailed to work from or hand to a cleaner.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the single most common cleaning complaint in Airbnb reviews?
Stray hairs, particularly in bathrooms and on bedding, come up more often than almost anything else. It’s a small detail but it has an outsized effect on how clean a guest perceives the whole property to be.
How much time should a proper turnover actually take?
A standard two-bedroom property needs three to four hours including restocking and a final check. Studios can be quicker, larger properties take longer. Anything significantly less than this usually means something gets skipped.
Do scented cleaning products help or hurt reviews?
Strong chemical smells can backfire, making guests wonder what’s being masked rather than reassuring them. A light, clean scent works better than something overpowering.
Is it worth using a checklist if I clean the property myself?
Yes. Even experienced hosts miss the same spots over time because they’re working from memory rather than a fixed list. A checklist catches the same hidden areas and high-touch surfaces every time, regardless of how rushed the turnover feels.
Can one bad cleanliness review really affect future bookings?
Yes. Cleanliness is one of the most heavily weighted categories in Airbnb’s review system, and a drop in this score affects search visibility. A single poor review on cleanliness often does more damage than a mixed review on location or value.