What should a kid charge to wash windows?

Windows are the business where the customer had stopped noticing the problem, which changes how you sell it and what it is worth.

What they are really buying

Light. People stop seeing their own dirty glass, and then somebody cleans it and the room looks different in a way they cannot quite name.

That is why the before and after photo works better than any sentence. You are not describing a service, you are showing them a problem they had stopped registering.

What adults pay proves it

Residential window cleaning runs about $8 to $16 per window for interior and exterior in 2026, or roughly $4 to $8 per pane. A whole house typically lands between $150 and $300, and most companies set a minimum job fee of $100 to $250.

Where to start, and why

Somewhere between $4 and $8 per window for ground floor exterior is a sensible opening price, or $6 to $12 if you are doing inside and out. Ten windows at six dollars is sixty dollars for a couple of hours.

Quote the whole job rather than the per window number. Sixty dollars for the front of the house is a decision someone can make. Six dollars times eleven windows is arithmetic they have to check.

The gap under the adult rate is for being unproven, and it is narrow, because a squeegee in careful hands produces the same glass regardless of who is holding it.

The discount should not last

The proof is visible. One house done properly, edges and sills wiped rather than just the glass, and there is nothing left for a company to demonstrate that you have not.

Windows are naturally a twice a year job, spring and fall, so a customer from last spring who asks for you again in October has already told you the discount has expired.

Where you should not discount at all

That minimum job fee is the whole opportunity. A company will not come out for four ground floor windows, and the neighbor with four dirty windows knows it. You are not the cheap version of window cleaning for that person. You are the only version.

Anyone already paying you for something else is the other one. If you mow their lawn, you are standing in the yard of a house with dirty ground floor windows, and asking takes one sentence.

Inside costs more than outside

The adult market charges close to double for both sides, and the reason is not the glass. It is moving furniture, laying down towels, being careful around somebody's things, and working slower because you are inside their house.

Ground floor only, and say so

Second story windows need a ladder at a height where a fall is serious, and companies charge a premium because they are insured for it. Telling a customer you do ground floor only sounds like a limitation and works as a credential.