Is it worth cleaning window screens?
Yes, in almost every case. A dirty screen holds a dust layer that blows back onto glass you just paid to have cleaned, so doing the glass alone undoes half the job. We only recommend replacement when the mesh is torn or the frame is bent past square.
Last updated: August 2026
Last March we pulled 22 screens off a 1974 ranch house in Point Loma, three blocks up from the water. Nineteen of them cleaned up fine. Three went in the truck as scrap, and we told the owner that before we touched them.
Here is the thing homeowners underestimate. A screen is a filter, and it has been filtering for years.
Pull one out of a Pacific Beach window and hold it up against the sun. The light comes through grey. That grey is a packed layer of salt, sand and household dust sitting in every square of standard 18x16 mesh, and it is the reason the room behind it never quite feels bright.
What actually comes off a window screen
We run screens through a screen machine and then work them with bristle brushes. After that the frame gets hand-detailed, because the 5/16 inch frame channel holds a completely different kind of grime than the mesh does.
What comes off depends entirely on where the house is.
| Location | What loads the screen | What you notice |
|---|---|---|
| Coastal: La Jolla, Del Mar, Pacific Beach, Point Loma | Salt spray off the ocean, fine beach sand | Grey haze in the mesh, salt film reappearing on glass within weeks |
| Inland: Poway, Scripps Ranch, 4S Ranch, Rancho Peñasquitos | Dust and hard-water sprinkler overspray | Mineral spotting in the bottom 12 inches of the pane, dulled mesh |
Coastal screens load faster in Pacific Beach than almost anywhere else we work, and the reason is behavioural rather than environmental. People there open their windows constantly. That is the whole point of living there. The screens are doing real work every single day.
What we charge, so you are not guessing
Screens run 4 to 6 dollars each when we are already on site doing the glass, because the labour is mostly in the setup and we have already done that. On their own, screens only, it is 9 to 12 dollars a screen with a 150 dollar minimum, since a screens-only trip is still a full drive and a full setup.
That Point Loma house was 19 screens alongside a full exterior, which put the screen portion at about 95 dollars. Most single-story San Diego homes land between 12 and 20 screens.
Why we will not clean your glass without doing the screens
We will, if you ask. But we tell you first what is going to happen.
A loaded screen sits directly in front of a pane we just spent time on. The first windy afternoon, that dust comes off the mesh and lands on the glass. You get maybe two good days.
So we push hard to book screens and glass in the same visit. Not as an upsell. It is just that half the work is wasted otherwise, and we would rather do the job once properly than have you looking at spotted glass on Thursday wondering what you paid for.
How do you clean outside window screens without removing them?
Honestly? You mostly cannot, not well.
You can knock the surface dust off an in-place screen with a soft brush and a rinse, and that is better than nothing between proper cleanings. What it will not do is clear the material packed into the mesh from the inside, and it will not touch the frame channel at all. Rinsing a screen in place also runs dirty water down the glass underneath it, which is why we do glass after screens rather than before.
Some fixed screens genuinely cannot come out without damaging the clips. Those we work in place and we say so up front.
When a screen is past saving
Three situations, and we will tell you rather than quietly cleaning something that needs replacing. All three of the ones we scrapped in Point Loma were the third kind:
- Mesh with a tear or a hole in it, because cleaning will usually widen it
- A frame bent out of square by more than about a quarter inch, which will not seat properly again no matter how clean it is
- Sun-rotted mesh that has gone brittle and crumbles under a brush, common on long-exposure west-facing windows
Everything else cleans up. Old aluminium-frame screens on 1970s stock come back further than people expect.
What is the difference between window washing and window cleaning?
Nothing meaningful. The two terms get used interchangeably in the trade and by customers, and anyone telling you there is a technical distinction is building a sales argument.
What does differ is method. Exterior glass we do with deionized water and water-fed brushes. San Diego tap water runs roughly 500 to 600 ppm dissolved solids depending on the district, and our tanks put it out at 0 ppm, so it dries without spotting and there is no squeegee pass. The poles reach a second story, about 35 feet, from the ground. Interior glass is hand washed with microfiber on the frames and the sills. Different rooms, different tools, same goal.
Read more about our screen cleaning and exterior window cleaning, or see where we work across San Diego County.
Matthew and Tanner do the jobs themselves. If we have cleaned your screens, telling other people which neighbourhood you are in when you leave a Google review helps more than you would think.