Cleaning after a death at home

Cleaning firms call this an “unattended death”: someone died and was not found for days or weeks. In that time fluids from the body can soak into the bed, a mattress, carpet and the floor beneath, and the longer the delay, the further they can spread. Removing them safely is specialist work. A domestic cleaner or a house clearance firm is not the right choice for the affected room, because contaminated material has to be removed and disposed of as possibly infectious waste, and because of the health risks explained below.

Cleaning and clearance are different jobs. The specialist cleans and decontaminates the affected rooms first; emptying the rest of the home afterwards is ordinary house clearance. Our sister site covers house clearance after a bereavement and what it costs.

If the death was a suicide or followed an injury, our page on trauma cleaning after a suicide, violent death or injury covers it. If the police are treating the home as a crime scene, see crime scene cleaning and who arranges it after the police.

Ask the firm to find and set aside the things that matter before the clean starts. That way nothing is thrown away by mistake, and you do not have to go in and look. Give the firm a written list:

• documents: a will, passport or other identification, bank, pension and property papers, insurance policies;
• cash, bank cards, jewellery and other valuables;
• photographs, letters and any named item that matters to the family;
• anything the police or the insurer have asked you to keep.

Whether an item can be cleaned and kept depends on what it is made of and whether fluids reached it. The firm decides at the assessment. Materials that soak up liquid, such as carpet, mattresses and plaster, may have to be removed and disposed of if they are contaminated. In heavier cases firms also take up floorboards and treat the subfloor: their published prices for these jobs include floor removal and subfloor work. Ask the firm to photograph anything that has to go, for your records and for any insurance claim.

Belongings the police took away are returned separately; ask the investigating officer. In Scotland, COPFS says it returns belongings on request once they are not needed for the investigation.

Where it comes from. When a person has died and is not found for some days, fluids from the body can soak into what is underneath: bedding, a mattress, carpet, and sometimes the floorboards and the floor below. The smell comes from those materials, and treating the air will not remove it while they remain.

Why air fresheners and redecorating do not fix it. Air fresheners, open windows and odour machines act on the air, not on the source. Painting over a stain or laying new flooring on top leaves the source where it is. In one discussion on a UK housing forum about a smell that remained after redecorating, one commenter reported that it stopped once the affected flooring was replaced. That is a single report, but it matches how firms price this work: their packages for deaths found late include taking up flooring and treating the subfloor, with odour treatment (fogging or ozone) added to that work, not in place of it.

What removes it is taking out the affected materials, cleaning and disinfecting what is left, and then treating the air. If a cleaning quote already includes odour treatment, you do not need to pay for a separate odour service.

If nobody has died in or near the home, this section may not fit your situation: a council or private pest control service deals with animals such as rats and mice.

If the smell is coming from a neighbour’s home

If you think a neighbour may have died and not been found, contact the police. If they have been found but the home has not been cleaned, the people to tell are the executor or administrator of the estate, or the landlord if it was rented, if you know who they are.

If nobody acts, report it to the council’s environmental health team. In England and Wales, premises in a state that is prejudicial to health can be a statutory nuisance: the council must take reasonable steps to investigate a complaint, and must serve an abatement notice if it finds one. A council can also serve a notice on a home that is filthy or verminous to a degree that harms health (Public Health Act 1936, section 83). In England, though, the government’s guidance on smell complaints says smells from homes are excluded from that route, so describe the state of the property and its effects, such as flies, rather than the smell alone. A report does not mean a free clean: councils can recover the cost of work they do in default. In Scotland and Northern Ireland the powers differ; ask the council’s environmental health team what applies.

Prices depend on how many rooms are affected, how long before the person was found, whether fluid has reached the floor below, and how much has to be removed. Published examples from two UK firms:

If the person owned the home, the executor or administrator is usually the person to arrange the work, and it is usually paid from the estate if the estate has the money. If you are unsure whether a cost can be paid from the estate, ask the executor or a solicitor. Being next of kin does not on its own make you personally responsible for the estate’s debts, but be clear, when you sign a cleaning contract, whether you are signing for the estate. If the home was rented, the landlord is involved: one council landlord, Folkestone and Hythe, says it may charge the estate for clearing and cleaning its home after a tenant’s death.

When a council arranges a public health funeral because no one else is making suitable arrangements (England and Wales; Scotland has its own equivalent), that covers the funeral, not cleaning the home. Fenland District Council, for example, says that in its cases in rented homes the landlord is responsible for the cleaning. Home insurance sometimes helps, but read the exclusions: Saga’s March 2026 policy covers contents damaged by bodily fluids after a death, but not where nobody permanently lives in the home after the only resident dies, which rules it out when the person lived alone. The who pays tool sets out the routes for owners, tenants, landlords and estates with no money.

No law we found stops a family cleaning a relative’s home, but the risks are real and the rules for people who do this work show them:

• HSE says direct contact with blood and body fluids should be avoided where possible and limited to people with appropriate training, and that gloves alone do not make a job safe.
• Blood-borne viruses can pass through a needle or sharp injury, or a splash to the eyes, mouth or broken skin. Needles may be among a person’s belongings.
• Contamination that has dried is not automatically harmless: HSE explains that hepatitis B can remain infectious in dried blood. We found no official safe waiting time before going in.
• Bleach can release chlorine gas if it meets acids or acidic fluids such as urine.
• Clothes, shoes and equipment can carry contamination to other rooms and back to your own home.

It can also be very distressing to see. You do not need to: the firm can assess, clean and retrieve items without you there.

You can arrange the clean without going to the home. What to sort out from where you are:

1. Access. Ask the investigating officer, if there was one, who has the keys and when the home can be entered. If the police are holding property from the home, they may ask for evidence that you are entitled to it: Merseyside Police’s policy, for example, normally asks for probate, letters of administration or other identification.
2. Authority. Tell the firm who can agree to the work and sign the quote: the executor or administrator, the owner, or the landlord. If that is not you, put the firm in touch with them.
3. A written brief. Send the firm the address and how to get in, who makes decisions, the documents, photographs and named items to find and keep, anything that must not be thrown away, and the insurer’s details if you have them.
4. Everything in writing. Ask for the quote, photographs of what was found and kept, the completion note and the waste paperwork by email, and agree how kept items will reach you.

We found no compulsory licence for after-death or trauma cleaners in the UK, so check what each firm can show you:

• Its waste carrier registration, on the public register for the nation it is registered in: England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. It shows the firm can carry waste, not that its staff are trained.
• The training its staff hold, by name: for example the BICSc units SU1 (bodily fluids and sharp objects) and SU2 (bio-hazard decontamination cleaning).
• A written quote that lists what will be kept for you, what will be disposed of, odour treatment, VAT and exclusions.

Our checklist for choosing a cleaner covers the rest, including how to compare quotes.