If you smoke in your home, the smell of it will embed into your walls and other areas. While you may not be able to smell it since you are used to it, people not used to the scent can notice it immediately.
Removing the long-lasting cigarette smell and replacing it with wonderful scents are one of the ways to increase home’s value. It will take more than just air fresheners and a fresh coat of paint to solve this issue. If you want to sell your home, the costs to remove the cigarette odor will include fumigating, dehumidifying, and redecorating.
Cost to Remove Cigarette Smell From House
Various removal methods are involved when removing cigarette smells from your home’s upholstery, furniture, and walls.
Depending upon which method you choose, how many items need to be fumigated, and how big your house is, cigarette smell removal can cost as low as $200 to as high as $1,000 or more.
The process can be time-consuming, so overall costs depend on how many methods you utilize to remove cigarette smoke damage from your home.
Thermal Fogging
Thermal fogging is the method that removes smoke odors from fabrics such as curtains, furniture, carpet, drywall, and other soft surfaces by spraying a disinfecting agent into the air.
Professionals will measure the airspace volume in your home to determine how many disinfectants they need to spray in the air to get the job done. It costs about $200 to $600 for overall treatment, which should be done to all soft fabrics exposed to smoke from previous owners of rental tenants.
Ozone Treatment
Ozone treatment also removes the cigarette smoke smell from these same surfaces. However, instead of spraying a specific disinfectant in the air for treatment, an ozone generator machine is placed in the home where all items are vacated from it.
When the machine turns on, it oxidizes the air to return the scent to normal, which is the best method for removing the cigarette smoke smell from walls and surfaces throughout the home.
Giving an apartment an ozone treatment will cost about $300. However, it can cost upwards of $500 or more if done to a bigger house. For best results, you should institute an ozone treatment for at least 30 hours.
Overall Costs
The following are the overall costs of removing cigarette smell buildup from your home based on the type of service you may petition for. All are based on average costs and could differ based on the company you choose, their designated rates, and how large your dwelling measures:
- Thermal fogging or ozone treatment: About $400 (mid-range for either service)
- Hiring a professional house cleaner: $250
- Getting a home dehumidifier: $1,000
- Fumigating costs: $6,250
- Redecorating your home: $5,000
Hence, if you do all the tasks listed above, you may be spending almost $13,000. Of course, you can find deals in your local area that could reduce that total investment into the overall costs to remove the cigarette smell from the house.
Fumigating your home is best if previous tenants or members of your household smoked heavily while living there. If there is still a smoke smell after taking the previous steps listed above, fumigation should be the last resort to finalize the deodorizing process.
Now that we understand the overall costs to remove the cigarette smell from the house, we’ll break them down further so you can learn your spending options more thoroughly.
Getting Professional House Cleaners
While you could try to do DIY solutions for smoke odor removal, it is easier to get a cleaning service or restoration company that can handle smoke remediation. Professional house cleaners know the inside and out of sprucing up your living space.
Besides fumigating and dehumidifying your home to remove the cigarette smoke smell, professional cleaners know other tricks and hacks that can reduce the noxious scent lingering in your home.
One house-cleaning session from a professional house cleaner averages about $150. You can usually pay as little as $100 or as high as $300. Factor in the size of the home, such as how many rooms they have to clean and the square footage of each one. House cleaners usually charge based on how much space they are tasked with cleaning.
Ask your house cleaner if they can do a few hacks while cleaning for higher-quality cigarette smoke residue removal. For example, utilizing natural ingredients such as white vinegar and baking soda will be a low-cost solution to save money on overall smoke removal.
For a natural odor removal cleaning solution, you can use white vinegar. It contains acetic acid that helps you clean and deodorizes household surfaces and walls to remove the cigarette smoke smell. While using distilled white vinegar with 5% acetic acid will give great results, cleaning vinegar can do much better because it has 6% acetic acid.
Ask your professional house cleaners to vacuum furniture and fabrics with baking soda. The ingredient naturally absorbs odors such as cigarette smoke. Place a couple of bowls of baking soda in each room for a few days at a time. Then, change out the baking soda in the bowls to ensure that all the cigarette smoke smell is absorbed throughout the home.
Changing air filters in air conditions and heating systems throughout your home, amongst other tips, are great tips for you and your professional cleaner to do to remove cigarette smoke smell.
Getting a Dehumidifier For Your House
You have a few options for getting a dehumidifier or air purifier for your house. First, invest in a dehumidifier with the capacity to affect your entire home’s air quality. Alternatively, you can pick up a few dehumidifiers to place one in each room throughout your home.
A unit that covers your entire home will cost as low as $1,000 and sometimes as high as $3,000 or more, depending on the brand and how much work the professionals would have to do to incorporate the dehumidifier into your home’s HVAC system.
Dehumidifiers that service one room at a time can cost about $250 to $450. If you only have a few rooms in the house and can find a great deal on the lower end of purchasing dehumidifiers for separate rooms, go for it! However, if you have more than three to four rooms in your home, opt for a whole-house dehumidifier to save money.
De-fumigating Costs
Fumigation costs are charged based on a set price for each square foot. The average cost is $2.50 per square foot of space serviced. The lower cost threshold is $1.00 per square foot, while the higher echelon price point is $4.00 per square foot. Shop around amongst your local professional fumigators to find the best price.
Gaseous chemicals in a cigarette can linger on furniture and surfaces for long periods. Fumigating your home removes the smells and pesticides from the air that come from that cigarette smoke. If your home is not fumigated and dehumidified, it can get you or future homeowners sick.
Having your home fumigated removes the chemicals found in cigarette smoke, including:
- Acetic acid, which is in hair dye products
- Acetone, which is used in nail polish remover.
- Arsenic is an ingredient used for rat poison products.
- Butane is an ingredient inside the lighter fluid.
- Cadmium is one of the active ingredients found in battery acid.
- Lead is a leading ingredient in various batteries on the market.
- Nicotine is something also used to kill insects.
Not removing these chemicals can harm someone over time as they continually inhale it into their body. Reduce the health risks of future homeowners by fumigating your home.
Redecorating Costs
You do not want to sell a house that smells like smoke. Even if you remove the smoke smell from carpets and other existing fabrics, you should consider redecorating or repainting to get the smell of smoke out of your house.
One of the advantages of selling your house by yourself is that you can call the shots on how you redecorate. Depending on how many rooms you want to redecorate, a two-bedroom house can cost about $5,000 on the lower end to revamp its look.
Higher end redecoration costs can range from $30,000 to $50,000. Think about your budget and negotiate with your home decorator to help you find the best redecoration services based on what you have available to spend for it.
When you finish and are prepared to list your house on the local real estate market, we buy houses Charlotte homeowners want to sell quickly. So consider us an option to get your home sold, so we can take the work out of searching for a buyer!
Conclusion
Fumigation, dehumidifying, using natural deodorizing cleaning materials, and hiring a professional home cleaner are all ways that you can remove cigarette smells from your home.
If you live nearby, cash home buyers in North Carolina are waiting to purchase a new house. So get your home ready for potential homebuyers that want a new chapter in their lives.
Learn how to sell a house fast in Belmont so a new family can enjoy your newly cleaned and fumigated home, and you can move on to the next city and home you have your heart set on.