Colorado house cleaning marketing with an all-in first-clean price and a hiring post that passes

A cleaning ad that shows a price now has to show the whole price. If a supply fee, a trip charge or a booking fee is added at checkout, the number in the ad is the wrong number.

Colorado's total price law took effect on January 1, 2026. The total is what the ad must show, written as a single figure, and nothing else about price on the ad may be bigger or bolder. Taxes and other government charges are allowed to stay out of it.

Cleaning is harder to fit into this than most trades, because the price really does move. A two-bedroom condo and a five-bedroom house with two dogs are different jobs. The law makes a narrow exception for a job whose final cost truly cannot be pinned down at the moment you quote it, because of things the seller does not control. It gives customer selections, distance and time as examples.

When the exception fits, the ad has to say three things. It names what sets the price, lists any mandatory fees and says the total may vary. On our reading, a flat fee you always charge is in your control, so it belongs inside the number. Here is how that plays out on a cleaning page:

• Price by home size. Show one figure for a two-bedroom home and one for a four-bedroom home, each with your standing fees already inside it.
• Deep cleans priced on their own. A recurring rate shown beside a deep-clean job with a footnote reads as bait. Give the first deep clean its own total.
• First-clean discounts. The biggest number on the ad is the price the client actually pays after the discount.
• Add-ons named, not hidden. Inside the oven, inside the fridge and interior windows go in a list with their own prices, so the client chooses them.

Ads aimed at older homeowners deserve the most care. Colorado's consumer protection penalty law allows a civil penalty of up to $50,000 per violation when the victim is elderly, against up to $20,000 otherwise.

The law's definitions set "elderly" at 60 or older. Many recurring cleaning clients are in that group, so a confusing "from" price on a senior-living flyer carries more risk than the same line elsewhere. The Colorado electrician page works through the same price law for service-call fees.

Many cleaning companies run under a friendlier brand than the LLC on their paperwork. In Colorado that brand has to be on file with the state, and Google wants your profile to carry it.

Colorado's trade name law says a business may not trade under a name other than its true name unless an effective statement of trade name is on file with the Secretary of State. The statement itself gives your true name, your form of entity, the trade name and a short description of the business.

Skipping the filing has a cost a cleaning owner will recognize. Under the consequences section, a company trading under an unfiled name cannot sue a client it served under that name to collect a debt until the statement is filed, and it faces a civil penalty of up to $500. That is the move-out client whose card was declined after the crew left.

Google's side is about consistency. Its Business Profile guidelines ask for the business's real-world name, as used consistently on the storefront, website and stationery and as known to customers. A cleaning company has no storefront, so the car magnets, the shirts, the invoices and the website do that job.

• One name everywhere. The brand on the magnet, the invoice, the site and the profile is the same, and it is the one on file.
• The legal name in the footer. Clients paying a company called one thing should be able to see who the company is.
• Old brands retired. A second trade name left on an old site or directory listing splits your reviews and confuses the client who searches it.

Vacation rental turnovers look like steady work, but Denver limits who may run a short-term rental. That changes who buys turnover cleans in the city and how the offer should read.

The City and County of Denver licenses a short-term rental, a stay of one to 29 days, only in the host's primary residence. That is the place the host usually returns to. The city's guidance adds that coming back to clean or turn over the home between stays does not count as returning there to live.

So a Denver turnover client is usually a resident renting out the home they live in while they travel. That is a different buyer from an investor with ten units. Write the offer for that person:

• A clean before they come home, not only between guests. The host sleeps in the same rooms the guests just left.
• Booking by travel dates. The booking form asks for checkout and return dates, so one request covers the whole trip.
• A recurring clean for the weeks in between. A host who rents the home out a few weekends a month still lives there the rest of the time.

Stays of 30 days or more need a different city license, which the same page names as the residential rental property license. Other Colorado cities set their own rental rules, so check each one before an ad names it.