Many customers wonder about how dry-cleaning prices work, and why they don’t see a dry cleaning price list posted when they visit their local cleaners. Here is some useful information for our customers, and anyone who does dry cleaning or uses laundry services.

We Will Provide a Detailed Price Quote Upon Request, Before Cleaning Your Garments

Even though prices are not posted in each location, the cost of dry cleaning does not need to remain a mystery. We want to avoid surprises at pickup as much as you do!

If you ask, we will be more than happy to go over each garment in your order, checking for stains and looking at the care tags and fabric content with you, so we can determine the exact cost to clean a given item. Then you can determine if the price is amenable to you.

Yes, There May Be Additional Fees Involved in the Price of Dry Cleaning

Premium fabrics, embellishments, or excessive staining require special care and can increase the total price to clean a garment.

Premium fabrics that may incur additional fees include, but are not limited to: silk, linen, rayon, viscose, TENCELTM, modal, velvet, velour, lace, very heavy fabrics, and animal fur/hair such as cashmere, angora, mohair, camel, alpaca, llama and others.

Embellishments that may incur additional fees include, but are not limited to: beads, sequins and certain kinds of buttons. These details may need to be covered before the garment can be cleaned; or removed and reattached afterward; or they may require that the garment be cleaned in an entirely different manner. These extra steps require more time and attention than normal to be spent on a garment.

Excessive staining, such as grease, oil, food, pet urine, etc. on a garment may incur an additional fee, as it will require extra time and attention during the cleaning process, and the garment may have to be cleaned more than once.

Excessive lint or pet hair on a garment may incur an additional fee, since it will require extra time and attention during the cleaning process, as the garment may have to be delinted by hand.

“Special Care Fees” may be applied to a garment if it requires extra time and attention during the professional finishing stage. If a garment is unable to be effectively pressed or steamed on our professional presses, a hand iron may be required to remove wrinkles after cleaning. This most often includes skirts, dresses and certain kinds of button-down shirts with pleats. Lined skirts, dresses and pants may also incur an additional fee.

Prices Can Vary, Which is Why You Won’t See a Price List Posted

It is not possible to post prices in our stores because the cost to clean any given garment varies based on the fabric content, decorations and embellishments, and extent of stains. Anton’s offers dry cleaning services for many types of garments, each with different prices, and the combinations of possible charges for each one based on those variants are in the hundreds.

Without Seeing a Garment, It May Not Be Possible to Give an Accurate Cost Estimate

You may wish to call your store of choice ahead of time for pricing information, but they will likely only be able to give you the base price, i.e. the least amount you can expect to pay for a garment to be cleaned.

Understanding the above mentioned factors that may increase the total price to dry clean clothes will help; you can look at the care tags and fabric content, and share that with the employee so they can factor that into their price estimate. Stains and lint/pet hair does get a little more complicated, but you can expect the price to be a little higher if you think either of those apply to a particular item you drop off.

With Dry Cleaning, You Get What You Pay For

Cheap dry cleaning will reflect in the finished product. Economy cleaners use lower quality dry cleaning fluid, and they use it more times before changing it out (think oil in a fryer and how you can tell if your food was cooked in old oil).

They also do not have strict inspection processes after finishing. Anton’s hand inspects all garments to make sure they are acceptable to return to customers, and if not, we work on them more until they are. Mistakes do happen and things are sometimes missed, but we also guarantee your satisfaction and will offer a ‘redo’ at no additional cost if ever we fall short. Budget cleaners make no such promises.