What laser cleaning actually costs, and what drives the number

Most companies in this trade make you call to find out whether you can afford them. We would rather you knew now, because a call that ends in sticker shock wastes your afternoon and ours.

The market band

Across North America in 2026, mobile laser cleaning runs roughly $150 to $350 an hour. Specialist and conservation-grade work sits between $250 and $450. Minimum job charges of $500 to $1,000 are standard across the industry, and delicate restoration work quoted by area frequently exceeds $25 per square foot.

Our published rates sit at the upper end of that band deliberately. The cheaper end of the market is generally a continuous-wave industrial unit run at speed by an operator whose usual work is descaling pipe — a perfectly good thing to buy for a fence, and the wrong thing to buy for a bronze.

Why there is a minimum charge

Getting a Class 4 laser to your site safely is most of the work on a small job: transport, power or generator, extraction, establishing a control area, and eyewear for everyone inside it. That effort is nearly identical whether the piece is a door knocker or a monument, which is why a minimum exists at essentially every company in this trade. Ours is waived on repeat and contract work.

The five things that move a quote

• What is on it, and how thick. A single failed wax coat is quick. Forty years of layered paint over corrosion is not. Thickness and number of layers drive passes, and passes drive hours.
• What is underneath. Robust substrate with nothing to preserve allows higher fluence and faster work. Irreplaceable material demands conservative settings and constant checking, which costs time.
• Geometry. Flat and open is fast. Deep relief, undercuts, ornament and interior corners are slow, because the beam has to reach every surface at a workable angle.
• Access. Bench height in a shop is the cheap case. Twelve feet up a façade needs a lift, and that is time and equipment before any cleaning happens.
• Site conditions. Power availability, whether the area can be controlled, whether the building is occupied, and how much of the day is setup versus work.

Hourly or by area?

Hourly suits variable work — sculpture, fire damage, anything where the condition is not uniform. Per-square-foot suits repetitive work over consistent material. Fixed-price suits a well-defined scope where you want cost certainty, and we are happy to quote that way once we have seen the piece.

What is included and never billed separately

• The on-site assessment, anywhere in Sedona, the Verde Valley or Flagstaff.
• The test patch and the conversation about how clean is clean enough.
• Laser safety control area and eyewear for everyone present.
• Fume extraction at the work face.
• Written parameter record for the piece, on conservation work.

And if we look at your job and conclude that blasting or a conventional remediation crew is the better buy, we will tell you and you will owe nothing. That happens, and it costs us less than a bad outcome on a piece that mattered.