Curtains, Blinds and Light Fittings at Handover: Who Pays in Singapore?

These three items cause more small deposit deductions than anything else at a Singapore handover, because they sit in the gap between cleaning and reinstatement. They are too minor for a contractor’s scope and too specific for a general cleaner, so nobody does them, and the landlord deducts. This guide prices each one for 2026 and names the clause that decides who pays.

Who pays to dry-clean the curtains at the end of a Singapore tenancy?

Two details in that clause do the work. The first is “professionally”: washing the sheers in your own machine does not discharge the obligation, and a shrunken or warped panel turns a S$10 job into a replacement. The second is the receipt. The clause makes the receipt part of the obligation, not a courtesy, so a tenant who cleaned the curtains but cannot prove it is in the same position as one who did not.

The clause is also the reason curtains appear twice in the paperwork. The Property Condition Report attached to the same template carries a line for “condition of curtains, drapes (stains, holes, torn)”, photographed at move-in and again at move-out. That row is what a landlord points at when a deduction is challenged, which is why a thorough move-in inventory is worth the hour it takes.

Not every lease uses the template. If yours was drafted by the landlord’s agent, check whether the curtain clause survived, and whether it was widened to cover blinds, carpets or upholstery. Where the clause is absent, the general yielding-up obligation still applies, but the specific duty to produce a dry-cleaning receipt does not.

How much does curtain dry-cleaning cost in Singapore in 2026?

Indicative 2026 Singapore market rates from published laundry price lists. Most operators set a minimum order of about S$100 where take-down and reinstallation are included.

Weight is the number most tenants get wrong. A full-length night curtain is around 3 to 4 kg, so a single blackout panel at S$12.90 a kilogram is a S$40 to S$50 item, not a S$13 one. Six night panels in a three-bedroom unit is therefore closer to S$250 than to S$80, which is why the whole-home quotes cluster where they do.

On-site steaming is cheaper per visit but is not the same service. It refreshes the fabric without removing it, so it will not lift kitchen grease or smoke staining, and it does not produce the dry-cleaning receipt clause 20.2 asks for. Use it mid-tenancy, not at handover.

Do blinds have to be cleaned at handover too?

The bigger risk with blinds is not dirt but mechanism. A roller blind with a snapped chain, a bent bottom bar or a jammed cassette counts as damage rather than fair wear and tear, and replacement is an order of magnitude dearer than cleaning: made-to-measure roller blinds start around S$240 for a small window of roughly 20 sq ft, a full set for a four-room flat runs S$600 to S$1,200, and motorised units start near S$690.

Where a blind genuinely has to be replaced, the deduction should reflect what was lost, not what it costs to buy new. A five-year-old blind replaced with a brand-new one leaves the landlord better off than before, and the betterment principle is the argument that gets that deduction reduced to a fair share.

Who replaces blown light bulbs, the tenant or the landlord?

That cap is negotiated rather than fixed. It is left blank in the template and commonly filled in at S$150 to S$200 per item per incident in Singapore leases, so read Item 10 of your own schedule before assuming a number. Our guide to the minor repair clause sets out how the cap, the problem-free period and the reimbursement mechanism interact.

Replacing a bulb needs no licence. The Energy Market Authority is explicit that related works such as replacement of bulbs and the installation of appliances do not require a Licensed Electrical Worker, unless wiring works are involved. That makes a dead bulb the cheapest line on this page to fix, and the least forgivable to leave: a S$10 LED costs a few minutes, while a failed handover inspection costs a return visit for everyone.

Walk the unit at night a week before handover and switch on every circuit, including the ones nobody uses: the store, the yard, the bomb shelter, the cooker hood lamp, the fridge and oven interiors, and the bathroom mirror light. Add them to your end-of-tenancy checklist so they are found with time to buy replacements.

What if you changed the light fittings during the tenancy?

Indicative 2026 Singapore electrician rates. Cove lighting and multi-point ceilings are usually quoted on site rather than at a fixed rate.

This is where the licensing line matters. The EMA requires that the addition, extension or replacement of lighting points, like any installation, repair or modification of wiring, is carried out or supervised by a Licensed Electrical Worker. Ask for the licence card, and check it on the EMA’s ELISE register before work starts: an unlicensed job that has to be redone before handover is the one avoidable cost in this whole article.

Keep the originals from day one. The most expensive version of this problem is a tenant who binned the landlord’s builder-grade downlight in month two and has to source a discontinued match in the final week. Box them, label them, and store them in the unit. The same rule applies to anything else you unscrewed, which is the theme running through our guide to fixtures versus fittings.

What does all this add up to on a three-bedroom condo?

Assumes nothing is torn, stained beyond cleaning or mechanically broken. Replacement, not cleaning, is what turns this into a four-figure line.

Set that against the rest of the handover. A whole-unit condo reinstatement is S$3,000 to S$12,000, so the soft furnishings and lighting are five to fifteen per cent of the bill, yet they generate a disproportionate share of the arguments because they are the items a tenant can still fix in the final week. They are also the items most often confused with cleaning, and cleaning is not reinstatement: a spotless unit with a dead downlight still fails the joint inspection.

How do you keep curtains and lighting off the deduction list?

1. Read clause 20.2 and Item 10 first. Confirm whether your lease carries the curtain clause and what the minor repair cap is, before you book anything.
2. Book the curtain cleaner around the painter. Panels come down before painting and go back up after, so a single take-down and rehang covers both jobs instead of two.
3. Photograph the curtains off the rail. Stains and pinholes that were there at move-in are only provable against the move-in photographs, so pull up the Property Condition Report row before you argue.
4. Test every light at night. Do it a week out, not the morning of the handover, and count the bulb types you need before going to the shop.
5. Undo alterations with a licensed worker. Anything involving a lighting point needs a Licensed Electrical Worker, and the landlord’s original fitting has to go back at the same position.
6. Hand the receipts over with the keys. Dry-cleaning receipt, aircon servicing records and any electrical invoice, in one pack, at the joint inspection.

Agents can close most of this out in a single message a month before expiry: send the tenant the curtain clause, the minor repair cap and the inspection date together. It is the same logic as the aircon servicing record, where the document, not the work, is what the landlord actually checks. Tenants who want the whole deposit back should read it alongside our guide to getting the full deposit returned.