Fair wear and tear is the deterioration that happens through normal living, and your landlord cannot deduct a penny for it.
What most tenants miss is that the allowance covers the condition of a property, not how clean it is. Dirt is never fair wear and tear, however long you lived there.
That single distinction decides most of the deposit arguments we see.
We run end of tenancy cleans across London every week and we read the check-out reports afterwards. The deductions that stick are almost always about cleaning, and the ones that collapse are almost always about condition.
Knowing which is which before you hand the keys back is worth more than any cleaning tip in this article.
The short answer
Fair wear and tear is damage caused by reasonable everyday use of a property and by the ordinary operation of natural forces, such as sunlight fading a curtain, and landlords cannot charge tenants for it. They can still charge for damage beyond normal use, for missing items, and separately for cleaning, because cleanliness sits outside the wear and tear allowance entirely.
What counts as fair wear and tear in UK law
There is no figure written into statute. The working definition used by deposit adjudicators comes from case law and describes wear from reasonable use of the premises by the tenant, plus the ordinary operation of natural forces.
In practice, adjudicators judge it against four things: the age and quality of the item, how long you lived there, how many people lived there, and what the check-in inventory recorded.
A carpet in a six-year tenancy shared by four people is expected to look very different from the same carpet after eight months of single occupancy. Both can be fair wear and tear.
Typical examples that a landlord cannot charge you for:
- Carpet pile flattened along the route between the door and the sofa
- Paint that has faded or yellowed, especially on a sunny wall
- Small scuffs on skirting boards and door frames from normal passage
- Curtains and blinds faded by daylight
- Worn seals on a fridge or washing machine from years of opening
- Minor marks where furniture has stood against a wall
The National Residential Landlords Association puts it plainly to its own members: landlords cannot deduct for fair wear and tear, and doing so is a common reason adjudicators reject a claim.
The rule most tenants get wrong: wear and tear does not cover cleaning
This is the part almost every guide on the subject skips, and it is the one that costs tenants money.
Fair wear and tear applies to the condition of the property and its contents. It does not apply to the standard of cleaning. mydeposits, one of the three government-approved schemes, states this directly in its guidance.
The property must be returned at the same standard of cleanliness recorded at check-in, no matter how long the tenancy ran.
So a three-year tenancy does not earn you three years’ worth of grease on the oven door. Time does not soften a cleaning standard the way it softens a carpet.
That is why cleaning dominates deposit disputes. The Tenancy Deposit Scheme reports that cleaning is the single biggest cause of the disputes it handles, accounting for around 56% of them.
A worn carpet and a dirty carpet are treated completely differently. One is your landlord’s cost, the other is yours.
Wear and tear, damage, or dirt: the three-way test
Most disputes are really an argument about which of three boxes something belongs in. Adjudicators sort them like this.
| Category | What it means | Who pays | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fair wear and tear | Gradual deterioration from normal use over time | Landlord | Carpet flattened along a walking route |
| Damage | A specific act or neglect beyond normal use | Tenant | Red wine stain, cigarette burn, cracked basin |
| Cleaning | Property returned less clean than at check-in | Tenant | Greasy oven, limescaled shower screen, dusty skirting |
Ask yourself one question about anything flagged on your check-out report: did this happen gradually just by living here normally, or did something specific cause it?
Gradual is usually the landlord’s cost. Specific is usually yours. Dirt is always yours.
What is fair wear and tear after 5 years?
After five years, a landlord can still only charge for damage or cleaning, never for the wear itself. What changes with time is how much they can claim when something genuinely is damaged.
Adjudicators apply a principle called betterment. Your landlord is entitled to be put back in the position they were in, not handed a free upgrade at your expense.
So if an item has a normal useful life and you damage it partway through, you pay only for the remaining life you destroyed, not for a brand new replacement.
Say a carpet has a typical ten year lifespan and cost £1,000. If you spill something unremovable in year five, roughly half its life was already spent.
A fair claim is around £500, not £1,000.
These are the working lifespans adjudicators commonly apply:
| Item | Typical useful life | Value left after 5 years |
|---|---|---|
| Budget carpet | 5 to 8 years | Little to none |
| Mid-range carpet | 10 years | About half |
| Interior paintwork | 3 to 5 years | Little to none |
| Curtains and blinds | 7 to 10 years | Roughly a third to a half |
| White goods | 8 to 10 years | About half |
The pattern is worth noticing. After five years, interior paint and a budget carpet have usually reached the end of their life anyway, so a claim for redecoration or replacement should be small or nil.
If your landlord quotes you the full replacement cost of a five year old carpet, they have ignored betterment and the claim is very likely to fail.
Do landlords have to replace carpets every 7 years?
No. There is no law requiring a landlord to replace carpets on any timetable, and the seven year figure that circulates online has no legal basis.
What does exist is the lifespan principle above. A carpet does not have to be replaced at seven years, but by then most of its useful life has been used up, so the amount a landlord can reasonably claim against it has fallen a long way.
Replacement is the landlord’s commercial decision. Depreciation is the adjudicator’s calculation.
What this means for your end of tenancy clean
The practical takeaway is narrow and useful: stop worrying about the things you cannot control, and spend your effort on the things that are actually chargeable.
You cannot undo four years of carpet compression or sun-faded paint, and you should not try to. That is the landlord’s cost and no adjudicator will hold it against you.
What you can control is every surface on the cleaning list. That is where the deductions that actually stand up come from.
The areas that get flagged most often on the check-out reports we see:
- Oven interior, door glass and shelves
- Extractor filters and the hob surround
- Limescale on shower screens, taps and around bath seals
- Inside kitchen cupboards and the fridge and freezer
- Skirting boards, door frames and the tops of doors
- Windows internally, including sills and frames
Our room-by-room checklist covers the full list. If carpets were professionally cleaned at check-in, your inventory will say so, and returning them the same way is a cleaning obligation rather than a wear and tear question.
If you think a deduction is unfair
Ask for the deduction to be itemised in writing, with the check-in and check-out entries that support it. A landlord who cannot show what the item looked like at check-in has a weak claim.
Then check each line against the three-way test above. Anything that is gradual deterioration from normal use should come off.
If the landlord will not move, all three schemes offer free adjudication, and the process is covered in our guides to what a landlord can charge for and getting your deposit back. Your deposit must be held in one of them, as set out in the GOV.UK deposit protection rules.
Frequently asked questions
What is considered fair wear and tear when renting a property in the UK?
Deterioration from reasonable everyday use and from natural forces such as sunlight. Flattened carpet pile on walking routes, faded paint, minor scuffs on skirting and worn appliance seals all qualify. Adjudicators weigh the item’s age and quality, the length of the tenancy and the number of occupants against what the check-in inventory recorded.
What is fair wear and tear after 5 years?
The same principle applies, but the money changes. After five years most interior paintwork and budget carpets have reached the end of their useful life, so a landlord can claim little or nothing for replacing them. For anything genuinely damaged, the claim is reduced to the remaining useful life rather than the full replacement cost.
Can a landlord charge me for cleaning after a long tenancy?
Yes. Fair wear and tear covers condition, not cleanliness, so the length of your tenancy makes no difference to the cleaning standard you owe. The property must be returned as clean as the check-in inventory records it, whether you stayed eight months or eight years.
Is a stain on the carpet wear and tear?
No. A stain is a specific event, not gradual deterioration, so it counts as damage or as a cleaning issue. If it lifts with professional cleaning it is a cleaning cost. If it is permanent, the landlord can claim the carpet’s remaining useful life, not a new carpet.
Do landlords have to replace carpets every 7 years?
No. No law sets a replacement timetable and the seven year figure has no legal basis. It reflects the rough point at which a carpet’s useful life is largely spent, which limits what a landlord can reasonably claim against it rather than obliging them to replace it.
Get the cleaning half right
Fair wear and tear will look after itself. Cleaning is the half of the check-out report you are actually responsible for, and the half that decides most deposits.
If you would rather hand it to a team that cleans to the inventory standard every day, get your free quote or call us on 07383 435 879. We cover all London postcodes from our Fulham base, with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee if your clerk flags anything.
Last updated: 2 September 2026
