Wear and Tear Versus Damage: Drawing the Line You Can Charge For

The line is not where the object looks bad. It is where you can show what it looked like before, and when.

Last updated: September 24, 2026

A scuffed skirting board and a snapped chair leg aren't the same kind of thing. Only one of them is a guest's problem. Wear is the slow decline you already priced into the nightly rate. Damage is an event: one stay, one item, one before-and-after you can point at. This guide draws the line where a claim actually holds — the record you build on day one, the replacement value you set before anything breaks, and the message that settles most of it before it becomes a claim.

Key Takeaways

• Wear is cumulative; damage is dated. If you can't attach a date and a stay to it, it's your cost of doing business.
• The record comes first. An inventory with values, a dated photo set, and a per-stay pass — built before the claim, not during it.
• Photograph on turnover day, before the cleaner. A cleaning pass removes the evidence along with the mess.
• Charge remaining value, not new value. A mattress two years into five is worth three fifths of what you paid. That's an example, not a standard.
• Talk before you file. Most claims that end badly started as a message that started badly.

Why the distinction matters commercially rather than morally, and who it protects

Every host meets this line the same way. A guest leaves, the cleaner texts a photo, and you're holding a decision you can't un-make. Charge too readily and you're billing someone for the ordinary life of a rental. Charge too rarely and you're funding it yourself, quietly, out of margin nobody budgeted.

It isn't a moral question. It's a commercial one, and it protects two parties at once. It protects the guest, who paid for a night in a home that gets used rather than a show flat that stays new. And it protects you, because a claim you can't evidence costs more than the item did. It costs the thread, the evening, and sometimes what that guest writes afterwards.

Here's the working test. Wear is cumulative and unattributable: upholstery faded on one side, a door frame scuffed by a thousand suitcases, a pan that's lost its non-stick, grout gone grey. None of it happened on a date. Damage is attributable. It has a date, a stay and a mechanism. Wine into a rug bought two months ago. A chair leg snapped sideways. A burn on a worktop that was photographed the week before.

The commercial framing matters more than the fair one because claims run on evidence rather than on fairness. Whoever reads yours doesn't know your unit. They know what you can show them.

Building the evidence before the claim: the record that has to exist on day one

Evidence is built before anything breaks, or it doesn't exist. That's the whole game, and it's why the day-one record matters more than the claim itself.

Three layers, in this order. First, an inventory with values, made while the unit is still empty: item, purchase date, condition when installed, replacement cost today. Second, a dated photo set — whole rooms first, then the six or eight items expensive enough to argue about, shot on a day you can name. Third, the per-stay pass: thirty seconds between checkout and the next arrival, four or five frames, the same corners every time.

The third layer does nearly all the work. It isn't there for claims. It's there so that when a guest says the mark was already there, you can answer in an hour rather than in a week — and sometimes the honest answer is that they're right.

Timing carries the rest. Shoot on turnover day, before the cleaner arrives, not after. Store the set with the booking rather than in a camera roll you'll be scrolling through in November. And shoot wide before you shoot close: a stain without a room around it proves nothing about which rug it's on.

Setting replacement values you can defend, rather than values you would like

A claim collapses on value far more often than it collapses on fault. You prove the guest broke it, then ask for the price of a new one, and the number undoes the rest of your work.

Work from remaining value. Say a mattress cost €600 and you'd expect it to last five years in a letting. Two years in, three fifths of that life is still ahead of it, so the figure you can defend is €360 rather than €600. That's a worked example, not a standard. Useful life is your judgement, and it has to be written down before you need it — a number produced during an argument reads as a number produced for the argument.

Three rules keep it honest. Set the life in writing at purchase, and keep the receipt with the inventory row. Separate the repairable from the replaceable: a reupholstered seat costs a fraction of a new chair, and asking for the chair invites the whole claim to be questioned. And don't add your own hours unless you've logged them at the time.

Where items sit in sets, price the set rather than the piece. One chipped plate from a twelve-place set isn't a twelfth of anything; it's the cost of a replacement set, or nothing at all. Most hosts land on nothing, and that's usually right.

The stay itself shouldn't be reconstructed from memory across four logins either. Bookings from Airbnb, Booking.com, Agoda and Trip.com sit on one calendar at localsbnb.com. So the stay you attach a photo set to is a stay you can name, with dates and a guest, rather than one you're fairly sure about.

The conversation to have with a guest before it becomes a claim

Most claims that end badly began as a message that began badly. The guest isn't expecting a bill, the bill arrives as an accusation, and from there you're both arguing about tone rather than about a chair.

Send one message first, within a day of checkout. State the item, attach the photo, and ask whether anything happened — as a question, not as a verdict. Half the replies are an apology and an offer to pay, and a good number are an explanation you didn't consider: the chair was already loose, the glass slipped because the shelf isn't level. That second category is worth more than the money, because it's a defect you're about to hand to the next guest.

Give a figure only when you have all three: the dated before-record, the after photo, and the remaining-value number. Send the arithmetic, not just the total. "The rug was bought in March, here's the receipt, two years into an expected five, so €140 of €350" is a message that gets paid. "€350 for the rug" is a message that gets argued with.

Then stop. If the guest won't engage, the route available to you — deposit, platform process, or nothing — is set by that platform's current terms and by local law, and both differ by place and change over time. Check the current wording yourself before you choose one. A claim you escalate in a temper is the kind you lose even when you're right.

FAQ

Can I charge for stained linen and towels?

Usually not, and trying will cost you more than the linen. Stains on soft goods are the clearest wear-and-tear category there is, because a towel is expected to absorb things and be washed. Charge only where the item is beyond laundering — a burn, a dye transfer that won't lift — and even then price it as one item from a set, not as a new set.

The guest says the damage was already there. What now?

Answer from the record within a day, or drop it. If your per-stay pass shows the item intact at the previous checkout, say so and attach both frames. If it doesn't, you don't have a claim, and pushing one converts a small loss into a bad outcome. That's the real reason the per-stay pass exists: it lets you lose quickly.

Should I claim through the deposit, or message the guest first?

Message first, nearly always. A deposit route is slower, adversarial by design, and governed by the platform's current terms rather than by your arithmetic. An agreed figure arrives faster and keeps the thread civil. Go to the formal route only when the guest won't reply, or when the amount is genuinely large.

Wear and damage aren't two ends of one scale. They're two different kinds of thing, and only one of them has a date on it. Build the record while the unit is empty, write down your useful lives before you need them, and photograph on turnover day before the cleaner. Do that and most of this never becomes a claim at all — the guest sees the photo and pays, or you see the photo and drop it. If you'd rather not reconstruct which stay was which from four separate inboxes, they sit on one calendar at localsbnb.com.

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Replacement values, useful lives and deposit routes differ by property, platform and place, and every figure here is a worked example rather than a standard. Confirm any claim route against the current terms of the platform you booked through and against local law. This is general guidance for hosts and isn't legal or platform policy advice.