Drywall dust is not the same material as household dust. It is finer, lighter and electrostatically inclined to cling, which means it stays airborne far longer and settles on vertical surfaces that ordinary dust never touches. That is why a renovated room can look clean, get walked through once, and immediately look dusty again.
Cleaning it properly is a sequencing problem more than an effort problem. Everything has to move downward, and every pass has to assume the pass before it knocked more material loose.
Start at the ceiling. Fans, light fixtures, vents, the tops of door frames and any high ledge or shelf. Vents in particular hold a remarkable amount of construction dust and will redistribute it through the whole house the first time the system runs.
Then walls and vertical surfaces. Wipe down rather than dust — a dry cloth mostly relocates fine dust rather than removing it. Door faces, trim, baseboards, switch plates and outlet covers all hold more than they appear to.
Then the hidden interiors. This is the step that separates a real post-renovation clean from a tidy-up. Cabinet interiors, drawer boxes, closet shelves, window tracks and sills. If a renovation happened anywhere in the house, there is dust inside cabinets in rooms that were never worked on.
Then the wet rooms. Kitchens and bathrooms need genuine detailing — appliance faces and gaskets, sink and tub surfaces, grout lines, fixtures and the areas behind and beneath them.
Floors absolutely last. Vacuum with a good filter, then mop. Cleaning floors before the surfaces above them are done means doing floors twice, and the second pass never quite matches the first.
One practical note for anyone doing this themselves: change filters and cloths far more often than feels necessary. Saturated microfiber stops picking up fine dust and starts spreading it around, and the difference is not always visible until the light hits the surface at an angle.
Air matters too. Run ventilation, replace HVAC filters after the work is done, and give the space time. Fine particulate stays suspended for hours after the last surface has been wiped, and it will settle on everything you just cleaned if the room is sealed up immediately.
The goal of a post-renovation clean is not a tidy room — it is a room that stays clean a week later. That only happens if the dust is genuinely removed rather than moved.