How to Price Pressure Washing Jobs: Rates and Minimums
Residential house washing gets quoted around fifteen to forty cents a square foot. Pressure washing labor gets quoted around fifty to a hundred and sixty dollars an hour. Both numbers are accurate and they do not describe the same job, because square footage does not predict how long a surface takes. The gap between those two rates is where the money in this trade is won and lost.
Area does not predict time, and time is what you sell
Two thousand square feet of vinyl siding on a one-story ranch with a hose bib on every elevation is a morning. Two thousand square feet of painted brick on a two-story with north-side algae, one working spigot and a wraparound flower bed you cannot step in is a day and a half. The measurement is identical. The invoice, if you priced off the measurement, is also identical.
What actually drives the hours is condition, access, water supply and dwell time. Condition decides how many passes. Access decides how much of the day is setup and repositioning rather than cleaning. Water supply decides whether you are cleaning or waiting on a buffer tank. Dwell time decides how long chemistry sits before it does the work, and that clock runs whether you are standing there or not.
A per-square-foot rate is a fine way to quote commercial flatwork, where the surface is uniform and the access is a parking lot. On residential it averages away the four variables that actually set your day.
| Surface | What actually drives the hours | Where the bid goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Vinyl siding | Elevations, water access, oxidation | Priced by wall area, not by trips around the house |
| Concrete flatwork | Staining, surface cleaner fit, edging | Edges and trim work done by wand at wand speed |
| Wood deck | Condition, stripping, drying window | Return trip to seal never priced as a second mobilisation |
| Roof | Dwell time, safety setup, runoff control | Quoted as a wash when it is a chemical application |
Your minimum is the pricing decision, not your rate
Most operators set a minimum between a hundred and two hundred fifty dollars, and the number they land on decides what kind of business they run more than any per-foot rate does. A small job is not small: it carries the same drive, the same unload, the same setup, the same pack-up and the same fuel as a job three times the size. The only thing that scales is the cleaning itself, which is the shortest part of the visit.
Set the minimum from a full mobilisation, not from a guess at what the market will bear. Add drive time both ways, setup and breakdown, fuel, chemical, and the share of the day the job consumes even when the cleaning takes forty minutes. That number is usually higher than the one people quote nervously over the phone.
The operators who raise their minimum almost always report the same two things: fewer calls, and more money. The jobs they lose are the ones that were never going to clear overhead. If you also run a seasonal service, the same arithmetic shows up in how a snow contract gets priced: the visit costs what the visit costs, whatever happens during it.
Soft washing and pressure washing are different products
Soft washing is a chemical application at low pressure, and the work is dwell time, coverage and rinse control. Pressure washing is mechanical, and the work is passes and surface contact. They use different equipment, different consumables and different amounts of your day, so one rate card means one is subsidising the other.
The distinction matters most on roofs. A shingle roof cleaned at pressure is a warranty problem and a shingle-granule problem, so the job is a chemical application by definition, priced for dwell and rinse rather than for square footage. Quote it as a wash and you have quoted the wrong job. The same trap catches wood restoration, where stripping and brightening are chemical steps with their own dwell windows, and the sealing pass is a second visit on a different day. Carry a separate rate for chemical work and a separate line for any job that requires you to come back, because a return trip is a full mobilisation that most estimates absorb silently.
Where the water goes is a regulated question
Wash water carrying detergent, algaecide, oil or paint residue is not rain, and a storm drain is not a treatment system. Under the EPA's NPDES stormwater program, discharges to a municipal storm sewer system are regulated, and local authorities are the ones enforcing it. Requirements vary by municipality, which is exactly why most operators have never checked theirs.
The practical version for a two-truck operation: find out what your city requires before you need to know, and price containment where it applies. Berms, mats, a reclaim setup and vacuum recovery are real costs, and on commercial work they are frequently the difference between a compliant bid and a cheap one.
This is also a selling point nobody uses. A commercial property manager who has been fined once will pick the bidder who brought it up first, and that is a differentiator you can put in writing on the estimate rather than hope to mention on site.
"I bid a shopping-center drive lane at my usual rate and the property manager asked how I was handling reclaim. I did not have an answer. The guy who got it was forty percent higher than me and he had a one-page containment plan stapled to his bid. Forty percent. For a page."
Price the condition, then the surface
Walk the job and grade the condition before you measure anything: light, moderate, or heavy, with heavy meaning multiple passes, longer dwell or stripping. Then apply your rate against that grade. Two identical houses in the same subdivision can sit two grades apart because one has a tree line on the north side and the other does not.
Put the grade on the estimate in plain words, along with what it covers and what it does not. "Moderate: two-pass house wash, gutter faces included, gutter interiors excluded" tells the client what they bought and tells you what to bill if the scope moves, and it belongs in your estimate template rather than in your memory. Heading into the fall 2026 shoulder season, when the calls shift from mildew to leaf stain and gutter work, that one line stops half the disputes before they start. Your pressure washing estimates stop being a number and start being a scope.
Here is the position that will annoy people: quote your minimum before you quote your rate, on the phone, out loud, in the first ninety seconds. The received wisdom says lead with value and hold price until you have built rapport. In a trade where a third of inbound calls are jobs that cannot clear a mobilisation, holding the minimum back just means both of you spend twenty minutes finding that out. Saying it early is not aggressive. It is the fastest kindness available to a homeowner with a two-hundred-dollar problem and a hundred-dollar budget.
This week, take your last ten invoices and divide each one by the hours the job actually consumed, door to door, including the drive. Not the cleaning time, the whole visit. You will get ten effective hourly rates, and the spread between the best and the worst will tell you which kind of job to stop taking. Then set your minimum above the worst one and leave it there.
A rate card sells hours you have not looked at yet. Grade the condition, price the mobilisation, and the surface area becomes what it always was: a measurement, not a price.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much should I charge for pressure washing?
Residential house washing commonly runs fifteen to forty cents a square foot, with hourly rates from fifty to a hundred and sixty. Grade the surface condition first, because two identical houses can take twice as long depending on exposure and access.
What should my pressure washing minimum be?
Build it from a full mobilisation rather than from what the market seems to bear. Drive both ways, setup, breakdown, fuel and chemical happen on every job regardless of size, and the cleaning itself is the shortest part of the visit.
Is soft washing priced differently than pressure washing?
Yes, because they are different products. Soft washing is a chemical application priced for dwell time, coverage and rinse control. Pressure washing is mechanical and priced for the number of passes across a surface. Running one rate card across both guarantees that one of them is quietly subsidising the other.
Can I let pressure washing runoff go down a storm drain?
Wash water carrying detergent, algaecide or oil residue is regulated under the EPA NPDES stormwater program, and enforcement sits with local authorities. Requirements vary by municipality, so find out what your city expects before a job needs containment rather than after one already did.
Should I price pressure washing per square foot or hourly?
Per square foot works for commercial flatwork where the surface is uniform and access is a parking lot. On residential it averages away condition, access, water supply and dwell time, which are the four things that actually set the length of your day.
