How to price pressure washing jobs: how much to charge

There are five pricing units in exterior cleaning. Most companies use price per square foot for surfaces, a minimum charge so small jobs still pay, and a flat price or per-foot price for a few specific services.

Whichever unit you quote in, the number underneath should be the same: what an hour of your crew costs and how many square feet that hour cleans.

Consumer cost guides show homeowners ranges of roughly $0.08 to $0.50 per square foot for general pressure washing, with roofs higher. These numbers shape what your customers expect, but they are national averages from many kinds of companies, so they are a check, not a price list.

Measure walls as perimeter times wall height, flat surfaces as length times width, and roofs as footprint times a pitch factor. Satellite maps are fine for driveways and roof footprints; walk the house for wall height and anything hidden.

house wall area = perimeter of the house × wall height (+ gable triangles: ½ × base × height each)
flatwork area = length × width (add each walk, step and patio separately)
roof area = roof footprint × pitch factor
pitch factor = √(1 + (rise ÷ 12)²)

Write measurements on the quote line (for example "40 × 20 ft driveway") rather than just a total. When the customer asks why the price changed from last year, the numbers are there.

Divide what an hour of your crew and truck costs by how many square feet they clean in that hour, add chemicals, then mark up to your target gross margin. Do it separately for each kind of work, because a crew cleans flatwork much faster than it washes a house.

hourly cost = crew wages per hour (with payroll taxes and workers' comp) + truck and overhead per hour
cost per sq ft = hourly cost ÷ sq ft cleaned per hour + chemical cost per sq ft
price per sq ft = cost per sq ft ÷ (1 − target gross margin)

Where the inputs come from

• Crew wages per hour: what you pay each person, plus payroll taxes and workers' comp. Your payroll provider or accountant can give you the loaded figure.
• Truck and overhead per hour: fuel, truck payments, insurance, equipment wear, the office and software, divided by the hours your trucks actually work in a year.
• Area cleaned per hour (sq ft): from your own timesheets. Take ten recent jobs of the same kind, add up the area and the on-site hours.
• Chemical cost per square foot: what a month of sodium hypochlorite, surfactant and degreaser cost, divided by the square feet you cleaned.

A worked example (invented numbers)

Notice that the flatwork rate comes out higher than the house wash rate in this example, because the crew covers fewer square feet per hour with a surface cleaner than with a soft-wash setup on siding. Your own timesheets may show the opposite. That is exactly why you measure instead of guessing.

Price each one from its own production rate and risk. A house wash is mostly chemical and rinse time, flatwork is machine time over the surface, and a roof soft wash adds ladder time, safety gear and more chemical, so it usually carries the highest rate.

For wash water on commercial jobs, ask the property manager and your city whether runoff has to be kept out of storm drains before you quote. If it does, recovery equipment and time belong in the price.

Your minimum should cover a whole short visit: the drive, setting up, the smallest real job, packing up, chemicals and your margin. If a small job does not cover that, the truck would have earned more somewhere else.

minimum charge = (drive + setup + smallest job + pack-up hours) × hourly cost ÷ (1 − target margin) + chemicals

Example with the invented crew above: 20 minutes of drive, 25 minutes to set up and pack up and 30 minutes of work is 1.25 hours. 1.25 × $104 = $130, plus $5 of chemicals is $135 of cost. At a 50% margin, the minimum is $270, rounded to $275. A 300 sq ft patio at $0.23 comes to $69, so the minimum applies.

• Say the minimum up front: "Our minimum visit is $275, which covers a patio and the front walk." Customers accept a stated rule more easily than a surprise.
• Let small jobs grow into the minimum: suggest the walk, the steps or the trash-can pad so the customer gets more for the same price.
• Consider a lower minimum when the job is on a day you are already on the same street. That is route density at work.

Measure each surface, price each line at its own rate, apply any condition adjustment, check the total against the hours the job will really take, then round. Here is one invented example, end to end.

The job (invented): Lena Ortiz, a two-story vinyl home with a 180 ft perimeter, an 18 ft wall height, a 40 × 20 ft driveway with oil stains and a 50 × 3 ft front walk.

The hours check: 3,240 sq ft at 1,500 an hour is about 2.2 hours, and 950 sq ft of flatwork at 1,000 an hour is about 1 hour. With 45 minutes of setup and drive, that is about 4 hours, or $416 of crew and truck cost. $829 leaves about $413 before chemicals, close to the 50% target. If the hours check had shown 6 hours, the price would be too low however the square feet looked.

The same job could go out as three options (house wash only, house and driveway, or everything plus gutter brightening). See good, better, best quotes.

Raise prices when you are booked out for weeks, when you win nearly every quote, or when your margin per job has slipped because costs went up. Each of those means the market is telling you your price is low.

• You are booked three or more weeks out in season and still adding work.
• Your [close rate](/glossary/close-rate) is very high. If almost everyone says yes, some of them would have said yes at a higher price.
• Your margin per job is falling. Chemical, fuel and wage increases eat a fixed rate quietly. Job costing shows it.
• Start with new quotes. Keep plan customers on their signed price until renewal, and tell them ahead of time.

Birdy keeps your rates in one price list and does the math the same way on every quote.

• Price each service by the square foot, linear foot, hour, each or flat, with its own minimum charge and a separate commercial price.
• Bundle discounts apply themselves when a customer picks several services.
• Quotes carry measurements on each line and up to three options side by side.
• Job costing shows the margin on each finished job from crew time and the chemical log, so you can see whether a rate still works.
• Try the math first with the pressure washing price calculator and the job profit calculator.