How to price house washing
A pricing method you can repeat on every house, worked through with real numbers, written by a softwash company owner in Minnesota.
The short version
Most owners who price consistently use the same few pieces:
- A rate per square foot of the home, set by siding type.
- A multiplier for height, because a two-story takes more ladder work, more chemical reach and more risk.
- A multiplier for shape, since an L-shaped or complex house has more corners and more setup.
- A multiplier for dirt: light, normal or heavy.
- A minimum charge, so a small house still covers the drive, setup and cleanup.
Price = square feet × rate × height × shape × dirt, but never less than your minimum.
A worked example
These are the example rates that ship in our estimator. They come from one working Minnesota company. Treat them as a starting point to test against your own past jobs, not as the right price for your market.
| Piece | Example value |
|---|---|
| Vinyl or fiber cement siding | $0.22 / sq ft |
| Brick or stucco | $0.30 / sq ft |
| Height: 1 story / 1.5–2 stories / 3+ | × 1.0 / 1.15 / 1.3 |
| Shape: rectangle / L-shape / colonial / complex | × 1.0 / 1.1 / 1.2 / 1.3 |
| Dirt: light / normal / heavy | × 1.0 / 1.1 / 1.25 |
| Minimum | $225 |
A 2,000 sq ft, two-story, L-shaped vinyl house with normal dirt:
2,000 × $0.22 × 1.15 × 1.1 × 1.1 = $612. That's above the $225 minimum, so it stands.
Showing a homeowner a range instead of one number leaves room for what you'll only see on site. Our estimator shows 85% to 115% of the figure: $520 to $704 for this house.
What other owners report
Published numbers disagree a lot, partly because some people mean floor area and others mean wall area. Here's what we could find with a source and a date:
- Housecall Pro's pricing guide (updated October 2026) gives a pricing formula of break-even cost ÷ (1 − target margin), with margins of 20% to 40%. (source)
- In a 2020 Pressure Washing Resource forum thread, one owner quoted $0.15 per sq ft. Another charged flat prices of $300 for one story and $400 for two. A third aimed for $140 to $150 an hour. (source)
- In another 2020 thread, owners described hourly targets from $100 to $200 and per-sq-ft rates of $0.10 to $0.14. (source)
One useful lesson from the first thread: if every quote you give is accepted, you're probably too cheap, and if none are, you're too high.
How to check your own rates
- Pull up ten jobs you've already done and know you priced right.
- Run each one through your formula.
- Adjust the rate until most of them land near what you actually charged.
Put this formula on your website. The Instant Wash Estimator runs this math for house wash, roof, gutters, driveways, decks, fences and windows, with your rates. Homeowners see their range in under a minute, and you get the lead by email. $49 once.
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