How to Price a Residential House Wash: The Complete Guide

Most pricing guides tell you to start with the square footage of the home. That is step two, not step one. Step one is the siding type. A 2,500 square foot vinyl home and a 2,500 square foot brick home are fundamentally different jobs, and if you price them the same, you will either lose money on the brick or lose the bid on the vinyl. Here are baseline per-square-foot ranges based on what operators across the country are charging in 2025. Vinyl siding: $0.15–$0.25 per square foot. This is your fastest clean — low-pressure rinse after a sodium hypochlorite application. Most 2,000 sqft vinyl homes take 30–45 minutes for a solo operator. Brick: $0.20–$0.35 per square foot. Brick requires longer dwell times, sometimes a second application for heavy biological growth, and more care around mortar joints. Plan for 45–60 minutes on a 2,000 sqft brick home. Stucco: $0.25–$0.40 per square foot. Stucco is the most time-consuming residential surface. The textured finish traps dirt and algae, and you cannot use high pressure without damaging the finish. Plan for 50–70 minutes on a 2,000 sqft stucco home with an extra rinse pass. Concrete (painted or unpainted): $0.18–$0.30 per square foot. Wood (painted, stained, or natural): $0.22–$0.38 per square foot. Wood requires the most caution — pressure must be kept low and chemical selection matters to avoid stripping stain or raising the grain.

A single-story home is your baseline. Everything is reachable from the ground. Your chemical application covers the surface in one pass, and your rinse reaches the eaves without extension tips or ladders. Two-story homes add time, chemical, and risk. You need longer reach on your wand or a dedicated second-story tip. Chemical needs to be applied higher, which means more volume and more precise technique to avoid streaking. Most operators apply a 1.3x to 1.5x multiplier for two-story homes. So a vinyl house wash that would be $375 for a single-story at $0.19/sqft becomes $490–$560 for a two-story of the same footage. Three-story homes are less common in residential, but when you encounter them, a 1.8x to 2.2x multiplier is standard. The added height means ladder work or a lift for certain angles, significantly more chemical volume, and longer job time. Do not discount the risk factor — three-story jobs require more care and your pricing should reflect that. The key is to have these multipliers set in your system before you quote. If you are calculating them on the fly, you will forget or round down, and that is where margin leaks.

Most house wash estimates should include a flatwork upsell. The customer is already paying for you to show up with a rig. Adding the driveway, sidewalk, or patio is incremental revenue with minimal incremental cost. Driveways: Price by square foot, typically $0.10–$0.20/sqft for concrete, depending on soiling level. A standard two-car driveway is roughly 400–600 square feet, so you are looking at $50–$120. For heavily stained or oil-spotted driveways, add a surcharge for degreaser and extra passes. Sidewalks: Price by linear foot ($1.00–$2.50/linear foot) or by square foot. Most front sidewalks are 30–50 linear feet. This is often a $40–$75 add-on that takes 10–15 minutes. Patios: Concrete patios price similarly to driveways. Paver patios command a premium — $0.25–$0.45/sqft — because of the extra care required around joint sand and the re-sanding step if needed. Decks: Deck washing is a separate category. Composite decks are $0.20–$0.35/sqft. Wood decks are $0.30–$0.50/sqft for wash only, and significantly more if the customer wants stripping and re-staining. The point is that flatwork should not be an afterthought. It should be a line item on every residential estimate. When you present it as part of a total property cleanup, close rates on flatwork add-ons exceed 60%.

The house wash is the anchor, but your average job value grows with add-ons. The most common residential add-ons, ranked by attach rate, are: Gutter brightening (exterior gutter face cleaning): This is the highest-attach add-on because customers see the difference immediately. Price per linear foot — typically $1.50–$3.00/linear foot. A standard home has 120–180 linear feet of gutter face. That is a $180–$540 add-on. Window cleaning: Price per pane, typically $4–$8 per pane for exterior only. A 15-window home is a $60–$120 add-on. If you offer interior/exterior, double it. Roof washing: This is a premium service. Soft wash only — never high pressure on roofing. Price per square foot of roof area, typically $0.25–$0.45/sqft. A 1,500 sqft roof is a $375–$675 add-on. Not every customer needs it, but the ones who do represent significant revenue. Gutter cleaning (interior debris removal): Price per linear foot, $1.00–$2.00/linear foot, or flat rate by home size. This is seasonal and pairs well with fall house washes. The key to selling add-ons is presenting them as line items on the estimate, not as a verbal upsell. When customers see "Gutter Brightening — $285" as a separate line item with a checkbox, they opt in at a much higher rate than if you ask verbally on the phone.

Let me walk through a real example. The property is a 2,200 square foot, two-story brick home in a suburban neighborhood. Driveway is concrete, approximately 500 square feet, moderate soiling. The customer wants the house wash, driveway, and is interested in gutter brightening. House wash: 2,200 sqft x $0.28/sqft (brick rate) x 1.4 (two-story multiplier) = $862. Driveway: 500 sqft x $0.15/sqft = $75. Gutter brightening: 150 linear feet x $2.25/linear foot = $338. Total estimate: $1,275. My cost on this job: chemical ($45), labor (3 hours at crew rate of $50/hr = $150), drive time ($25), equipment wear allocation ($15). Total cost: $235. Margin: $1,040 / $1,275 = 81.6%. That is a green badge job. Now imagine I had quoted this with a flat rate of $0.20/sqft — my old vinyl rate — without the story multiplier. The house wash would have been $440 instead of $862. Same cost, same time on the job, but I would have walked away with $422 less. That is the difference between knowing your numbers and guessing. Set the rates once. Let the system do the math. Check the margin badge. Send the PDF.

After pricing thousands of house wash jobs and talking to hundreds of operators, here are the mistakes I see most often. First, using one rate for all siding types. We covered this already, but it bears repeating — this single mistake costs the average operator $15,000–25,000 per year in lost margin. Second, forgetting the story multiplier. A two-story home is not the same job as a single-story home of the same square footage. If you do not multiply, you are giving away your time on every multi-story job. Third, not pricing flatwork separately. Your customer sees a dirty driveway. If you do not put a price on it, you are leaving easy revenue on the table. Fourth, verbal upselling instead of line-item upselling. Put every add-on on the estimate as a line item. Let the customer see the price and choose. Your attach rate will double overnight. Fifth, not knowing your margin before you send the quote. If you do not know your cost on the job, you do not know your margin. If you do not know your margin, you are guessing. And guessing is expensive.