How to Price Pressure Washing Jobs
How to price pressure washing jobs: work out your true cost per hour, pick per-square-foot, hourly or flat rate, and set a minimum. Free calculators.
Price pressure washing jobs by working out your true cost per hour first, then building every quote up from that number. Cost per hour is labor plus truck, fuel, insurance, chemicals, equipment wear and admin time, divided by the hours you actually bill rather than the hours you hoped to. Most residential work is then quoted flat rate per job, with a minimum that covers drive time and setup. Per-square-foot suits flatwork and house washing; hourly suits genuinely unpredictable commercial work and quietly penalises you for getting faster.
- Your cost per hour is the foundation of every pricing method, and it must be divided by billable hours, not calendar hours. Rain, drive time and quoting come out first.
- Flat rate per job is what homeowners prefer and where the margin is, but only if it was built up from your cost per hour rather than guessed.
- Per-square-foot rewards efficiency and works from an aerial measurement. Its weakness is surface condition, which can double the passes on the jobs that already take longest.
- Set a minimum charge at what a half day is worth. Drive time and setup cost the same on a small porch as on a whole house.
- Soft washing is a chemical job with its own consumable cost and risk, not pressure washing at a lower setting. Price it separately.
Most pressure washing companies price by feel, then find out at the end of the season whether it worked. The fix is not a magic rate card, because the right number is different in your market than in the one the YouTube video was filmed in. It is knowing what an hour of your truck actually costs, then pricing every job up from that. This is the estimating companion to our pressure washing marketing hub and to the Pepper's Pressure Washing case study, where quoting and job tracking run as one system.
Start with what an hour costs you
Every pricing method eventually reduces to this number, and most operators have never worked it out. Your cost per hour is not your wage. It is labor plus the things that run whether or not you are spraying: the truck payment, fuel, insurance, equipment that wears out, chemicals, phone, software, and the hours you spend quoting and invoicing instead of washing.
Add those up for a year and divide by the hours you actually bill, which is the part that surprises people. A full season is not 2,000 billable hours. Rain, drive time, quoting, equipment failures and the off-season all come out first. If you divide by the hours you hoped to bill, every job you price will quietly lose money.
Our cost per hour calculator does this arithmetic and is free to use.
Then pick how you quote it
Per square foot
The default for flatwork and house washing, because the customer can see what they are buying and you can quote from an aerial measurement without a site visit. It rewards efficiency: get faster and the same square foot pays you more. The risk is surface condition. A driveway with three years of algae is not the same job as one washed last spring, and a square-foot rate that ignores that will punish you on exactly the jobs that take longest.
Per hour
Honest and easy to explain, and it quietly penalises you for getting good. The faster you work, the less you earn for the same result, which is backwards. It is a reasonable fit for genuinely unpredictable work, like a first-time commercial job where nobody knows what is under the grime, and a poor default for residential.
Flat rate per job
What most homeowners prefer, because it is one number with no surprises. It is also where the money is, provided you built it up from your cost per hour rather than guessing. Flat rate rewards the operator who knows their own numbers and punishes the one who does not, which is why it is worth doing the work above before you quote this way.
The estimate calculator will take a job and give you a number you can send.
Set a minimum and hold it
Drive time, setup and teardown cost roughly the same whether the job is a small porch or a whole house. Without a minimum, small jobs lose money every single time, and they lose it on the days your schedule was full enough to turn them down.
Set the minimum at what a half day is worth to you, say it plainly when someone calls, and stop apologising for it. The customers who leave over a minimum are the customers who were going to be difficult about the invoice anyway.
Price soft washing differently
Soft washing a roof is not pressure washing at a lower setting. It is a chemical job with different consumable costs, different risk, and different insurance exposure. Pricing it off your flatwork rate will either lose you the work or lose you money on it.
Mix cost is the part most people estimate badly, because the dilution changes what a gallon of concentrate actually covers. The soft-wash dilution calculator gives you the real number per job.
What to add before you send the number
- Access and height. A second storey, a steep roof or a fenced back yard with no gate all cost time nobody quoted for.
- Condition. Quote from a photo where you can. Heavy organic growth can double the passes required.
- Water and power. If you are hauling water or running a generator, that is a real line item.
- Drive time. The job forty minutes out is not the same job as the one on your street, even at identical square footage.
- Profit. Covering your costs is breaking even. Profit is a number you add on purpose, not what happens to be left over.
Quote fast, and in writing
The homeowner asking you for a price is asking two other companies the same day, and the first credible written number usually wins. A quote that arrives in an hour at a fair price beats a quote that arrives in three days at a slightly better one.
Written also protects you. A number said on the phone becomes whatever the customer remembers by invoice day. Send the scope, the price and what is not included, even if it is a text message.
The take. Work out your true cost per hour first, because every other pricing decision is built on it. Quote flat rate from that number, hold a minimum that covers setup and drive time, price soft washing as its own job, and get the number in writing the same day. Pricing by feel works until the season you find out it did not.