House Washing Pricing Guide: How to Price a Soft Wash in 2026

House washing is the highest-margin residential service most exterior cleaners offer, and the one with the widest spread in pricing. This guide covers the three ways to price it, what belongs in the base job, what the chemicals and time actually cost you, and how to package add-ons so the average ticket goes up.

What you are selling

A modern house wash is a soft wash: a sodium hypochlorite (SH) and surfactant mix applied at low pressure, allowed to dwell, then rinsed. For vinyl, a common starting mix on the Pressure Washing Resource forum is "2gal SH, 3gal water, with 1oz per gallon of the surfactant," left to dwell about ten minutes and never allowed to dry Pressure Washing Resource. The chemistry does the work; the pressure washer is a rinse tool.

That matters for pricing because your cost is mostly time and chemical, not wear on equipment. Price accordingly.

Three ways to price a house wash

1. By footprint or living square footage

Measure the footprint from satellite or pull living area from the assessor, then apply a rate.

Source	Rate	Basis
Fixr	$0.25–$0.35 per sq ft (soft wash)	Home square footage
HomeGuide	$0.15–$0.25 per sq ft	House power washing
Southeast Softwash	$0.15–$0.30 per sq ft	"of living space"
Pressure Washing Resource	$0.10–$0.14 per sq ft	Operator advice, lower-cost market

The spread is real. Published totals by home size show it: Fixr lists a 2,000 sq ft house at $600–$1,600 Fixr, while Angi lists the same size at $200–$1,000 Angi. Both are national data; they are weighting different jobs. Pick a rate that returns the hourly number you need and stay inside the published band.

Square-foot pricing is the easiest to systematize and the easiest to defend. Its weakness is that it ignores stories unless you add a multiplier.

2. By stories

Stories are the biggest driver of time on a house wash, so many operators price by them first.

Stories	Published range
One story	$150–$750 HomeAdvisor
Two stories	$400–$1,400 HomeAdvisor
Three stories	$700–$1,800 HomeAdvisor

HomeGuide frames it as $200–$600+ per story for the home exterior HomeGuide. On the forum, one experienced operator's flat menu is $329 for one story, $369 for two, and $449 for three Pressure Washing Resource. Notice how small his step between one and two stories is. He is pricing for a market where most homes are similar in size; the story line is a modifier, not a multiplier.

3. Flat rate

A flat menu is fastest to quote and simplest for customers. Published flat ranges for a one- to two-story house wash are $250–$800 Housecall Pro. Consumer averages are lower: $312 nationally, with most homeowners paying $213–$449 Angi. Fixr's average is $700 with a $500–$900 typical range Fixr.

Flat pricing fails on outliers: the 4,500 sq ft two-story with a walk-out basement gets the same number as the 1,600 sq ft ranch. Most operators end up with a hybrid: a base price by stories, adjusted by a footprint band (under 2,000, 2,000–3,000, over 3,000). That is what we recommend, and it is how AboveYard's Pressure Washing Price Calculator is set up: measured footprint times your rate, plus your story modifier.

What is included in a house wash

Write this on the estimate so the customer and your tech agree.

Included:

• Soft wash of all siding, trim, soffits, and fascia
• Exterior of gutters rinsed (not brightened)
• Entry doors, garage door, shutters
• Pre-wet and post-rinse of landscaping near the house
• Rinse of windows (not a window cleaning)

Not included unless added:

• Gutter interior cleaning or brightening
• Window cleaning (spot-free or squeegee)
• Driveway, walks, patio
• Roof
• Oxidation removal, rust removal, paint prep

Publishing the exclusions is how you turn "I thought that was included" into an add-on sale instead of a free hour.

Chemical cost per job

SH is cheap. Vendor pricing for 12.5% sodium hypochlorite is $3.95 per gallon on sale and $5.50 regular at one supplier LNI Equipment, and $215.00 for a 55-gallon drum from a bulk vendor Elite Chlorine, which works out to roughly $3.91 per gallon.

To get your cost per house, do not guess. Track the gallons of mix you spray on five houses, note what fraction is SH, and multiply. Using the forum's 2:3 vinyl ratio above, 40% of your mix is SH. If a one-story house takes 20 gallons of mix, that is 8 gallons of SH; at $3.95 per gallon, about $32 of SH plus surfactant. If it takes 10 gallons, halve it. The point is that chemical is a small line next to labor, which is why the hourly rate you need matters far more than the price of bleach.

For comparison, Jobber's worked driveway example budgets $25 in materials on a $276 job Jobber, and Housecall Pro's example prices a quarter gallon of $40 degreaser at $10 per job Housecall Pro.

Time per job

Time is your real cost. Published figures vary with crew and equipment:

• A professional wash of a 2,000 sq ft home takes "two to four hours" Angi.
• HomeGuide's labor estimate for house and siding is about 2.3 hours HomeGuide.
• HomeAdvisor puts exterior house washing at 30 minutes to 3 hours HomeAdvisor.
• A two-person crew on the forum reports 40 minutes on a 2,400 sq ft house and 50 minutes on 3,800 sq ft Pressure Washing Resource.

The same forum thread tells solo operators to "shoot for $100-150/hr" soft washing Pressure Washing Resource. Multiply your realistic on-site time, plus drive and setup, by that target, and you have a floor for the house wash price before any square-foot math.

Add-ons that belong on every house wash estimate

Add-on	Published pricing
Gutter cleaning (interior)	$0.50–$1.50 per linear ft one story, $0.75–$2.00 two story HomeGuide
Gutter brightening (exterior tiger stripes)	$1–$3 per linear ft Housecall Pro
Downspout flush	$25–$75 per downspout Housecall Pro
Windows	$1 a pane, as a separate line item Pressure Washing Resource
Driveway	$0.30–$0.40 per sq ft; 600 sq ft at $180–$240 Fixr
Sidewalk with driveway	additional $50–$75 Fixr
Roof soft wash	$450–$700 typical Fixr

Most homes carry 150 to 200 linear feet of gutters HomeGuide, so a gutter add-on is a meaningful line, not pocket change. You are already on site with the truck set up; the driveway is the cheapest square footage you will ever clean.

How to present good, better, best

Three tiers, one page, visible savings on the upper tiers. The forum operator above runs it this way: house wash alone, a "deluxe" package that adds concrete cleaning or gutter cleaning and saves $29, and a "premium" package that adds both and saves $49 Pressure Washing Resource. His reasoning: "most people subconsciously already want the middle package," and he ends every price in a 9.

A clean layout:

	Good	Better	Best
House soft wash	Yes	Yes	Yes
Driveway and front walk	–	Yes	Yes
Gutter cleaning	–	–	Yes
Exterior window rinse	Yes	Yes	Yes
Savings vs a la carte	–	$29	$49

Keep the a la carte prices visible so the savings are provable, and keep windows as a separate line rather than folding them in; the forum advice is the same. Jobber's quoting guidance adds that optional line items let clients "choose between product options that suit their needs and budget" while creating upsell opportunities Jobber. Customers pick a tier. You do not have to sell the gutters; the page does.

Sources

• Pressure Washing Resource – What is the mix ratio of SH for house wash?
• Pressure Washing Resource – What is your average rates on residential washing?
• Pressure Washing Resource – House Washing Packages, Pricing Help
• Fixr – Pressure Wash House Cost
• Fixr – Pressure Wash Driveway Cost
• Fixr – Roof Cleaning Cost
• HomeGuide – 2026 Pressure Washing Prices
• HomeGuide – How Much to Charge for Pressure Washing
• HomeGuide – Gutter Cleaning Cost
• HomeAdvisor – How Much Does Pressure Washing Cost?
• Angi – How Much Does It Cost to Pressure Wash a House?
• Housecall Pro – Pressure Washing Pricing Guide
• Housecall Pro – Gutter Cleaning Price Guide
• Southeast Softwash – Pressure Washing Pricing Calculator
• Jobber – How to Price Pressure Washing Jobs
• Jobber – How to Write a Quote for a Job
• LNI Equipment – Sodium Hypochlorite 12.5%
• Elite Chlorine – 12.5% Sodium Hypochlorite, 55 Gallon