How to Price Pressure Washing Jobs: The Per-Square-Foot Formula, Worked Out

What is the best way to price pressure washing jobs?

Price from your own costs, then convert to a per-square-foot rate you can quote on the spot. Guessing from a competitor's flyer tells you what they charge, not what the job costs you.

Most of the pages ranking for this question are forum threads where one operator says a one-story house starts at one number and another says something else. Those numbers came from someone else's wage, truck, chemical prices and town. The method below works with any of those inputs, and every figure on this page shows its working so you can check it.

The whole method fits in five lines:

1. Hours = square feet ÷ production rate (sq ft per hour, door to door).
2. Labour = hours × workers × loaded rate (wage × (1 + burden %)).
3. Overhead share = hours × workers × (yearly overhead ÷ sellable hours).
4. Break-even = labour + chemicals + overhead share.
5. Price = break-even ÷ (1 − target margin).

Divide the price by the square footage and you have your price per sq ft for that surface. Build that into a pressure washing pricing calculator once and every quote after that takes a minute.

How much to charge per square foot for pressure washing (try it)

Your price per square foot is the job price divided by the area, and it moves mostly with your production rate. Type your own area, rate and chemical cost into the calculator below.

The table shows why the rate matters more than anything else. Same 1,000 sq ft, same $10 of chemicals (assumed), same $25 wage, 30% burden, $14,520 a year of overhead and 35% margin. Only the door-to-door production rate changes.

Going from 250 to 800 sq ft an hour cuts the price per square foot by about two thirds. That is why two honest operators can quote the same driveway very differently. Neither is wrong; they have different machines, surface cleaners and travel.

How to measure your rate: for your last five jobs, add up the square feet and add up the hours from leaving the yard to getting back. Total sq ft ÷ total hours is your door-to-door rate. It includes setup, pre-treat, rinse, pack-up and drive, so you never have to add those separately.

How much should I charge to pressure wash a 2,000 sq ft house?

Price the siding, not the floor plan. A 2,000 sq ft two-story house has a 1,000 sq ft footprint; if it measures 25 × 40 ft, the perimeter is 130 ft, and at 18 ft of wall height that is 2,340 sq ft of siding to wash.

Measure it from the street or a satellite view: perimeter × wall height. This example does not subtract windows, since on a soft wash they still get sprayed and rinsed; subtract them if your process skips them. Add gables as triangles (½ × width × height) if the house has them.

With the assumptions below (600 sq ft an hour door to door, $14 of sodium hypochlorite and surfactant, solo operator) the house takes 3.9 hours and the price to quote is $266.04, or $0.114 per sq ft of siding.

Break-even is $172.93. Quote below that and you paid to wash the house. If you add 35% as a markup instead, you bill $233.45 and keep only 25.93% margin. At five house washes a week that gap is $8,473.33 a year.

Chemical cost is the line most free pricing sheets skip. It is small per job, but it is real money every job, and it scales with square footage and mix strength. Price your own mix per 1,000 sq ft once and put it on the sheet.

What is the price to pressure wash a 1,000 sq ft driveway?

At an assumed 400 sq ft an hour door to door and $8 of chemicals, a 1,000 sq ft driveway is 2.5 hours and prices at $169.04, which is $0.169 per sq ft. Your number changes with your rate and your costs.

Flatwork can run slower per square foot than a soft-wash house, because every inch goes under the surface cleaner and then gets rinsed and often post-treated. That is exactly why a single "per sq ft" number for all surfaces fails. Keep a separate production rate for each surface you clean: siding, concrete, pavers, wood decks, roofs, fences.

Oil stains, rust and gum removal are extra time and extra chemical. Price them as add-on lines (minutes × loaded rate plus product), not by nudging the per-sq-ft number up and hoping it covers them.

What should your minimum charge be?

Your minimum is the full price of the shortest job you would still drive to. With a 1.5-hour door-to-door visit, $5 of chemicals and the same costs as above, that minimum is $101.73.

Here is why it matters. A 12 × 12 deck is 144 sq ft. Priced purely per square foot at 300 sq ft an hour, it comes out at $34.71 (assumed $3 of product). But that math only counts the time on the boards. You still load the trailer, drive, set up, wash, pack up and drive back. The per-sq-ft number would lose money on the day, so small jobs get the minimum instead: charge whichever is higher, the per-sq-ft price or the minimum.

The formula for that is in the Excel block below (a MAX of the two).

How much to charge for pressure washing per hour

Before chemicals, the hourly price is (loaded rate + overhead per hour) ÷ (1 − margin). With a $32.50 loaded rate, $8.25 an hour of overhead and a 35% margin, that is $62.69 per working hour, plus chemicals.

Where does $8.25 come from? $14,520 of yearly overhead (insurance, truck payment, fuel, phone, software, equipment repairs: an assumed total, use yours) divided by 1 person × 220 billable days × 8 hours = 1,760 sellable hours. Overhead is a division by the hours you can sell, not a percentage stacked on top of the cost. If you only sell 1,000 hours a year, your overhead per hour almost doubles.

At a 50% target margin the same hour is $81.50. Hourly pricing suits jobs you cannot measure in advance (heavy graffiti, rust, commercial degreasing). For houses and flatwork, customers want a fixed number, so convert your hourly cost into a per-sq-ft rate with your production rate.

The common mistake: markup instead of margin

Adding 35% to your cost is not a 35% margin. Markup is a percentage of cost; margin is a percentage of price. Adding 35% as a markup keeps 25.93% of the price, every time.

The gap on one driveway is $20.71. At five jobs a week for 52 weeks it is $5,383.88. More on this in the markup vs margin guide, and on the wage-vs-loaded-rate error in the labour burden guide.

The second common mistake is pricing labour at the wage. A $25 wage with a 30% burden (payroll tax, workers comp, liability insurance, paid time off: use your own percentage) costs $32.50. Price at $25 and every hour you quote is $7.50 short before you have bought a jug of anything.

Excel formulas for a pressure washing price sheet

You can build this in any spreadsheet. The formulas below assume this layout: B2 = square feet, B3 = production rate, B4 = wage, B5 = burden %, B6 = chemicals, B7 = yearly overhead, B8 = people in the field, B9 = billable days, B10 = target margin %, B11 = minimum charge.

If you would rather not build and test it yourself, the pressure washing price sheet template does this with the chemical line costed on every job, a break-even shown before the price, and an "am I underpricing?" check that answers in dollars. It works in Excel and Google Sheets for a one-time $39.

Pricing calculator, app or spreadsheet: which should you use?

Use whichever makes you state your production rate, chemical cost and overhead before it shows a price. The tool matters less than whether it prices from your numbers.

Starting with nothing? The free Job Pricing Starter covers loaded labour, overhead, break-even and margin on one sheet. The same method applied to other trades: window cleaning and auto detailing.

What to put on your pressure washing price sheet

A price sheet is a small table of your own rates per surface plus your minimum. Build it once from the formula above and reprice it when fuel, chemicals or wages move.

• One production rate per surface: siding, concrete, pavers, wood deck, fence, roof. Measured door to door.
• Chemical cost per 1,000 sq ft per surface, from what you actually pay for SH, surfactant and degreaser.
• Loaded labour rate, not wage.
• Overhead per sellable hour: yearly overhead ÷ (people × billable days × 8).
• Target margin, applied by division.
• Minimum charge, calculated, not rounded down to something that sounds friendly.
• Add-ons: oil stain treatment, rust, gutter brightening, sealing, each as minutes plus product.

Then print the result as price per sq ft by surface. That is your pressure washing pricing guide, and unlike a PDF you download, it is built on your truck, your chemicals and your wage.

Step-by-step: How to Price Pressure Washing Jobs: The Per-Square-Foot Formula, Worked Out

1. Measure the area. Measure the surface you will clean: siding = perimeter × wall height, flatwork = length × width. Use sq ft of surface, not the home's floor area.
2. Apply your production rate. Divide area by your door-to-door production rate for that surface (sq ft per hour, including setup, drive and pack-up) to get hours.
3. Cost labour at the loaded rate. Multiply hours × workers × wage × (1 + burden %). A $25 wage at 30% burden is $32.50 an hour.
4. Add chemicals and overhead. Add the chemicals you will pour on this job, plus hours × (yearly overhead ÷ sellable hours) as the overhead share. The total is break-even.
5. Divide by one minus your margin. Price = break-even ÷ (1 − margin). For a 35% margin divide by 0.65. Do not multiply by 1.35.
6. Apply the minimum. Quote the higher of the calculated price and your minimum charge, so small jobs still cover the drive and setup.

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