How to Price Pressure Washing Jobs (Real Numbers)

Price a pressure washing job with this formula: Surface Area × Rate, plus Chemical Cost, plus Travel Time, plus Dwell Time, plus Margin. Each piece is a real cost that eats into profit if you skip it, and together they turn a guess into a number you can defend.

That formula works for any surface, but pressure washing has its own quirks. Chemical cost and dwell time barely matter when you're pricing a general service job, but they can swing a wash job by 20% or more. This guide builds on that general formula and applies it specifically to washing.

The five inputs, one at a time

1. Surface area

Everything starts with square footage. Walk the driveway, patio, or wall and get a real number, not a guess from the kerb. A 1,200 square foot driveway and an 1,800 square foot driveway look similar from the truck, but the second one costs 50% more in time and chemical, and your price needs to reflect that.

If a job has more than one surface type, for example a driveway plus a stretch of siding, measure each one separately. They take different rates, different chemicals, and often different equipment settings, so lumping them into one total square footage hides the real cost.

2. Chemical cost

Detergent, degreaser, and soft-wash solution all cost real money, and heavier soiling means more product per square foot. A gallon of concentrated house wash solution might run $20 to $40 and cover several thousand square feet diluted, so the per-job cost is often small, but it is not zero. Skipping it on paper means you're quietly paying for it out of your margin.

Rinse water and chemical runoff also matter for where you're allowed to work and how you dispose of wastewater. The EPA's NPDES stormwater program treats pressure washing runoff as process wastewater, since it can carry detergent, oil, and grease picked up off the surface, and discharging it straight into a storm drain generally is not allowed without capturing or treating it first. Some municipalities require containment equipment or a permit for wash water, and that compliance cost belongs in your pricing too, not treated as free.

3. Travel time

The drive to and from a job is unpaid time unless you price it in. A 20-minute drive each way is 40 minutes of your day gone before the wand even turns on. Price it at your hourly rate and add it to the job, the same way you would for any other service call. On a tight route with three jobs close together, travel time shrinks and your price can too; on a job 45 minutes out, it should go up.

4. Dwell time

Dwell time is the part pressure washing pricing guides skip most often, and it's the one that's genuinely specific to this trade. It's how long a cleaning solution needs to sit on the surface before rinsing, usually 5 to 15 minutes, so it can break down algae, mildew, or grease before the water blasts it off. Rinse too early and the job looks patchy; the customer notices, and you're back for a redo.

Dwell time is not free time. On a single-surface job it's a pause where you're waiting, and that's still time on the clock. On a multi-surface job, a good crew applies chemical to the second surface while the first one dwells, which is efficient, but it still needs to be counted as labour somewhere in the estimate. Either way, build it into your time-on-site, not around it.

5. Margin

Once you've added labour, chemical, travel, and dwell time, add a margin of 20–30% on top. This covers profit, equipment wear, insurance, and the jobs that run long for reasons outside your control. If you want the fuller breakdown of why margin is separate from your wage and how to size it, that's exactly what the general pricing formula post covers, so it's worth reading alongside this one.

Typical pressure washing rates by job type

These are illustrative US market ranges for 2026, not a guarantee. Pressure washing rates swing hard by region, local competition, and how dirty the surface actually is, so use this as a sanity check on your own number, not a price list to copy.

Roofs and heavy siding jobs sit at the top of these ranges because they need soft-washing chemicals, more careful dwell time, and often ladder or lift access, which adds both risk and time. A plain concrete driveway with light dust is the easiest job on the list, which is why it sits at the bottom. If you want a second opinion on your local market, trade groups like Power Washers of North America run training and certification that many operators use to justify pricing at the top of these ranges.

A full worked example

Say you're quoting a 1,200 square foot concrete driveway with moderate dirt and a few tyre marks, no heavy oil staining.

• Surface area × rate: 1,200 sq ft × $0.18 = $216
• Chemical cost: degreaser and detergent for a driveway this size, about $18
• Travel time: 25 minutes each way at a $50/hour rate ≈ $42
• Dwell time: 10 minutes built into labour at the same $50/hour rate ≈ $8
• Subtotal: $216 + $18 + $42 + $8 = $284
• Margin at 25%: $284 × 0.25 = $71
• Quote: $284 + $71 = $355, call it $350

That $350 isn't a round number picked out of the air. It's built from five real costs, which means you can explain it to the customer line by line if they ask, and you know exactly what you're protecting if they try to talk you down.

How one operator fixed a pricing problem

Marcus runs a two-person pressure washing outfit outside Charlotte. For his first year, he quoted everything at a flat $0.12 per square foot, no matter the surface or the soiling, because that's the number a competitor's website listed. He was booked solid and still barely breaking even.

The problem showed up on a siding job: 2,400 square feet at $0.12 came to $288, but the soft-wash chemical alone cost him $60, and the job took three hours including a 40-minute round trip and 15 minutes of dwell time on two sides of the house. Once he added it up, he'd cleared about $9 an hour after chemical and fuel.

Marcus switched to the five-input formula, split his rates by surface type, and started pricing dwell time as labour instead of a free break. His average driveway price barely moved, but his siding and roof jobs went up 30–40%. He lost a couple of price-shoppers and picked up a lot more actual profit, which is the trade every pricing fix like this eventually comes down to.

Common pricing mistakes

• Underpricing dwell time. Treating those 10–15 minutes as a free break rather than paid labour quietly erodes every quote you send.
• Not accounting for chemical cost. It looks small per job, but skip it on fifty jobs a year and it adds up to real missing margin.
• Ignoring drive time between jobs. A day full of short jobs spread across town can lose an hour or more to driving that never gets priced in.
• Pricing by the hour instead of the job. Hourly pricing punishes speed and gives the customer no clear number to commit to; flat, itemised pricing does both jobs better.
• Not adjusting for surface type or soiling level. A grease-stained driveway and a lightly dusty one are not the same job, even at the same square footage, and pricing them the same shorts you on the harder one.

Frequently asked questions

How do you price a pressure washing job?

Multiply the surface area by a per-square-foot rate for that surface type, add your chemical cost and travel time, build in dwell time as paid labour, then add a margin of 20–30% on top. For small jobs, set a flat minimum instead of pricing by the square foot.

How much should I charge per square foot for pressure washing?

Most operators charge $0.10 to $0.35 per square foot for a driveway or patio, $0.25 to $0.75 for siding, and more for roofs or heavily soiled concrete. Rates vary a lot by region, soiling level, and whether the job needs soft washing chemicals, so treat any per-square-foot number as a starting point, not a rulebook.

How much does it cost to pressure wash a driveway?

A typical residential concrete driveway runs $150 to $350 for around 1,000 to 1,500 square feet, depending on soiling, stains, and local rates. A driveway with heavy oil staining or rust will cost more because it needs extra chemical and dwell time.

Should I charge by the hour or by the job for pressure washing?

Price by the job, not the hour. Hourly pricing punishes you for working efficiently and gives customers no fixed number to say yes to. Use your hourly cost internally to build the quote, then present a flat price.

What is dwell time and why does it affect pricing?

Dwell time is how long a cleaning chemical needs to sit on a surface before rinsing, often 5 to 15 minutes depending on the product and the soiling. It is real time on the clock, sometimes on a second surface while the first one sits, so it needs to be built into your labour estimate, not treated as a free wait.

The bottom line

Surface area, chemical cost, travel, dwell time, and margin: price every pressure washing job against those five inputs and you'll stop leaving money in the driveway. Once the number is right, the next win is getting it to the customer fast and looking sharp; see how to write a quote that wins the job for that half of the equation, and get paid faster once the work is done. If you run a broader cleaning or pressure washing business, the same formula scales from a single driveway to a full day of routed jobs.