How to Price Pressure Washing Jobs in 2026: Per Square Foot vs Per Hour

Two guys quote the same 900-square-foot driveway on the same Tuesday.

The first one looks at it, thinks "that's about two hours," and says $175. The second one measures it, checks the water spigot, notices the oil stain by the garage, and says $220. Both of them are guessing. Neither of them knows whether they made money until the invoice clears and the month closes.

The difference between crews that grow and crews that stay busy-but-broke almost never comes down to how well they wash. It comes down to whether the number they say out loud has any math behind it.

The short answer

Quote the customer per square foot or as a flat job price. But calculate that number from your target hourly rate.

Per-square-foot versus per-hour is a false choice. Square footage is how you estimate the time. Your hourly rate is what you're actually selling. Get those two numbers right and every quote is a thirty-second calculation instead of a gut feeling.

Three numbers you need, in order:

1. What one billable hour actually costs you
2. How fast you actually produce (square feet per hour)
3. Your minimum job charge

Most crews have never worked out any of the three.

Step 1: What an hour actually costs you

The number people use is their wage. That's not the number.

Here's the part that catches everyone: you don't bill the hours you work. Drive time, estimates, buying chemical, answering the phone, rained-out mornings, equipment repair — none of that is billable. A solo operator working a full week is often billing somewhere around 25 to 30 hours out of 50 worked. Every fixed cost you have has to be recovered inside those billable hours only.

Fill in your own version of this. Monthly:

Fixed cost	Example	Yours
Truck payment / replacement fund	$650
Insurance (general liability + auto)	$250
Fuel	$400
Equipment repair + replacement fund	$200
Phone, software, website	$100
Total fixed	$1,600

Now divide by billable hours. At 100 billable hours a month — that's about 5 a day, 20 days — this example carries $16 per billable hour in fixed cost before anyone gets paid and before a drop of chemical.

Then add, per hour worked:

• Labor. Yours or a helper's. If you're paying a guy $20/hr, his true cost with payroll taxes and comp is closer to $26.
• Chemical. Varies enormously by service. Track it per job for a month and you'll have a real per-hour figure instead of a shrug.
• Profit. This is not your wage. Your wage is labor. Profit is what the business keeps — and if it's zero you've bought yourself a job, not built a company.

Stack it up and most small exterior cleaning operations need to be collecting somewhere north of $100 per billable hour for the business to be genuinely healthy. If that number makes you wince, that's the useful part. It usually means the last two years of quotes were subsidised by not replacing the equipment.

The fastest way to find out if your pricing works: take last month's total revenue and divide it by the hours you actually spent on-site. That's your real hourly rate. Compare it to the number above.

Step 2: How fast you actually produce

This is the number that turns square footage into time, and it's the one you can only get by measuring yourself.

Production on flat concrete with a surface cleaner depends almost entirely on your machine's GPM and how filthy the surface is. Crews commonly report anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 square feet per hour — which is a range so wide it's useless as a planning number. A 4 GPM homeowner-grade setup on a neglected driveway lives at the bottom of it. An 8 GPM machine on annual-maintenance concrete lives at the top.

So measure yours. It takes one week and it's the highest-value hour of admin you'll ever do:

1. On your next five concrete jobs, write down the square footage and the on-site time from truck-stop to truck-loaded — including setup and pack-up, not just trigger time.
2. Total the square feet, total the hours, divide.
3. That's your real production rate. It will be lower than you think, and that's the point.

Do the same for house washing (per square foot of siding), roofs (per square foot of roof), and anything else you sell regularly. Four numbers on a card in the truck and you can quote anything from the driveway.

Step 3: The formula

Now every quote is arithmetic:

Price = (Area ÷ Production rate) × Target hourly rate + Setup & travel + Chemical

Run the 900 sq ft driveway from the top of this article, using a 1,800 sq ft/hr production rate and a $110 target:

Wash time	900 ÷ 1,800 = 0.5 hr
Setup, hose out, pack up	0.5 hr
Travel (round trip, apportioned)	0.5 hr
Total time on the clock	1.5 hr
1.5 × $110	$165
Chemical	$12
Quote	$177 → call it $185

Notice what just happened. The actual washing was 30 minutes of a 90-minute job. Two-thirds of what you're selling isn't washing at all — it's showing up. Crews who price only the wash time are the ones who can't work out why a full calendar doesn't turn into money.

That comes out to about $0.21 per square foot on this job. You'll see the range $0.12–$0.25/sq ft quoted around the industry, and it varies hugely by region — but notice that you didn't need it. The per-square-foot figure is an output of your math, not an input. Use it to sanity-check yourself, never to set the price.

When to quote hourly instead

Almost never to a homeowner for production work. Hourly pricing punishes you for being good: buy a faster machine, get better at the work, and you earn less per job. It also invites the worst conversation in the trade — the customer watching the clock.

Charge hourly only when you genuinely cannot predict the time:

• Rust, battery acid, or unknown stains where the outcome isn't guaranteed
• Graffiti removal
• Surfaces that haven't been touched in fifteen years
• Commercial work where scope changes mid-job

Even then, quote a range with a not-to-exceed rather than an open meter: "$110/hour, I estimate 3–4 hours, I'll call you before I pass 4." That protects both of you and it's the version customers actually say yes to.

Your minimum job charge — the one that changes your month

If you take one thing from this article, take this.

A $95 driveway that's 25 minutes away costs you close to an hour of drive time, half an hour of setup and pack, plus the wash. Call it two hours door to door. That's under $50/hour, before chemical, before fuel, before the truck payment.

You did not make money. You were busy, which feels the same on the day and doesn't at the end of the year.

Set a minimum and say it out loud on the phone. Something in the range of $175–$250 is common for residential exterior cleaning. Two things happen immediately:

1. The tiny unprofitable jobs stop calling — which is the point.
2. The ones who do call start adding services to clear the minimum. "Well, could you do the walkway and the front porch too?" That's a bigger ticket you didn't have to sell.

The minimum isn't a barrier. It's the single best upsell tool you have, and it costs nothing to implement.

Five things that quietly eat the margin

1. Pricing off what the other guy charges. You have no idea what his costs are, whether he's insured, or whether he's about to go out of business. Half the "competition" undercutting you is a guy with a $400 machine who'll be gone by fall. Price off your numbers.

2. Not checking the water source. A weak spigot or a long hose run can add half an hour before you've started. Ask on the phone, verify on arrival, and price the awkward ones accordingly.

3. Bundling gutter brightening into a house wash. Brightening the outside of gutters is a separate chemical, separate step and separate time. It's one of the most commonly given-away services in the trade. Quote it as a line item — customers accept it readily when they see it listed.

4. Access. Steep drive, gated yard, dogs, cars that won't be moved, a second-storey soffit that needs a ladder. Every one of these adds time that wasn't in your square-footage estimate. Add an access factor when you see one, at quote time, not after.

5. Not raising prices. Chemical, fuel and insurance all went up. If your prices didn't, you took a pay cut and called it loyalty.

How to raise prices without losing the route

The fear is losing everybody. What actually happens is you lose the customers who were costing you money.

• Raise on new quotes first. Set the new number today for everyone who calls from here on. You'll find out within two weeks whether it sticks — and it almost always does.
• Existing repeat customers get notice. One short message, one reason, no apology: "Starting in March, driveway service goes to $195. Costs have moved and I'd rather adjust once than cut corners."
• Expect to lose a few, and let them go. If a 10% increase loses you 10% of customers, you're doing the same money for less work and less wear on the equipment. That's not a loss.

The part of the price that isn't in the price

Here's the thing that changes what you can charge more than any spreadsheet.

A homeowner comparing two quotes for work she can't evaluate technically will decide on the evidence she can evaluate: whether you showed up when you said, whether the quote was written down, whether the truck looked organised, whether you looked like a company or two guys. The higher quote wins that comparison more often than people expect — but only when everything visible backs it up.

That's why a $220 quote from a crew in matching shirts with a written estimate beats a $175 quote from a guy in a cutoff. It isn't fairness. It's that she's buying certainty, and the only certainty available to her is what she can see.

We wrote about the visible half of this in the small crew uniform guide — and if you run chemical all day, what that chemical does to the shirt matters more than most crews plan for.

The card that goes in your truck

• My cost per billable hour: $____
• My target hourly rate: $____
• Concrete production: ____ sq ft/hr
• House wash production: ____ sq ft/hr
• Roof production: ____ sq ft/hr
• Minimum job: $____
• Add for access issues, weak water, gutter brightening — every time

Fill that in this week. It's the difference between a business and a very busy hobby.

Look like the higher quote → — crew shirts built for chemical, no minimum order, nothing prints until you approve the mockup.