House Washing Melbourne
Nobody books a house wash on its own. Walls, glass and screens go together, at low pressure, in one visit. Packages from $420 including GST.
- $20M public liability insurance
- Police-checked, WorkSafe compliant
- 5.0 from 170 Google reviews
- Not happy with the work? You don't pay
A house wash is rarely the whole job. People book it when the place is going on the market, when the tenants are changing over, or when the walls have gone a colour nobody chose — and by then the glass and the screens need doing as well.
So it gets priced as a package rather than a line item. House washing starts at $420 including GST for a single-storey house, and that figure covers the walls outside and the windows outside with them.
A cleaning solution does the lifting and low pressure does the rinsing, on anything painted or rendered. The garden gets wet down before a drop of it goes on. Anything needing a licence we do not hold gets photographed and left alone.
Two ways to book house washing services
Most people book house washing services one of two ways, and the difference is worth knowing before you call.
- The first is a deadline. The photographer comes on Thursday, the lease ends on the first, the inspection is already booked. Walls, glass and screens all have to be right at once, and there is no second visit to fall back on.
- The second is an interval. The house gets done on a cycle and nobody thinks about it in between. That is the cheaper way to own a rendered or weatherboard house, because growth taken off early comes away with water, and growth left for five years comes away with effort.
- Which one suits you depends on the aspect more than the age. A north-facing wall in the open stays dry and stays clean. The same wall on the shaded side under a canopy does not, and no amount of paint changes that.
- We will also say when a house does not need us yet. A place washed eighteen months ago and standing in the open is usually still fine, and saying so costs one job and keeps the next five.
What actually grows on an exterior wall
Exterior house cleaning is mostly not about dirt. Three things sit on a wall in Melbourne, and they behave differently enough to be worth separating.
Mould and lichen. Both want shade and moisture, which is why they arrive on one side of a house and not the other. Lichen grips the surface rather than resting on it, and the longer it stays the more of the coating comes away with it.
Salt. Closer to the bay it settles on everything and does not rinse off with rain. It is an electrolyte rather than a dust, and it goes to work on fixings and frames before the wall itself shows anything.
Road film and weathering. The dull grey that arrives so slowly nobody sees it happen. It is why a washed house reads as repainted from the footpath when nothing has been painted at all.
There is a fourth thing worth naming because fixing it is not our job. If the coating is already failing, washing will find it. You get the photograph rather than a bill for the discovery.
| What goes wrong | What causes it | What it costs | How to prevent it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coating failing earlier than it should | Lichen holding moisture against the paint film | Repainting sooner than the paint was rated forNo published figureTrade experience, no published figure | Wash on a cycle instead of waiting for the colour to change |
| Growth back within months | A wash that took the surface and left the hold | The same job again, at the same priceNo published figureTrade experience, no published figure | Let the solution release the growth, then rinse it away |
| Render face driven off | High pressure aimed at a rendered wall | Permanent. Patch render never quite matches the original faceNo published figureTrade experience, no published figure | Low pressure only on render and paint |
| Water pushed into the wall | Pressure directed up under weatherboard laps | Trapped moisture behind cladding, found later and from insideNo published figureTrade experience, no published figure | Wash down the laps, never up into them |
| Planting burnt along the wall | Cleaning solution left on garden beds without wetting down or rinsing | Replacing established planting that took years to fill inNo published figureTrade experience, no published figure | Wet the beds before, rinse them after |
| A facade that talks the price down | Grey walls in the listing photographs | A first impression every buyer prices in before the inspectionNo published figureTrade experience, no published figure | Wash before the photographer, not after |
Sources
No published dollar figure exists for the effect of soiling, or of a bad wash, on a Melbourne house. None is quoted here. Every row is trade experience and says so in the row.
What a house wash includes, and what it does not
A house wash covers the walls, the eaves and soffits, the downpipes and the entry — the whole envelope you can see from the ground, not the front elevation on its own.
The glass goes with it, and that is sequencing rather than an upsell. Windows cleaned before the walls get dirty again on the first rinse, so the glass is done afterwards. That is why the two are priced together instead of separately.
Everything painted or rendered is washed at low pressure. A cleaning solution goes on first and does the work of loosening what is on the wall, then the whole lot is rinsed away. Driving it off with pressure instead is quicker and takes the coating with it.
What is not included. Three things sit outside the job, and it is better to say so here than on the day.
- Painting, patching or repairing whatever the wash uncovers
- Roof work, unless it is quoted as a job of its own
- Anything that needs a licence we do not hold
If the wash finds cracked render, a failed seal or a downpipe that goes nowhere, you get a photograph and a plain description. We wash; we do not repair.
House washing cost in Melbourne by package
House washing is almost never booked on its own, so it is priced as a package rather than by the square metre. Every figure below is a starting price for a single-storey house.
from — walls outside, windows outside
from — adds inside windows and fly screens
from — adds the driveway
All prices include GST and start from a single-storey house. A double-storey house is quoted after we have looked at it.
What influences the cost of house washing?
- How much wall there is, which is not the same as how many bedrooms
- Whether it is single or double storey
- Whether equipment can reach the back of the house or everything is carried
- What is already on the surface — light film rinses away, established lichen does not
Exterior house cleaning prices go wrong in the same place every time: a figure given over the phone for a house nobody has looked at. Send photographs of the worst wall and of the access down the side, and you get a price rather than a range.
House washing Melbourne wide is quoted the same way whether it is a weatherboard cottage or a rendered two-storey: wall area, height, access, condition. Only the numbers move.
A double-storey house is not on the list on purpose. The access is different and the time is different, and we would rather look at it than publish a figure we would have to correct on the day.
How the day runs, from quote to rinse
You send photographs of the house and of the side access. We come back with a price, not a range.
- On the day the garden beds and anything planted against the wall are wet down first, and the windows are shut and checked. Soft wash house cleaning is a chemistry job rather than a force job, and the solution goes on as a foam for a reason: foam clings to a vertical wall instead of running straight to the ground, so it stays where it was put long enough to work.
- What it is doing while it sits there is drawing the grime up out of the surface rather than skating over the top of it. Then it comes off at low pressure, and the wall underneath has not been touched by anything harder than water.
- Walls, eaves, downpipes and the entry, then the glass, then the screens if they are in the package. That order every time, because any other order means doing part of it twice.
- There is a report at the end with the before and the after in it. Most owners are standing in the driveway by then and have already seen the difference, so it earns its keep on the houses that are managed from somewhere else, or where the work has to go in a file.
- Nothing gets driven at. Pressure is what most people picture when they imagine a house being washed, and it is the most common way a sound facade gets ruined.
Recent house washes, before and after
A multi-storey townhouse on St Kilda Road, cleaned top to bottom in a single visit. Rope access was used for the polycarbonate roof, the upper render and the windows.
Read case study
Building washingA house wash on Richardson Street, Albert Park, done to get the property ready for sale. Victorian facade at low pressure, the rear soft washed, windows and fly screens finished with it.
Read case study
Building washingA full exterior clean on Clapperton Street, Bentleigh in January: rendered walls soft washed, windows done inside and out, and the driveway cleaned. One visit, three jobs.
Read case study
Google reviews
What clients said, straight from Google
Recent verified feedback from local clients who booked exterior cleaning with WaterCrew.
★★★★★ GoogleJuly 2026"Very happy with the service. They were clean, professional and left everything tidy Plus the job was done beautifully Many thanks!"
MelbourneView on Google ↗
★★★★★ GoogleJune 2026"Highly recommend Eren and his WaterCrew. Have used for gutter cleaning and will in future use for terracotta roof tile cleaning & window cleaning. They do a very thorough and professional job at competitive rates. Also, they are polite, friendly and well spoken."
CanterburyView on Google ↗
★★★★★ GoogleJune 2026"WaterCrew Cleaning recently cleaned the windows at my home in Chadstone and did an excellent job. The team was professional, friendly, and easy to deal with. The windows look crystal clear, and the service was completed on time and to a very high standard. I would highly recommend WaterCrew Cleaning to anyone looking for reliable window cleaning services in Chadstone."
MelbourneView on Google ↗
★★★★★ GoogleJune 2026"New age equipment, timely with very satisfactory results. Highly recommend crew for exterior/interior and flyscreen cleaning. Gutters cleaning available as well Best crew I came across for sometime and reasonably priced. Collin"
HamptonView on Google ↗
Who books a house wash, and why
A house going to market
The photographs are taken once and the inspections run for weeks afterwards. A grey facade in the listing gets priced in by every buyer who scrolls past it, and it costs less to wash than to argue about.
A changeover between tenants
The window between one lease and the next is short and everything has to happen inside it. Walls, glass and screens in a single visit rather than three trades across three days.
A house nobody has touched
Five or six years of growth on the shaded side, and the owner stopped seeing it a while ago. This is the one where the solution matters more than the pressure, because the lichen has a hold.
A managing agent or landlord
Someone who needs the work arranged, the invoice clean and a dated photo record for the file. On this kind of job the report matters as much as the wash does.
Questions we get asked before booking
Do I have to be home?+
No. The work is outside and the water comes from your tap. If the package includes inside glass we will need access, and we will say so when you book rather than on the day.
How long does a house wash take?+
Most single-storey houses are done in a day. Adding inside glass and screens adds hours rather than a second visit, which is the whole point of booking them together.
Will it strip my paint?+
Not at the pressure we use. Sound paint is not the problem. Paint that has already failed is, and washing finds it — if we see it lifting you get a photograph before we go any further.
What about the garden?+
Beds against the wall are wet down before anything goes on and rinsed afterwards. Established planting is harder to replace than a facade is to wash, and it gets treated that way.
Will the mould come back?+
It is living, so eventually. What changes is the interval. Growth lifted with a solution stays away far longer than growth that was blasted off and left at the hold.
Do you clean brick as well as render?+
Yes, and it is a different job. Brick and the mortar between it take a cleaning solution and pressure differently to a rendered wall, and old lime mortar takes neither of them well.
Can you just do the walls?+
We can, and most people do not. Clean walls next to dirty glass is the thing clients regret most often, which is why the packages start with the two of them together.
What if the house is double storey?+
It gets quoted after we look. The access changes and the time changes, and publishing one figure for something we have not seen would be a number we would have to correct.
Why a hose and a good afternoon does not do it
A garden hose moves water. It does not move what is holding on to the wall, and on the shaded side that is the whole problem.
Growth on a wall is not sitting on top of it the way dust sits on a car. Lichen puts a hold into the coating and mould gets down into the texture of render, and a jet of water goes straight past both.
So the wall looks better wet and looks the same again once it dries. That is the tell. Anything that improves while wet and reverts on drying was never removed, only darkened.
The other half of it is reach. The parts that need the work most are the eaves, the top of the wall and the shaded return down the side, which are exactly the parts a hose held on the lawn cannot get to.
High pressure on a facade, and what it costs
Pressure washing a house is the quickest way to make a wall look clean this afternoon, and the quickest way to shorten the life of what is on it.
On render, pressure drives the face off. The wall goes back to flat, slightly different in the patch that was worked hardest, and it does not come back. On weatherboard, water driven up under the laps ends up somewhere it cannot dry from.
House pressure cleaning has a place and it is on the ground: concrete, paving, a driveway. Hard, flat, unpainted, and built to take it. A painted wall is none of those things.
The honest version of the argument is that low pressure is slower and costs more in labour. It is also why the facade lasts. A quote well under everyone else is usually selling the faster method without mentioning it.
Brick, mortar and what they will take
Brick cleaning Melbourne wide mostly means one of two things, and they are not the same problem. Modern brick with cement mortar is durable and forgiving. Nineteenth-century brick with lime mortar is neither.
On old brick the face was fired and the inside was not, so once the face is gone the brick starts taking up water. Lime mortar is softer again and washes out of the joint, which is how a wall ends up needing repointing after a clean.
The safe method is the boring one. Wet the wall, let the solution do the work, rinse at a pressure that would not mark your car, and accept that some staining on hundred-year-old brick is now part of the brick.
If the address sits in a heritage overlay there is a second reason to keep it gentle. What may be done to the surface can be a permit question, and a wash that changes the appearance is a different conversation to one that removes what is sitting on it.
What house washing should cost in 2026
House washing is priced by what has to be reached and by what is already on it. Any quote given without photographs or a visit is a guess dressed up as a number.
Be careful with a figure well under the packages on this page. Washing a house properly means the solution, the time it needs to work, low pressure, protecting the planting, and the glass afterwards. A price that assumes a machine and ninety minutes is priced for a different job to the one described here.
Be equally careful with a package that will not say what is in it. Ours are set out above in order: walls and outside glass from $420, inside glass and screens from $638, the driveway as well from $946. All including GST, all from a single-storey house.
The numbers are published for the same reason the method is. Two quotes cannot be compared when only one of them says what it covers.
About the expert
Ihor Sydorenko
Founder & Lead Rope Access Technician (IRATA Level 3) — WaterCrew Cleaning
Ihor has worked on ropes since 2013, starting on high-rise facades in Kyiv, where he founded and still runs the rope-access company Альпіністи Київ. He holds IRATA Level 3 — the highest grade in the international rope-access system, covering work supervision, safety planning and rescue.
- ✓ IRATA Level 3 rope access technician
- ✓ Working safely at heights
- ✓ Construction induction
- ✓ First aid