How Often Should You Pressure Wash Your House? A Greenville, SC Guide

September 23, 2026

Most answers to “how often should I pressure wash my house” give one blanket number for the whole property. That’s not very useful, because siding, driveways, roofs, and decks are different surfaces facing different kinds of buildup, on different schedules, and Greenville’s climate changes the math on top of that.

Siding: about once a year

Vinyl, metal, and composite siding generally need washing about once a year; wood siding does better every 1 to 2 years with gentler pressure. The reason for the annual cycle isn’t really dirt. It’s organic growth. Mold, algae, and mildew build up steadily on vertical surfaces, especially on shaded, north-facing walls, and left too long, that growth traps moisture against the siding itself, which is the actual damage risk, not the discoloration.

Driveways: every 1 to 2 years, sometimes more

Concrete driveways typically go 1 to 2 years between cleanings, more often (closer to every 6 months) with heavy shade, oil staining, or high traffic. Horizontal concrete collects organic staining and oil more slowly than siding collects biofilm, but it’s worth knowing that over-washing, especially high PSI applied directly and repeatedly, can wear at aging concrete and asphalt binder over time. More frequent isn’t automatically better; matched-to-need is.

Roofs: every 2 to 4 years, if it’s soft washed

This interval only holds if the roof is soft washed rather than pressure washed. Soft washing uses low-pressure chemistry to kill algae and moss at the root, so it lasts years rather than the few months a high-pressure “blast” buys before regrowth. See our full roof moss and algae guide for why pressure washing a roof is the wrong call to begin with.

Decks: material-dependent

Wood decks generally need annual cleaning, especially ahead of re-staining or sealing, since wood absorbs moisture and needs the surface refreshed regularly. Composite decking needs cleaning far less often. It doesn’t absorb moisture the way wood does and doesn’t require refinishing.

How Greenville’s climate changes these numbers

A generic U.S.-wide answer misses the two biggest local factors that actually shorten these intervals here in the Upstate:

• Humidity and tree canopy. Both are the biggest accelerants of biological growth. A heavily shaded, tree-covered lot (common across Greenville’s older, tree-lined neighborhoods) holds moisture longer after rain, which speeds up algae and mildew on roofs and siding well past the “once a year” baseline.
• Spring pollen season. Pine and oak pollen (heaviest March to April in the Upstate) coats siding, driveways, and decks in a yellow film that stains on its own, independent of the regular annual cycle. Most homeowners here end up doing at least a light spring cleaning specifically for pollen, separate from their main annual wash.

A practical Greenville maintenance calendar

If you’d rather not track four different schedules yourself, we set up recurring service on whatever cadence actually fits your property. See our house washing, driveway cleaning, and deck & patio cleaning pages for each service.