Getting ready painting an exterior? Wonder how to clean exterior walls before painting? Question if you actually need to wash exterior walls before painting? If so, what should you use cleaning walls? Should you pressure wash house before painting? Answering everything below.

Giving you all our knowledge how to properly clean outside wall surfaces before picking up a paint brush or paint sprayer. Know painting your exterior is not done everyday, nor every year, so properly painting includes cleaning first.

Let me ask you a question. If you stood outside your home for let's say, five years without moving a muscle, perfectly still, would you get dirty? Any bugs, spiders, wasps, birds, squirrels, or airborne dust landing on you?

Knowing all details how to clean exterior walls before painting will not only help final finish paint coatings, but helping the person actually conducting cleaning process.

Do I Need To Wash Exterior Walls Before Painting?

You'd be surprised how much debris would wash off you, after five years. So, if you haven't painted exterior within last six months, it is recommended you need to wash exterior walls, soffits, fascia, porch ceilings, removing dust and debris, before painting again.

Cleaning, washing off cracks, crevices, where siding overlaps each other tends to collect a considerable amount of dust, debris. Washing these areas before sealing with paint will have nothing but a positive impact on your exterior surfaces.

Remember recently washing off an exterior shed before we painted it. Shed had not been painted for many years. As I used a high pressure washer, I was amazed how much dirt, debris dripped out. Afterwards, knew without a doubt, after shed dried back out, it was ready for exterior paint job.

As a painting contractor here in Denver, we make a point to always wash off exterior wall surfaces before painting.

What Should I Use To Clean Walls Before Painting?

OK, so you need to wash exterior wall areas before painting, but wonder what you should use to clean it? Paint industry standards suggest using a high psi pressure washer, typically 2500-3000 psi.

Several higher quality pressure washers include a siphon hose. These siphon hoses picks up a variety of liquid cleaning agents, spraying on exterior surfaces, similar to a car wash in soap mode. If you need to clean walls before painting, most of the time only requires water.

However, some areas on wall surfaces may require using a cleaning agent. If high pressure water does not cut the mustard, use a cleaning additive. Cleaning agents include TSP, Oxi-Clean™, even Dawn, or Simple Green®. Mixing small amount of Oxi-Clean™ in a 5 gal. bucket, filling up with cold water. This cleaning mixture can be easily applied on exterior before rinsing off, cleaning exterior walls before painting. Also, you'll be very pleased this will not harm plants or vegetation.

Should I Pressure Wash My House Before Painting?

So you've decided to clean walls before painting, but wondering if you should pressure wash your home before actually painting? Pressure washers lend themselves to professionally clean your home's exterior. It's like having a portable high pressure, car wash, handheld spray wand.

Let me ask you a question. Do you need to wash your car at a local car wash? Or does your car get spotless using a garden hose, & low pressure water? Even more important, which cleaning method would you use before painting your car?

Your home's exterior is no different. A pressure wash cleaning process will remove dirt film from all surfaces of cars and homes before painting. Believe this is making sense now.

However, a home's exterior is not near as hard as a car, so cleaning either one, you'll still want to be careful not getting too close spraying surfaces.

Cleaning Exterior Walls Before Painting

When you clean exterior walls before painting, you'll ensure a clean canvas just like walls, before painting a fine piece of art, or home. Not trapping any foreign material under fresh paint. So it's best cleaning, using a high pressure wash method.

Starting from top, working down, this is one of many important steps painting exteriors. This is a great time to clean gutters if need be. While most pressure washers gives ability to easily apply different cleaning agents at the same time to your exterior in half the time.

When you are cleaning off walls using a pressure washer, one word of caution. Do Not put your hand near spray tip! You could possibly inject water into your bloodstream, as this will penetrate skin being only inches away.

If you still want your exterior walls cleaned before painting, but do not want to pressure wash yourself, you might call a local painting contractor. However, most painting contractors, like myself, include pressure washing as part of entire exterior painting job.

Hopefully this helps you cleaning walls before painting exterior of your home. And if so, please like, share, ping, and/or comment below.