How Often Your Home Needs Exterior Cleaning

How often you need to clean the exterior of your home depends on different factors. In general, early spring and late fall are important because that's when we see the most severe weather changes, along with heavy rain and snow. But specific factors include the number of trees around your home, traffic throughout your neighborhood, and your subdivision location. There is no one answer for every situation. Understanding the role these factors play on your home is key.

There’s No One Perfect Schedule that Fits for Every Home

No two homes are the same or are exposed to the same exact conditions. Some homes remain cleaner for longer compared to others, usually caused by different factors that explain the degree environmental exposure has on your home.

• Tree coverage and falling debris – It’s easier for leaves, pollen, and other grime to gather on homes that are surrounded by trees, compared to homes with less. Termites and other pests may gather in these dirty areas more often.
• Pollution levels caused by traffic – Home’s around busy roads are affected more by seemingly small fumes and pollutants given off cars or large buildings. Coating the outside of your home with layers of harmful grime over long periods of time.
• Surrounding bodies of water.svg – Areas near lakes, rivers, or other large bodies of water.svg may need to clean their exterior more often. These areas are generally wetter and moister, leading to mold growing faster and corrosion happening quicker.

Why Location and Climate Matter

Your home's location and climate are the most important factors when deciding how often your home's exterior needs to be cleaned.

• Location – Is your home in a forest or surrounded by trees? Is there heavy traffic on or around your road? Are there any bodies of water.svg nearby creating moist and wet conditions? These are questions homeowners need to ask themselves when looking at their homes location and the effect it’s having on the outside of their home.
• Climate – Different environmental factors appear in different climates. Understanding the climate your home faces and the impact it has on your exterior surfaces is important. In a dry and sunny climate, mold and algae stains are less likely to grow and spread due to access to sunlight and lack of moisture gathering on surfaces. In a rainy, wet, humid climate, the opposite is seen. These climate conditions are where cleaning your house.png regularly is vital.

How Often Should Most Homes Be Cleaned?

As clearly shown above, there is no consensus as to how often every home’s exterior needs to be cleaned. However, it’s recommended that most homes need should be cleaned once or twice a year. Once a year works for homes that aren’t exposed to harsh environmental conditions, while homes surrounded by trees, busy roads, or bodies of water.svg benefit from twice a year. Spring is considered the most important time to clean the outside of your home, as winter leaves behind harmful mold, mildew, and even salt residue.

What Are the Signs Your Home Needs Exterior Cleaning?

Signs that your home’s exterior needs to be cleaned can be subtle, but they are there. Checking shaded areas is important, with less access to sunlight and moist conditions; green and black streaks often appear first in shaded areas and expand from there. Hazy looking windows and gutters that don’t clear properly are also signs that your home’s outside needs cleaning. Noticing and dealing with these issues early prevents any problems spiraling out of control in the future.

Does Skipping Exterior Cleaning Cause Any Long-Term Problems?

When you don’t properly clean the outside of your home, it allows nasty and harmful grime and buildup to gather. Dirt, mold, algae, pollutants, all can have serious negative consequences on your home when not addressed. These might not seem like serious issues originally, but the damage caused over time is serious and preventable. It will also be harder to sell your home when it’s covered in years of non-cleaned substances that lower curb appeal and show buyers that an effort wasn’t made to keep the house.png in its best condition. First impressions are important, and buyers get the impression that if the outside of the house.png is dirty and unkept, there’s probably other issues with the house.png as well.

The Takeaway

Even following the general rule of cleaning once or twice a year, how often you need to clean the exterior of your home is influenced by many factors. Your home’s surrounding environment, location, and climate all play a role in understanding the risk your home is facing around whether your home needs to be cleaned more or less frequently. Regular, preventative cleaning keeps your home looking fresh and protects against serious issues down the road.