💡Quick Answer: First, clear all dry debris with a leaf blower or push broom. Prime your pressure washer by running water through it before turning it on, then clean the edges with a wide-angle green or white tip. Use a surface cleaner for the main area, moving slowly like a vacuum and overlapping each pass by an inch or two to avoid streaks. For stubborn mildew, pre-treat with a 50/50 bleach-and-water mix before washing. Finish by post-treating the whole driveway with a light bleach mist to even out and brighten the concrete.
If your driveway is looking dirty or covered in mildew, pressure washing is the fastest way to bring it back to life. Done right, you can blast away years of buildup and even brighten the concrete without any harsh scrubbing. Here’s the best way to clean your driveway from start to finish.
Tools You’ll Need
Start by Removing Dry Debris
Before any water comes out, grab a leaf blower or push broom and remove as much dry debris from the driveway as possible. This means sticks, leaves, grass clippings, mulch, and anything else you can easily clear off the surface.
This step sets your whole cleanup for success. If debris is scattered around while you’re pressure washing, you’ll constantly have to stop and move it, and once it gets wet, it becomes much harder to remove. Taking a few minutes to clear everything first makes every following step easier.
Prime Your Pressure Washer
Once the driveway is clear, it’s time to get the machine ready. Hook the hose up to your pressure washer, attach the wand, and run water through the machine without turning it on. This pushes all the air out of the pump so there are no bubbles left behind. It’s a small step, but an important one, because priming the pump this way ensures your pressure washer is ready to go and helps prevent damage to the pump itself. Never skip it.
Clean the Edges First
With the machine primed, grab the wand and clean all the edges along the driveway. For this, use either the green or white tip, since these are the widest angle and do a great job without being so strong that they cause damage. Be mindful of where you’re spraying. If you get too close to the grass or mulch along the edges, the pressure will blast it away, so stay on the concrete as much as possible to avoid making a mess or causing damage. Getting the edges done first makes the next tool work that much better.
Use a Surface Cleaner for the Main Area
The next step is to clean the main driveway with a surface cleaner, and this is a tool worth investing in if you can, because it makes the job dramatically easier and faster. A surface cleaner is essentially two nozzles that spin quickly when you turn on the pressure washer, and the combination of pressure and spinning blasts away all the buildup. You just move it straight up and straight back like you’re using a vacuum, which is efficient and honestly pretty satisfying.
To make sure you don’t miss anything, rinse each section with your wand after cleaning it. Sometimes you’ll spot a few remaining streaks, so just come back over them with the surface cleaner. A quick rinse reveals exactly what still needs attention.
There are a couple of important rules for the best results. First, go slow and let the pressure washer do the work, since this isn’t a race. Second, always overlap each pass by about an inch or two. If you move too fast without overlapping, you’ll miss spots, and once the driveway dries you’ll see “tiger stripes,” those unmistakable streaks across the concrete where you missed. For especially dirty areas, try cleaning from a few different angles to remove as much buildup as possible so it looks great when it dries.
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Choosing the Right Pressure Washer
The machine you need depends on how dirty and how large your driveway is, plus your budget, but a few specs are worth understanding. The first is PSI, and I recommend somewhere around 2,500 to 3,500 PSI, which is strong enough to blast away buildup and let you work quickly. Keep in mind your surface cleaner may need a minimum PSI to spin, so make sure both are compatible and you have enough power to actually clean.
The second spec is GPM, or gallons per minute, which is how much water flows through the machine. More water means you can rinse and clean more efficiently, and I like to recommend around 2.3 to 2.5 GPM, though higher is even better. For reference, a machine like the Simpson Pro Series offers 3,500 PSI and 2.5 GPM, which is plenty of power for a driveway and can handle jobs all around the house.
If you already own a less powerful washer, you can still clean your driveway, but a lower PSI and GPM mean you’ll have to work much more slowly and it will take longer, which adds up on a larger driveway. A smaller electric unit around 1,800 PSI and 1.2 GPM will get the job done, but you’ll likely need to go over heavy mildew areas several times.
When and How to Use Bleach
Here’s the cool thing about cleaning with pressure: much of the time, you don’t need any cleaning agents at all, since water and pressure do the work. But when you hit an area with heavy mildew buildup, a little cleaner gives you a boost, and I recommend simple bleach.
Mix the bleach 50/50 with water in a pump-up sprayer and apply it to the area before you start cleaning. One critical warning: bleach will burn out and potentially kill grass and plants, so always wet those down with water first so it won’t cause damage. Once you’ve sprayed the concrete, let it set for a bit but don’t let it dry completely, then come through with your pressure washer and clean the whole area. Remember that bleach on the concrete will splash up as you wash, so keep it off painted surfaces and wear old clothes to avoid damage.
Bleach works so well here because it’s easy to find, affordable, and excellent at killing organic growth like mold, mildew, and algae, while also lightening the concrete’s appearance. And once it’s done working, it naturally breaks down when exposed to air, light, and organic matter, leaving behind mostly salt water.
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Post-Treat to Brighten the Concrete
Once you’re done power washing, there’s one final step that really levels up the result: post-treating. Take that same 50/50 bleach mix you used to pre-treat the bad spots and apply a light mist over the entire driveway. You don’t need to get carried away here.
That light layer of bleach cleans up anything that might still be on the surface, which likely isn’t much, and evens everything out. The result is brighter concrete and a driveway that looks pristine. And there you have it, the best way to get your driveway nice and clean.
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