Before you pay for a logo, know what it has to do: look sharp at one inch tall on a truck door and a Google listing. This covers what works, the common designs to avoid, and what a logo should cost.
We build websites for pressure washing companies, which means we've placed a lot of pressure washing logos onto website headers, truck doors and Google listings. Some make the company look established, and some fight the layout on every page. This article covers the difference.
Your logo spends most of its life at about one inch tall: in a Google Business Profile photo circle, a website header, an embroidered polo, or a truck door seen at forty miles an hour. At that size it has one job, which is to be readable and look professional. Everything else is secondary.
Open a logo marketplace and search for pressure washing, and you'll see the same four ideas repeated: a cartoon man aiming a wand, a house inside a water droplet, a swoosh of water across the name, and letters that look like they're melting. None of these will hurt you on their own, but all of them make you look like every other competitor in your county, because everyone is buying from the same marketplace.
Start with a strong wordmark: your company name, set in a solid font, readable from a distance. If you add a symbol, keep it to one simple idea, such as a droplet, a clean vertical stripe showing before and after, or a house silhouette, drawn simply enough to survive embroidery. Use two colors, or three at most. Get a dark version and a light version, because your logo will sit on white websites and dark truck wraps.
Ask for the vector files (SVG, EPS or AI) as well as a PNG. Vector files scale up to a yard sign without going blurry, and they're what the wrap shop and the embroiderer will ask for. A logo delivered only as a small PNG is a logo you'll pay to have rebuilt later.
A marketplace template costs under fifty dollars and looks like it. A freelance designer typically charges a few hundred dollars. An agency identity project runs into the thousands and is more than most one crew operations need. For most companies, the right range is a few hundred dollars for original vector work, with both color versions and the source files included.
A plain wordmark on a site that ranks, with a complete Google listing and fifty reviews, will bring in more work than a beautiful logo on page three of the results. If you're choosing where to spend a dollar, the visibility system pays better than the badge. That system is what we build. The full guide is on our pressure washing marketing page, with live client sites to look at on our work page.
If you already have a logo and you're not sure about it, send it along with a free audit request and we'll tell you whether it's a problem. In most cases it isn't.
Start with a free audit of your site and your Google listing. It costs nothing and you aren't signing up for anything.
