Table of Contents
The short answer
Most villa walls that look tired are dirty, not worn out. Dust set hard by humidity, salt near the sea, white sprinkler spots low down and drip marks under the AC outlets all sit on top of the paint. A gentle, low-pressure wash with a cleaner that suits the finish takes them off. That is facade cleaning.
Pressure washing is the job for the ground. Driveways, paths and paved yards hold oil and ground-in grime that need force, and they are hard enough to take it. Most wall finishes are not.
Repainting is for a wall whose coating has failed: paint that comes off on your hand as powder, that flakes or blisters, or that has faded to a different colour on the sunny side. Washing does not bring failed paint back. New paint does not last on a wall that was not cleaned, repaired and dried first, so even a repaint begins with a wash.
Many villas need two of the three, in the right order. The table gives the usual answer for each thing you might see on a wall, and the checks in the next section tell you which row you are in.
At IHR Dream Cleaning, facade cleaning covers the exterior walls of villas and low-rise buildings where the work can be done safely at ground level or low height, and pressure washing covers driveways, parking areas, paths and outdoor tiles. Both are priced from photos or a free inspection before anyone starts. Our published painting service describes interior work, so an outside wall has to be described when you book and confirmed first.
| What you see | What it usually is | First job |
|---|---|---|
| Even grey or sandy film, heavier on ledges | Dust set by humidity and dew | Facade cleaning |
| Dull, slightly sticky film on the sea side | Salt holding dust | Facade cleaning, more often |
| White spots in an arc on the lowest metre | Limescale from a sprinkler | Turn the sprinkler, then clean |
| One streak below a pipe or an AC unit | Condensate run-off | Move the drip, then clean |
| Green or black patch in damp shade | Algae or mould | Stop the damp, treat, rinse gently |
| White fluffy crust at the foot or by a crack | Efflorescence: salts from inside the wall | Brush dry and find the water |
| Orange or brown streak | Rust, or iron in irrigation water | Fix the source; treat if the finish allows |
| Powder on your palm, paler colour in the sun | Chalking, faded paint | Repaint |
| Flakes, blisters, bare patches | Paint that has lost its bond | Find the moisture, repair, repaint |
| Oil spots, tyre marks, grey paving | Ground-in dirt on the ground | Pressure washing |
Three checks before you choose a job
Do these on each side of the house, because the sunny side and the shaded side of the same villa often need different things. They take a few minutes and need a dry hand, a sponge, a bucket and a strip of masking tape. Note where each mark sits as you go. A stain's position usually names its cause, and the cause decides whether a clean will last.
The hand test
Rub your palm firmly across a dry part of the wall at shoulder height and look at it. Grey or sandy dirt on your hand is dust, and it will wash off. A fine powder in the colour of the paint, usually white or cream, is chalking: the sun has broken down the binder that holds the paint together, and the pigment is coming loose. A light trace is normal on any wall that has seen several summers. A palm coated in powder means the paint is near the end of its life.
Try the south and west walls first. They take the strongest sun, and paint on them chalks and fades years before the same paint on the shaded side.
Wash one small patch
Choose a dirty area low on the wall, about the size of a dinner plate. Wash it with a soft sponge and a bucket of water with a little washing-up liquid, rinse it with clean water and let it dry fully. A wet wall always looks better than a dry one, so judge it the next morning. Then compare the patch with the wall around it.
- The patch is clean and the colour under it is even: the wall is dirty, and cleaning will work.
- The patch is cleaner but the paint under it is faded or blotchy: cleaning will help, and the wall will still look its age afterwards.
- Paint came off on the sponge, or the patch dried paler and powdery: the coating is failing. Washing the whole wall will leave it patchier, not better.
- The mark did not move at all: it is a bonded deposit or a stain in the surface. It needs a specific treatment, or it is permanent.
The tape test where paint looks doubtful
Where the paint has fine cracks or lifted edges, press a strip of masking tape firmly onto it and peel it off. If flakes come away on the tape, the paint has lost its grip on the wall. That area has to be scraped back and repainted whatever else is done. It should be washed very gently or not at all, because a jet of water will lift the rest.
Dirt on the surface: what a low-pressure wash removes
These are the marks facade cleaning is for. All of them sit on the wall and none has changed it.
The dust film
Fine dust settles on every ledge and every textured surface after a windy day. On its own it would brush off. Humidity and morning dew wet it, the sun dries it, and after a few rounds it is a thin crust that a garden hose only smears. Rain is too rare here to rinse the walls, and when it does come it carries the dust down in dirty stripes from each sill and ledge.
The crust comes off when it is wetted properly, given a cleaner that suits the finish and a few minutes to soften, loosened with a soft brush where the texture holds it, and rinsed from the top down with a wide, gentle spray. Villas near building sites collect cement and plaster dust as well, which sets harder and returns sooner, so mention any construction near you when you ask for a price.
Salt near the water
On the coast and the islands, sea air leaves a film of salt on walls as it does on glass. It feels slightly sticky, holds dust and draws moisture from the air, so a salty wall stays damp for longer each morning and soils faster. It rinses off readily and comes back quickly, which makes the answer a regular gentle wash and not a harder one. The same film on glass is explained in why sea-facing windows get dirty so fast.
Sprinkler spots and AC drip marks
Abu Dhabi's tap water is very hard. A sprinkler that wets a wall every day leaves a little limescale each time the sun dries it, and over a summer that becomes a white, rough band along the lowest metre. An AC outlet does the same in a single line. Condensate runs down the same path for months and leaves a streak, often with a dark edge where dust has stuck to the damp.
Fresh marks lift with a cleaner made for mineral deposits. Old ones are bonded to the surface, and the products that dissolve limescale are acids, which mark limestone, marble and some paints. This is why our facade page says that staining and watermarks are treated where the surface allows it. On sound painted render that is usually possible. On soft natural stone the mark may be reduced and not removed.
Put the cause right before the clean, or the mark is back within weeks. Turning a sprinkler head takes two minutes during a garden maintenance visit. A condensate outlet can usually be extended so that it drips clear of the wall, which is a small job for an AC technician or a handyman.
Marks that come from damp: growth and white salts
Two kinds of mark appear only where a wall stays wet. Cleaning removes both for a while. Neither stays away until the water does.
Green and black growth
Algae and mould need moisture and shade. In a dry climate that means particular places: the wall behind a bed that is watered daily, the strip below a dripping tap or a condensate pipe, a shaded corner beside the pool. The growth is green while it is fresh and wet, and it dries to black.
It is treated, not blasted. A careful team applies a product made to kill the growth, leaves it for as long as that product needs and rinses gently. A pressure jet on its own takes the colour off and leaves the growth alive in the pores of the render, so the patch is green again within a season. Force also roughens the surface, and a rougher surface holds more water and more dirt.
If you treat a small patch yourself, follow the label, wear gloves and eye protection, keep the product off the plants and never mix it with another cleaner. Bleach combined with an acid or with ammonia gives off a toxic gas. Then deal with the water: move the dripper line, mend the tap, clear whatever keeps the corner wet. A wall that dries out every day does not grow anything.
Efflorescence: the white crust that grows back
Efflorescence is salt from inside the wall. Water gets into the masonry and dissolves salts in the blocks, the mortar and the render. It travels to the surface and evaporates there, and the salt is left behind as a white, fluffy or crystalline bloom. It shows along the base of a wall, below the coping of a boundary wall and beside cracks. Much of the ground here is salty, and a bed irrigated daily against a wall keeps its foot wet, so the lowest half-metre of a boundary wall is the commonest place to find it.
It is easily confused with sprinkler scale and with chalking paint. Scale is hard and follows the arc of the spray. Chalk is even and is the colour of the paint. Efflorescence is patchy, brushes off as loose crystals and turns up where no sprinkler reaches. Under paint it shows as blisters with white powder behind them.
Brush it off dry with a stiff brush that has no metal bristles. Do not hose it. Water dissolves the salt and carries it back into the wall, and it reappears as the wall dries. Brushing is a tidy-up and not a cure. The bloom returns for as long as water has a way in, so the real job is to find that way: irrigation against the wall, soil or paving banked up against it, a cracked coping that lets water in at the top, or a leaking pipe. The signs of a leak you cannot see are listed in how a hidden water leak is found. A wall painted while it is still damp and salty does not stay painted, because the salts go on arriving behind the new film and push it off.
Rust and irrigation stains
Orange and brown marks have three common sources. Metal fixed to the wall rusts and weeps: brackets for AC units and satellite dishes, light fittings, railings, gate hinges, the screws that hold a sign. Irrigation water can carry iron, and where it hits a wall or the paving every day it leaves an orange-brown fan. And lawn feed that contains iron stains paving and the foot of a wall if the granules are left lying there and get wet.
All three are stains in the surface, not dirt on it, and ordinary washing does little. Rust removers work, but most of them are acids, with the same limit as scale removers: they suit some finishes and damage others. On a painted wall the stain has often dyed the paint film itself. Expect cleaning to reduce a rust mark and sometimes to clear it. Where it has soaked into the paint, the repair is to seal the stain with a suitable primer and repaint that section.
Stop the source first, because a rusting bracket goes on bleeding through new paint. Fixings can be changed for stainless or galvanised ones, and a sprinkler that throws stained water at a wall can be turned, or swapped for a dripper at the roots.
Rust that comes out of the wall
One kind of rust stain is not a cleaning matter at all. A brown streak that runs from a crack in a concrete column, a beam, a balcony edge or a boundary-wall post can mean that the steel inside is corroding and swelling, especially if the surface is bulging or a piece of concrete has come loose. Do not have it washed or painted over. Show it to a building contractor or a structural engineer, and tell the landlord if you rent.
When the paint itself has failed
Paint is a thin film with a working life, and strong sun, heat and salt shorten it. These are the signs that the job is no longer cleaning.
Chalking and fading
Chalking is the powder from the hand test. The film is thinning from the outside, and each wash takes a little more of it. Fading goes with it: the colour is paler where the sun is strongest, and darker in the shape of whatever used to shade the wall. Neither is dirt, so a facade clean leaves a chalky, faded wall clean, chalky and faded. Sometimes it looks worse, because the dust was hiding the unevenness.
The cure is a repaint, and the chalk decides how it is done. New paint laid over powder sticks to the powder and comes off with it. The wall is washed down, left to dry and given a primer made to bind a chalky surface before the finish coats go on.
Peeling, blistering and flaking
Paint that lifts in sheets, bubbles or flakes has lost its bond. The usual reasons are water behind the film, salts pushing from inside, or an earlier coat put on over dust or chalk. Painting over it gives a new coat that fails along the same edges.
The order is fixed: find and stop the moisture, let the wall dry, scrape back to paint that is firmly attached, fill and prime, then paint. The same reasoning for stains indoors is set out in which to fix first: the leak, the gypsum or the paint.
Cracks
Hairline cracks in render are common and are mostly a surface matter. They become a problem when water gets into them, which shows as a dark line along the crack after washing, or as dirt and growth following it. They are filled and painted over as part of a repaint. A crack you could slide a coin into, one that is wider at one end, one that runs in steps through the blockwork or one that keeps growing should be seen by a building contractor before anyone decorates over it.
What an exterior repaint involves, and what we have published
An exterior repaint is mostly preparation: washing, drying, scraping, filling and priming, and only then the coats, with the windows, the paving and the plants protected throughout. The paint is a masonry paint made for sun and weather. Interior paint is not a substitute, for the reasons given in choosing wall paint for an Abu Dhabi home. The upper walls need access equipment, which makes the outside of a two-storey villa a different scale of job from a room.
Our wall painting service is published as interior work: preparation and crack filling, touch-ups, accent walls and full repaints of apartments and villas, quoted by wall area, paint type and condition. We have not published exterior painting. If your job is a house wall, a boundary wall or a balcony, describe it and send photos when you book, and we tell you before any visit whether it is something we can take on.
The three jobs side by side
Once the fault is identified the choice is usually plain. The times given for the two cleaning jobs are the ones on our service pages.
| Job | What it deals with | Where it stops | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Facade cleaning | Dust and salt film, drip marks, watermarks and growth on reachable walls | Faded or failed paint; walls above safe reach | 1–3 hours a wall section; half a day to a day for a villa |
| Pressure washing | Oil, tyre marks and ground-in grime on driveways, paths and paved yards | Weak paint, soft stone, render and glass | 1–2 hours for a standard villa driveway |
| Repainting | Chalking, fading, peeling and stains that have dyed the paint | A wall that is still damp, salty or dirty | Days, with drying time between stages |
Why a pressure washer is not the quick answer for walls
It is tempting to treat a wall as more driveway. A jet strong enough to clean concrete paving does four things to a house wall. It strips paint that was only weakly attached, in ragged patches. It cuts visible lines into render and soft stone wherever the nozzle passed too close. It drives water into cracks, behind cladding, past window seals and into outdoor sockets and light fittings. And it cleans in stripes, so the wall dries looking like a mown lawn.
Walls are cleaned with volume, the right cleaner and time, not with force. A pressure machine may still be the tool, with a wide spray and the lance held well back, but that is a judgement made surface by surface by the person holding it. Our pressure washing service sets the pressure by the surface even on the ground, to protect painted surfaces and older tiles. Which paving takes a full wash and which does not is covered in pressure washing a driveway or yard.
If you are still unsure, clean first
A wash is the first stage of any repaint, so cleaning a doubtful wall is rarely money wasted. Once the wall is clean and dry you can see what the dust was hiding and decide about paint with the facts in front of you. The exception is paint that failed the tape test. Washing it will leave bare patches, and you should expect to paint soon afterwards.
If a wall is certainly going to be repainted, tell the cleaning team. It still has to be washed, but careful stain treatment on a surface that is about to be primed and covered is effort better spent on the walls that are staying as they are.
What each wall finish tolerates
A villa is rarely one material. The front may be painted render with a stone surround at the door, moulded decoration at the roofline, a timber door and a metal gate. Each takes cleaning differently, which is why a facade is assessed before a method is chosen.
| Finish | Suits | Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Painted render in sound condition | Low-pressure wash, mild cleaner, soft brush | A close jet; scouring pads |
| Textured or sprayed coating | Soaking, a cleaner with time to work, gentle rinse | Force, which knocks the texture off |
| Limestone, sandstone and travertine | Water, a neutral cleaner, a soft brush | Acid scale and rust removers; a close jet |
| Marble and polished stone | Neutral cleaner and a soft cloth | Any acid, which dulls the polish |
| Moulded cornices, columns and screens | Soft brush and a gentle rinse | Pressure on thin edges and joints |
| Metal cladding panels and coated gates | Mild soapy water and a soft cloth | Abrasives, solvents, a jet at the joints |
| Timber doors and pergolas | A damp cloth, dried afterwards | Soaking and pressure, which raise the grain |
What to say about your own walls
If you know what a finish is, say so. If you do not, a close photo usually settles it. Our terms ask customers to tell us about fragile surfaces and specialist materials before work begins, and they are plain about limits: complete removal of permanent stains and aged marks cannot be promised, and neither can the restoration of a surface that is damaged or deteriorated. A facade clean returns a sound wall to its real colour. It does not make a worn wall new.
If the house needs more than one job: the order
Each of these jobs puts dirt, water or dust onto the next surface down, so the order saves doing anything twice. Hedge cutting and mowing come before all of it, because they throw clippings and dust at clean walls. The full sequence for the outside of a house, garden and pool included, is in the villa outdoor season checklist.
- Stop the causes. Turn the sprinklers, extend the AC outlets, mend the dripping tap and replace rusting fixings.
- Brush off efflorescence and loose flakes dry, and sweep them up, so that they are not washed into the wall or across the paving.
- Wash the walls from the top down at low pressure. Dirty water runs onto whatever is below.
- Let the walls dry, then look again. Clean, dry walls show which ones truly need paint.
- Repair: cracks filled, loose render and flaking paint taken back, stains sealed.
- Paint the walls that need it, a whole elevation at a time.
- Pressure wash the driveway and the paving. They have collected the run-off, the scrapings and the odd drip of paint, so they come after the walls.
- Clean the glass last. Every earlier step has put dust or spray on it.
Height, community rules and rented villas
How far up a cleaning team goes
Our teams carry a step ladder. Tall ladders and scaffolding are not part of their equipment. Facade cleaning therefore covers what can be reached from the ground and from a step ladder on firm, level ground: ground-floor walls, the entrance and its surround, boundary walls and the lower floors of a low-rise building. A section that cannot be reached safely is left out by default and is never attempted on the day.
On a single-storey wing or a boundary wall that is the whole job. On a tall, plain two-storey elevation it is not, and a wall washed only as far as the reach allows can show a line where the work stopped. Photograph anything higher and describe it when you book, and we confirm beforehand what can be done. Work that needs a tall ladder, a platform, scaffolding or rope access belongs to a company whose trade is access. Where the line falls is set out in what a cleaning team can safely reach.
Community rules
Many villa communities have their own rules for the outside of a home: which colours may be used, whether equipment such as scaffolding needs approval, and when wet or noisy work may be done. They differ from one community to the next, and we do not list them here. Ask your community management before you change a colour or bring in access equipment.
If you rent
Washing a wall is cleaning. Repainting it, replacing fixings or repairing render changes the property, and it is normally the owner's decision. Read the maintenance clause of the tenancy contract, then send the landlord or the agent your photos and the result of the hand test in writing.
Time, price and what to send
None of the three jobs has a list price, because the same words cover very different amounts of work. Facade cleaning is quoted by the size of the facade, its height and the access, and pressure washing by surface area, staining and access. Painting is quoted by wall area, paint type and condition. Each is priced from photos, with a free inspection for larger jobs in every area we serve, and the price is confirmed before work starts.
Once the price is agreed you pay by card from My bookings on this website. Jobs of AED 1,000 or more take a 30% advance by that link, and the balance is paid by link when the work is finished. Every price includes VAT. Facade cleaning and pressure washing are often booked together, which puts the walls and the paving on one visit in the right order.
Glass is the exception. Window cleaning is booked by the hour from the same list as home cleaning, so three hours by one cleaner is AED 90 with your own products and AED 105 with ours. Every visit length is on the pricing page.
What to send for an accurate price
Send what the three checks showed, with photos taken in daylight.
- A wide photo of each side of the house, with a door or a person in it for scale.
- A close photo of each kind of mark, and of your washed test patch once it has dried.
- What the hand test left on your palm, wall by wall.
- The finish of each wall, its height, and what is at its foot: paving, planting, a pool or a slope.
- Where the outdoor tap is, and where the water will run to.
- Anything already loose or damaged, and any building work near you.
On the day, and before the team leaves
Clear furniture and pots from the foot of each wall, shut the windows and point out the stains that bother you most. The job ends with a check for an even finish before it is signed off, and the team walks the cleaned walls with you from the ground. Look at the edges, the window frames and the lower sections, which take the most dust and splash. A wet wall flatters, so if a patch looks different once everything has dried, tell us straight away, with a photo.
How to photograph and measure any job so that the first price is the final one is in how to get an accurate quote.
Keeping a cleaned or painted wall from going back
Villa facades are usually cleaned once or twice a year, and homes on the desert edge or the seafront often need it after the sandstorm season and again after the humid months. Gentle washing on that rhythm is kinder to paint than one aggressive clean every few years. The habits below stretch the interval.
- Run each irrigation zone once a month while you watch, and turn back any head that has started to hit a wall.
- Keep soil, mulch and planting a little away from the foot of the wall, and water beside it with drippers, not sprays.
- Brush dust off sills and ledges when you sweep the terrace. Less dust on a ledge means fainter stripes after the next rain or heavy dew.
- Deal with a new mark while it is new. A rust weep or a green patch that is a month old cleans off. One that is three summers old has become part of the wall.
Common questions
Can the stains simply be painted over?
Not with any hope of it lasting. Paint does not grip dust, salt or chalk. Rust and water stains bleed through ordinary paint unless they are sealed first. Growth carries on under the new film, and efflorescence pushes it off. Every one of these has to be cleaned or treated, and its cause stopped, before the first coat.
Can one wall be repainted, or does it have to be the whole house?
One wall is possible if it is painted from corner to corner. Fresh paint next to weathered paint of the same colour shows as a patch, because the old paint has faded. A corner or a change of plane hides the difference, which is why painters work in whole elevations. The front and the sunny sides often need paint years before the shaded side does.
How soon after washing can a wall be painted?
When it is dry all the way through, not only on the surface. Render takes in water during a wash and gives it up slowly. In warm, dry weather that is a matter of days, not hours, and a wall with a history of damp needs longer. The painter makes the call, and a careful one will not be hurried.
I have a small pressure washer at home. Can I use it on the walls?
On bare paving, yes, with care. On the house walls, a garden hose, a soft long-handled brush and a bucket of mild soapy water do less harm and often do as good a job on dust. If you do use the machine, keep to its widest spray, stand well back, stay off the ladder, and keep the jet away from windows, sockets, lights, cracks and any paint that failed the tape test.
When is the right time of year?
The cooler months. On a scorching wall, cleaners dry before they have worked and leave marks of their own, and paint dries too fast to form a good film. Painting and exterior washing are both on the cooler-months list in a home maintenance calendar for Abu Dhabi.
Do the checks, then book the right job
Start with the side of the house that visitors see, and with the walls that passed the patch test. They give the most change for the least work, and once they are clean the walls that need paint are easy to pick out.
Our facade cleaning page lists what is included and what to send for a price. Book online, email the photos to info@ihrdreamcleaning.com, and we confirm what can be reached, the method for your finish and the price before anyone comes. We work every day from 8 AM – 8 PM.
Services in this article
Read more
- Specialist cleaningPressure Washing a Driveway or Yard: Oil Stains, Sand and Surfaces You Should Not Blast
- Specialist cleaningHow to Clean a Crystal Chandelier Safely, and When Not to Try
- Specialist cleaningGetting a Villa Ready for Outdoor Season: A Checklist for Windows, Facade, Driveway, Garden and Pool
