Fences are the surface where pressure washer damage is most common, because a fence is thin softwood, often weathered, and people treat it like concrete. Done carelessly you end up with a furred, fuzzy fence that looks worse than the gray one you started with.
Check the fence first
Push each panel. If the posts move, the boards are soft, or there is visible rot at ground level, pressure will make it worse rather than better — and a jet will go straight through a soft board.
Repair or replace first. A pressure washer is a cleaning tool, not a diagnostic one, though it will certainly find every weakness.
The technique that avoids furring
White 40-degree tip. Nothing narrower, ever. A 25-degree tip on softwood fencing will leave marks.
A foot or more away, consistently. Distance is your real control.
Always moving, along the grain. Working across the boards, or hesitating, raises the grain and leaves a pattern that only sanding removes — and nobody sands a fence.
Let the cleaner work. On a badly grayed or mossy fence the answer is a wood cleaner and a brush, not more pressure. A rotary brush attachment is genuinely the better tool here.
Do you need to pressure wash before staining?
You need the fence clean and dry. Pressure washing is one way to get there and not the only one, and on a fence it carries real risk of furring the timber, which then absorbs stain unevenly.
So the honest answer: if the fence has green growth, black mildew or a chalky gray layer, clean it — and prefer a cleaner plus a brush with a gentle rinse over an aggressive wash. If it is simply dusty, a hose and a brush will do, and you can stain sooner.
The fuller discussion, including drying times and how to tell when timber is ready, is in pressure washing before staining a deck — the principles are identical.
Both sides, and the neighbor
A fence has two faces and run-off goes through it. Pre-wet planting on both sides, move anything stored against it, and if the fence is shared, tell the neighbor before you start spraying cleaner through it onto their borders.
If their side is planted up to the fence, that is a good reason to use an oxygenated cleaner rather than anything stronger — see bleach and pressure washers for why that matters.
The lower-effort alternative
For a fence in permanent shade that goes green every year, a no-rinse outdoor treatment sprayed on and left is often less total work than washing it annually, and it carries no risk of furring the timber at all. It is slow — weeks, not minutes — and for a back fence nobody is in a hurry.
That approach is covered in soft wash vs pressure wash.
