With my taller-growing hybrid tea varieties, I take off 1', 2', or even 3' when deadheading, and have been doing so for decades. Also the number of leaflets makes no difference.

Here is a pruning rule you can believe in: If the plant is smaller than you like, just remove the flower, no leaves. If it is taller than you like, take off enough to suit yourself.

What Michael said. Besides, even if it was injurious to them, the safety of people walking past your driveway and your and your family's safety backing from your drive are far more important than any plant of any kind. Sometimes, you just have to do what you have to do, whether it's the best thing for a plant or not. Kim

Ok, thanks! Of course, Kim, safety first.

I've found the garden looks a lot better for a lot longer in our long growing season when the roses are kept lower. I take off 3 or 4 feet on some of them. It can potentially slow repeat down, but not by much.

You can also try reducing irrigation a bit. If they are really growing ridiculously you might be able to save a little on your water bill by cutting back on the water.

I dead head deep to keep certain ones in shape all the time. I've never noticed it harming them in any way. On the contrary, those seem to be the ones that just grow right back up there!

The local Rose Society here actively encourages "summer pruning" which is kind of an extended deadheading at the end of summer to get the roses into shape for autumn shows. Our summer tends to come in two parts; the nice warm weather that everyone, including the roses, loves..then the awful baking heat part where everything just shuts down for a month or so. A lot of the garden can do with a bit of trimming back after that, before we get back to the more temperate autumn weather, when the roses start growing again. I've also seen summer pruning recommended at several sources for the Austin Roses to encourage repeat. So if you prune to protect your driveway, you may get a really nice show out of it.

Another consideration is to not continue deadheading - or to do any pruning, - too far into the season. Modern roses need time to enter what is called "quiescence". For other plants and those roses that do go into a true dormancy, quiescence is merely the first stage toward a dormant state. However, modern repeating roses never do that. So they need an adaptation time to prepare for the cold weather, and you want to keep new growth to a minimum.

A rule of thumb is to take the average date of first autumn frost -very easy to find on the web - and go back about 30 days. Conservatively, repeating roses should not be deadheaded after that date.

Great info, everyone! Thank you all.

When you are deadheading you're pruning. At some point you need to sacrifice good growth to keep the rose manageable. Cut those huge candelabras way down unless you want a tall skinny tree.

Well, while I will obviously defer to the experts in roses, I must jump in and say that this is a slightly simplified explanation and there are other factors to be considered, at least regarding woody growth generally. Although I am a dimwit regarding rose pruning (I admit, I only do it if a plant is falling over), I do know that loosely speaking , growth always follows the knife.....so while a prune, especially a hard prune, will keep a plant fairly compact, this is a short lived effect and the plant will almost certainly react by pushing out insanely vigorous (but functionally impaired) growth - ie.blind shoots, water stems and so on. I do a lot of tree pruning and it always feel utterly counter-intuitive that when attempting to rebalance a tree which has grown lopsided, it is necessary to actually cut even more from the diminished side. leaving it looking really iffy. Of course, there are many considerations such as innate vigour (genetics), climate conditions, timing of reduction and so on......but I have observed roses really ramp into growth after a sharp cutback - but not producing flowering canes.

That is true, Campanula, pruning usually always stimulates new growth. That is why dead heading deep or summer pruning helps to keep them in shape. If you just snip off to that first 5 leaf set that plant is going to start to grow and soon will be larger than life. By cutting deeper you can maintain a more manageable size. I hate it when I have to use a step ladder to see my blooms!