We have determined distances to 100 galactic classical Cepheids on a homogeneous system with an improved version of the surface brightness technique, using the extensive northern Cepheid observations of Moffett and Barnes, and the southern Cepheid observations of Gieren. The period-luminosity relations in the V bandpass obtained for the northern and southern Cepheid samples are found consistent, and the absolute magnitudes have been combined into a two-hemisphere PL(V) relation which is M V =−1.371−2.986 log P. ±0.095±0.094 This is the currently most precise Cepheid PL(V) relation from the surface brightness technique