How Much Does a Bathroom Renovation Cost?

The three parts of any bathroom price

Every bathroom quote is labour, materials and the awkward bits in between. Labour is the biggest and most stable element: strip out, first fix plumbing, boarding, tanking, tiling, second fix, sealing and making good. Materials swing wildly depending on your taste. The awkward bits, waste removal, replastering a wall that turned out to be blown, boxing in a soil pipe, are where quotes differ most between contractors.

A contractor who has not allowed for the awkward bits is not cheaper. They are just telling you about the cost later.

• Labour: typically the largest single share of the total
• Sanitaryware and tiles: entirely your choice, entirely your budget
• Waterproofing and substrate: small cost, biggest consequence if skipped
• Making good and waste: always present, often omitted from cheap quotes

What pushes a bathroom price up

Moving the toilet is the single most expensive decision in most bathrooms, because the soil connection dictates the floor build-up and often the layout of everything else. After that: level-access wet rooms, large-format tiles that need a dead flat substrate, underfloor heating, and anything that involves opening up a structural wall.

• Relocating the WC or soil connection
• Converting to a level-access wet room
• Large-format or natural stone tiling
• Underfloor heating and a new floor build-up
• Discovering rot or failed joists once the floor is up

Where you can sensibly save

Keep the layout. Choose a good mid-range suite rather than a designer one. Use a standard tile size in a simple pattern. Keep the shower enclosure rectangular. None of these compromise the quality of the finished room, and together they can take a substantial slice off the total.

What you should never economise on is the waterproofing, the shower valve and the tiling labour. Those three are what decides whether the room is still sound in ten years.

Getting a price you can trust

Ask for the quote broken down by stage rather than as one figure. A staged breakdown lets you compare contractors honestly, and lets you adjust the specification without starting again. We quote every bathroom that way as standard.