How we spec a bathroom renovation
10% to book. After that you pay for your materials once they are in your house, and for the work once it is finished.
| Spec | What it is | Room it suits |
|---|---|---|
| Essential | A clean, well-built family bathroom | Rooms up to 2.5m × 2.2m |
| Premium | Most popular — the walk-in shower upgrade | Rooms up to 3m × 2.5m |
| Spa | Larger rooms and en-suite pairs | Rooms up to 4m × 3m, or a bathroom plus one small en-suite |
Every spec is quoted as one figure covering fixtures, labour, waste removal and VAT, once we have seen the room. See exactly what is in each spec.
Where the money actually goes
Approximate proportions of a typical fitted price. Useful mainly for spotting what a cheaper quote has left out.
- Labour≈ 45%
- Five working days of one specialist doing plumbing, tiling, electrics and making-good. The single biggest line, and the one cheap quotes shrink by rushing.
- Fixtures and sanitaryware≈ 25%
- Bath or shower tray, screen, basin, vanity, WC, taps and towel rail. Where the tier differences mostly live.
- Tiling and flooring≈ 15%
- Tiles, adhesive, grout, tanking and the floor. Large-format porcelain costs more to buy and considerably more to lay.
- Making-good and decorating≈ 10%
- Plastering, boxing-in, repainting, new extractor. Almost always excluded from a cheap quote and almost always needed.
- Waste removal and materials run≈ 5%
- Skip or grab hire, tip runs, sundries. Small, but it is real money and it should not appear as a surprise at the end.
How much does a walk-in shower cost?
A walk-in shower as part of a full bathroom is the step from our Essential spec to Premium. As a standalone job in an otherwise sound bathroom it is a two to three day piece of work, and what it costs turns almost entirely on the tray size and whether the wall needs tanking.
The cost is not the shower. It is the floor. A proper walk-in needs the wet area tanked, the tray set dead level into the floor, and the waste re-routed. On a suspended timber floor in a Victorian terrace that is a day of work before a single tile goes on. It is the reason we price a walk-in at the survey and not over the phone. We look under the floor first, and only then does a number go on the contract, where it stops moving.
Where a quote comes in dramatically cheaper, it is usually a shower tray sat on top of the existing floor with a screen against it. That works, it is cheaper, and it does not look like the photographs.
Bathroom installation cost — labour versus materials
Roughly 45% of a bathroom price is labour and 25% is the fixtures. That ratio surprises people, because the suite is the part you can see in a showroom and the five days of work is the part you cannot.
It is also why supplying your own fixtures saves less than you would expect. We will happily fit a suite you have bought and take it off the fixed price, but you are removing a quarter of the cost, not half — and you are taking on the risk that something arrives damaged or does not fit, which is a delay you now own rather than us.
Day-rate labour is where budgets die. A cheap day rate is still cheap on day nine, and you are the one paying for day nine. A fixed price for the whole room moves that risk to us, which is the entire point of quoting it that way.
Small bathroom renovation cost
A small bathroom is not much cheaper than an average one, and it is worth knowing that before you get three quotes and assume the low one understood the job.
The reason is that the work barely changes. A 1.7m × 2m room still needs the same strip-out, the same first-fix plumbing, the same electrics, the same tanking, the same making-good and the same five days. You save on tiles and on the size of the shower tray. That is genuinely about it — call it 10 to 15% off a standard room, not 40%.
Small rooms can actually cost more to do well, because every fitting has to be chosen to work in the space and there is nowhere to hide a bad decision. Wall-hung sanitaryware and a concealed cistern buy back floor space, and they sit in our Spa spec rather than the entry one.
Cost to replace a bath with a walk-in shower
Two to three working days as a standalone job. It is one of the changes people ask about most, usually once their knees have made the decision for them.
The variables are the floor and the waste. Baths sit in a corner with the waste at one end; a walk-in tray needs the waste roughly central, which means lifting floorboards and re-running pipework. If the bathroom is upstairs and the ceiling below is Artexed or lath and plaster, factor in making that good too.
One thing worth thinking about before you commit: if your house has only one bathroom, removing the only bath can knock value off it with family buyers. It is your house and your knees — but an estate agent will mention it, so it is better to hear it from us first.
How long does a bathroom renovation take?
Five working days for a standard family bathroom — strip-out Monday, handover Friday. Larger spa-spec rooms with a freestanding bath and a separate shower take seven to eight.
That assumes one specialist on site every day rather than a plumber for two days, then a wait for the tiler, then a wait for the electrician. The gaps between trades are what turn a five-day job into a five-week one, and they are the reason we run one person through the whole room.
Your finish date goes on the contract, and once we start we're on site every working day until it's done. That's also why we turn work down when the diary's full rather than squeezing it in and hoping.
Want the number for your room, not the average?
We survey for free, in your home, and put one written fixed price in front of you. No showroom visit and no sales appointment.
Book a free survey