Cost Of A New Bathroom
So what’s the rough cost of a new bathroom? A question I’m often asked over the phone or face-to-face at the initial enquiry stage. Potential customers often want some idea of the rough cost of a new bathroom without getting into the detail of a full survey, and having to make decisions about which bathroom suite, or the type of tiles.
My response, more often than not is – it depends. The cost of a new bathroom depends on what is meant by a “new bathroom”. Is it just changing the suite, leaving everything else in place. Or does it mean a complete strip-out of everything, back to bare-brick in places and start again.
But to give people some idea I usually summarise it like this.
Cheapest New Bathroom
I think the cheapest new bathroom I’ve fitted cost in total about £1,000. A very small room with standard bath, basin and toilet, and very little tiling. The customer chose a cheap suite, on a special offer, and very ordinary but adequate taps. the radiator wasn’t replaced, and nothing was moved around. Vinyl was laid on the floor, and the customer decided to paint the plain walls themselves. Materials cost about £500 and the labour was something similar.
Moving up the scale a bit, its quite easy to spend £500 on a suite. Add in some fancy taps, replace the radiator with a towel rail and tile more of the room, and materials will soon be up to £1,000. The labour and miscellaneous plumbing fittings will come to a similar amount and the total cost of the new bathroom will be around the £2,000 mark.
Power Showers
For many of my customers, one of the main reasons for a new bathroom installation is to change the shower. Lots of the showers fitted ten to fifteen years ago are not very powerful compared with modern showers and this can be the most imortant thing to improve. So when the cost of supplying and fitting a new shower valve, plus perhaps a new shower enclosure, is added onto the £2,000 ish bathroom, the total cost can soon start to approach £3,000, or more.
In reality many of the bathrooms installations I take on, end up with a total price of between £3,000 and £4,000. The exact figure will always depend on the price of the suite, tiles, shower, etc. Not that price is always an indicator of quality. I’ve fitted some very expensive toilets and shower doors that work no better than, and sometimes not as well as, cheaper equivalents.
At the top end of the new bathrooms I’ve fitted, are the larger rooms which will have an expensive suite, including a large steel bath, or perhaps a whirlpool, as well as a big shower enclosure. The shower valve will be top of the range, sometimes remote controlled – yes, they do exist! The shower also may be fitted with a shower pump to achieve a high flowrate. In addition the room could be fully tiled, including the floor, with the basin or bath moved to a new position, and the lighting could be replaced. In these cases, the price for the finished room could be £5,000 – £7,000 or more.
Independent Bathroom Fitter
The good news is that an independent bathroom fitter will usually be better value than the big bathroom showrooms, like the now defunct Dolphin Bathrooms. I don’t have anything like the overheads to pay for, compared with the bathroom showrooms, and because I’m involved from survey to the end of the project, and do nearly all the work myself, there is continuity. My prices are usually about two-thirds of the prices quoted by the big companies.
I don’t often supply the cheapest estimate as I’m more interested in quality, without going “over the top”. And judging by the number of customers who have had me back to refit a second bathroom, or referred me to their friends and neighbours, I must be getting my prices right most of the time.
So there you have it.
What’s the cost of a new bathroom?
It depends….