Ask five bathroom companies what a new bathroom costs and you will get five versions of “it depends on what you want.”
Which is true, and completely useless if you are sitting at the kitchen table trying to work out whether you can afford this year or need to wait until next.
So here are actual numbers. Not a range so wide it means nothing. What we charge, what the trades around Hertfordshire charge, where the money goes, and what makes one quote come in thousands higher than another for what looks like the same room.
Prices are for a standard three-piece family bathroom, roughly 2.2m x 1.7m, first floor, in a Hertfordshire house. Adjust up for anything bigger or anything unusual.
The short version
Type of job | Typical all-in cost |
|---|---|
Straight swap, same layout, budget fittings | £6,500 – £8,500 |
Full refit, same layout, mid-range fittings | £9,000 – £13,000 |
Full refit with layout changes or a wetroom | £13,000 – £18,000 |
High-spec, large room, premium brassware and stone | £18,000+ |
Most of the bathrooms we do in Harpenden and St Albans land somewhere in that middle band. If a quote comes in a long way under it, that is not automatically bad, but you should find out what has been left out before you sign anything.
Where the money actually goes
Here is a mid-range job broken down. This is the part nobody publishes.
Item | Typical cost |
|---|---|
Strip out and disposal | £450 – £700 |
First fix plumbing (pipework, waste runs) | £900 – £1,400 |
Electrics (fan, lighting, shaver point, certification) | £500 – £900 |
Boarding and tanking the wet areas | £600 – £1,000 |
Floor preparation or replacement boards | £300 – £900 |
Tiling labour | £1,400 – £2,600 |
Second fix plumbing and fitting | £900 – £1,400 |
Plastering and making good | £400 – £700 |
Sanitaryware (bath, WC, basin, taps, shower) | £1,200 – £3,500 |
Tiles | £600 – £2,000 |
Sundries (adhesive, grout, sealant, fixings, waste) | £350 – £600 |
Labour is usually somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of the total. That catches people out, because it is easy to price up the bath and the tiles online and assume you are most of the way there. You are not. You are about a third of the way there.
The extras that turn a £10,000 job into a £14,000 job
None of these are anybody being greedy. They are the things you cannot see until the room is open, or the things people forget to factor in.
Moving the soil pipe. Shifting a WC more than a short distance means new waste runs, often through joists, sometimes with a boxed section you did not want. Add £600 to £1,500 depending on the route.
Floor repairs. Old chipboard under a bath is frequently soft. Replacing boards is manageable. Repairing a joist means exposing more floor and, occasionally, making good the ceiling below. Anywhere from £300 to well over £1,000.
Going from bath to wetroom. A proper wetroom needs a formed floor, a level drain, and full tanking. It is a different job to fitting a tray, and it is typically £1,500 to £3,000 more.
Large format tiles. A 1200 x 600 porcelain looks superb and costs noticeably more to fit than a 300 x 600. They need flatter walls, more preparation, and two people to handle. Expect around 30 to 40 percent more on tiling labour.
Underfloor heating. Electric mat, thermostat and the extra circuit comes in around £700 to £1,200 fitted for a room this size. Worth it in a north-facing bathroom, honestly optional otherwise.
Old pipework. Lead, or badly corroded copper, or a system that has been extended six times since 1978. Sometimes we find it, sometimes we do not. We flag it at survey where we can see it, but nobody can see inside a wall.
Why two quotes for the same bathroom differ by £4,000
This is the question we get most, and there are usually four reasons.
One includes things the other does not. Waste disposal, certification for the electrics, making good the ceiling below, painting. Ask both quotes what happens to the rubbish and who signs off the electrical work.
One has priced tanking and one has not. Tiles stuck to plasterboard is cheaper on day one. It is the reason we open up so many showers a decade later and find the board has turned to pulp.
Different sanitaryware. A £180 shower valve and a £600 shower valve look broadly similar in a photo. They do not behave the same after five years of Hertfordshire water, which is hard enough here to be a genuine factor.
One is a fitter and one is a company. A sole trader with a mate who tiles will usually be cheaper than a firm carrying insurance, guarantees, and someone who answers the phone when something goes wrong in year two. Both are legitimate. Just know which one you are buying.
How long you are without the bathroom
Cost and time run together, so it is worth saying. A straight refit with no layout change is usually eight to twelve working days. Layout changes or a wetroom, two to three weeks. Anyone promising a full bathroom in four days is either skipping the drying times or has a very different definition of finished.
If it is your only bathroom, factor that in before you factor in the tiles.
What we would tell a friend
If your budget is under £7,000, do not try to force a full refit into it. Do a good quality straight swap, keep the layout, spend the money on the bits you touch every day – the shower valve, the taps, the flooring – and leave the walls alone.
If you are between £9,000 and £13,000, you can have a genuinely good bathroom that will still look right in fifteen years. That is the sweet spot and it is where most of our work sits.
Above that, you are paying for space, stone, and brassware. All perfectly nice things. None of them make the room more waterproof than the tanking underneath them.
Getting a real number for your room
Every figure above is a starting point. The only way to know what your bathroom costs is for someone to stand in it, look at the floor, look at where the soil pipe runs, and tell you honestly.
We do that free across Harpenden, St Albans and the surrounding villages. No obligation, and we will tell you if we think you would be better off doing something smaller than what you asked for.
How much does a new bathroom cost in Hertfordshire?
A full refit with mid-range fittings typically costs between £9,000 and £13,000 for a standard family bathroom. A straight swap keeping the same layout starts around £6,500, and a wetroom or a layout change usually pushes the figure past £13,000.
How long does a bathroom refit take?
Eight to twelve working days for a straight refit with no layout change, and two to three weeks if the layout moves or you are having a wetroom formed.
Why is one bathroom quote so much cheaper than another?
Usually because it excludes something – waste disposal, electrical certification, tanking, or making good afterwards. Ask each quote to confirm what is included before comparing the totals.
