Bathroom Remodel Cost Calculator

The refresh is a quarter of the price and often the right answer

Nobody selling a bathroom remodel opens with this, so:

A cosmetic refresh keeps the walls closed and the tub where it is. New toilet, new faucet and vanity top, new light and mirror, new fan, fresh paint, floor tile, and the tub and wall tile either refinished or regrouted. It takes a few days and needs no permit, no waterproofing and no inspection.

A full gut takes everything back to the studs. New rough plumbing, new wiring, a new waterproofed shower, tile to the floor and the surround, a full fixture set. Two to four weeks.

These are different jobs, not two prices for the same one. The refresh is the right answer when the tub is sound, the tile is intact and the layout works — which is a lot of bathrooms. It becomes the wrong answer the moment there is any sign of water behind the tile, because then the walls have to come off whatever you had planned.

Do not move the toilet

This is the single largest avoidable cost on the page.

Keeping all three drains — toilet, sink, shower — where they are means the floor never comes up. Moving the vanity or the shower within the room means re-running their drains, which is real work but contained: 18% more.

Moving the toilet means opening the floor, cutting in a new three-inch drain at a proper fall, finding a vent for it, and getting it inspected. On a concrete slab it means cutting and re-pouring the slab. That is 35% more on the whole job, for a change that looks minor on a floor plan.

It is sometimes worth it — a badly laid out bathroom is badly laid out for thirty years. But it should be a decision made knowing it costs three thousand dollars on a ten thousand dollar job, not a line somebody adds because the drawing looked better.

Budget for what is behind the tile

The most common surprise in a bathroom is a shower pan that has been leaking quietly for years. By the time it shows, the subfloor has gone and sometimes a joist with it.

Signs worth looking for now, before you ask for quotes:

• The floor gives underfoot near the shower or the toilet.
• A stain on the ceiling of the room below.
• Grout that keeps cracking in the same place — usually movement under the tile.
• A toilet that rocks, which means the flange, the subfloor, or both.
• Tile that sounds hollow when tapped.

If any of those are present, assume the subfloor at least. Replacing it adds about 12%; framing repairs about 28%.

And regardless: hold back 10 to 15% as a contingency. Not as a guess about this contractor's honesty, but because a bathroom is the room most likely to be hiding something and the one where the walls have to come off to find out. A remodel that comes in on budget with the contingency unspent is a good outcome; one that has no contingency and finds rot turns into an argument.

How this number is built

Worth saying, because remodel pricing is usually a square-foot rate somebody made up.

The labor here is priced from the residential remodelers wage — the Bureau of Labor Statistics classification for exactly this trade — rather than from a plumber's or a tiler's rate. That is the right choice because a remodel is one general contractor coordinating subs and carrying a crew, and a large share of what you pay for is the coordination itself: the sequence, the three inspections, the days when two trades cannot both be in a 40 square foot room.

The materials are the actual list — fixtures, tile, cement board, waterproofing, rough plumbing, wiring, paint, trim — priced from shelf and supply house prices, the same way every other page on this site is.

For a mid-range 40 sq ft gut at $10,400:

One honest caveat. This estimate has a wider real spread than anything else on this site, because a bathroom is a dozen decisions rather than one measurement. A vanity can be $450 or $3,000. Treat the figure as the middle of a sensible range for the grade you picked, not as a quote.

The timeline, and losing the bathroom

• Cosmetic refresh: three to five days.
• Mid-range gut: two to three weeks.
• High-end gut: three to five weeks, often longer if anything is on order.

What makes it longer than the work: the inspection sequence. Rough plumbing and electrical have to be inspected before the walls close, which means a scheduled visit and often a day lost waiting for it. Then tile, then final. A delay at any inspection stops everything.

What actually goes wrong on the schedule is almost always a decision that had not been made — a tile not chosen, a vanity on a six-week lead time, a glass enclosure that cannot be templated until the tile is in and then takes two weeks to make. Choose everything before demolition starts. All of it. The contractor will ask, and the honest ones will refuse to start until you have.

And plan for the household: if this is the only bathroom, work out where people are washing for three weeks before the work begins rather than during it.

What is worth the money and what is not

Worth it:

• Waterproofing done properly. A sheet or liquid membrane behind the tile, not just cement board. This is the difference between a shower that lasts twenty years and one that rots the floor in eight, and it is invisible the day it finishes.
• The exhaust fan, sized for the room and vented outside rather than into the attic. A bathroom without working ventilation destroys its own finishes.
• Good valve bodies. The trim is cosmetic and swappable; the valve inside the wall is not, and replacing one means opening the tile.
• Blocking for grab bars, even if you do not want them now. It costs almost nothing while the walls are open and a fortune afterwards.

Less often worth it:

• A tub you will not use. In a single-bathroom house keep a tub for resale. In a house with another tub, a bigger shower is what people actually use.
• Heated floors in a small bathroom, which add real cost for a few minutes of pleasure a day. Pleasant, genuinely; just know it is a comfort purchase.
• A frameless enclosure in a bathroom whose walls are not plumb, where it will cost more again to make it fit.

On resale: a mid-range bathroom remodel recoups roughly 60 to 70% of its cost, and that is one of the better figures in remodeling. A high-end one recoups less in percentage terms. Neither is an investment — a dated bathroom depresses offers out of proportion to its condition, so what you are buying is the removal of an objection.

Questions worth asking

• Is this a fixed price or an allowance-based estimate? Allowances for tile, vanity and fixtures are where a quote and an invoice separate.
• What are the allowances, in dollars per square foot and per item? Compare quotes on these, not on the total.
• Who pulls the permit? It should be the contractor. A homeowner-pulled permit moves the liability.
• What waterproofing system, by name?
• What happens if there is rot? At what hourly rate, and who decides.
• Is the dumpster and the haul-out included?
• How long will the bathroom be out of use, and what is the inspection schedule?
• Who is doing the tile? It is the most visible work in the room and the most variable in quality.