Ask three companies what a new bathroom costs and you will get three very different answers, because "a bathroom" can mean anything from a tidy refresh to stripping back to brickwork and moving the soil pipe. The honest answer is that most full bathroom refits in London land somewhere between £6,000 and £15,000 all in, but the spread within that range is where homeowners get caught out. Here is what sits behind those numbers, based on the sort of jobs we quote for around Wallington, Carshalton and Sutton.
For a standard family bathroom of roughly 2.5m x 2m, a complete refit including strip out, first fix plumbing and electrics, tanking, tiling, fitting and making good typically runs from around £6,000 to £9,000 at the budget-to-mid end, £9,000 to £13,000 for a mid to good spec, and £13,000 upwards once you are into stone tiles, bespoke vanities, underfloor heating and wet room construction.
Labour usually makes up 50 to 65 percent of that figure. In south London you should expect to pay more than national averages quoted online, largely because of trade day rates and parking or access costs on terraced and Victorian streets.
Sanitaryware is the part people focus on, but it is rarely the biggest variable. A decent suite with a good quality shower and brassware might be £1,500 to £3,500. Tiles are the sleeper cost: large format porcelain at £40 to £70 per square metre plus the extra labour they need for levelling can quietly add £1,000 compared with a standard ceramic.
The other big lever is whether the layout changes. Keeping the toilet, bath and basin roughly where they are keeps first fix short. Moving the WC more than a metre often means lifting floors, altering soil connections and, in a flat, checking whether you can achieve fall at all. That single decision can swing a quote by £1,000 to £2,500.
Older properties around Wallington and the surrounding Sutton borough throw up predictable surprises. Once the suite is out we often find perished lead or steel pipework, joists notched badly by a previous installer, or plaster that has been wet for years behind a shower.
A good quote should either include a contingency line or be honest that certain items can only be priced once opened up. If a quote is suspiciously low, check whether these are in it.
The most useful thing you can do is ask every company to price the same specification. Give each of them the same tile, the same suite and the same shower, or ask them all to include a fixed supply allowance so you are comparing labour and method rather than product choices.
Also check what tanking or waterproofing is specified behind the shower, whether tile trims and silicone are itemised, and how many working days are allowed. A typical full refit takes eight to twelve working days with the room out of use for most of that, so if you only have one bathroom, factor that into your planning.
Yes, usually by £1,000 to £2,500. Keeping the soil connection and existing supply runs cuts first fix labour significantly and reduces the risk of unexpected work when floors come up.
You do not need planning permission for a like for like refit, but electrical work in a bathroom is notifiable under Part P and must be certified by a qualified electrician. If you are converting a bedroom or adding a bathroom where there was none, ventilation and drainage will need to comply too.
Around 10 to 15 percent of the quoted price is sensible for a property built before the 1970s, and closer to 10 percent for newer homes. Most of that is for pipework, floors and plaster problems that only become visible once the old bathroom is stripped out.