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How much does a bathroom remodel cost?
Build up a bathroom remodel line by line, then check it against what US homeowners told the Census they actually paid. Most cost guides quote you an average. We will show you the median too, and they are not close.
The "average bathroom remodel" is a mean, and a mean is not a typical job.
The Census American Housing Survey asks homeowners what a finished remodel actually cost, then publishes the microdata.
The mean contractor-done bathroom remodel is $13,559 in 2025 dollars, or $12,639 in the nominal
dollars the survey collected. That is the kind of figure cost guides quote as "the average". But the median is
$8,497. Half of US contractor-done bathroom remodels cost less than $8,500. The mean is dragged up by a
long tail: the top 10 percent of jobs run past $28,700. Before you budget against an average, ask which average it is.
Estimated cost
$13,196
Typical range $9,897 – $17,815
- Demolition and disposal$1,460
- Plumbing (rough-in and set)$2,026
- Electrical (fan, lights, GFCI)$1,096
- Framing, backer board and drywall$1,592
- Tile and waterproofing$2,968
- Fixtures: tub or shower, toilet, vanity$2,670
- Faucets, lighting and mirror$560
- Paint and finish$574
- Permit$250
- Total$13,196
§ 02 Your estimate against what people actually paid
Median for your region, contractor-done (Census AHS)$8,497
Mean for your region, the "average" you see quoted$13,559
Labour in this estimate$9,076
If your line-item estimate lands above the median, that is the point rather than a bug: a textbook 'standard remodel' prices out near the MEAN, because half of the jobs Americans call a bathroom remodel are smaller than the word suggests. AHS costs are also self-reported and recalled up to two years later, about 15 percent are imputed by Census, and 'remodeled bathroom' is whatever the homeowner thought it was. That is why we show you a median, a mean and your own line items instead of one confident number.
Where the money goes
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Above the US median of $8,497, in the band around and above the mean of $13,559. The top quarter of all US bathroom remodels starts at $15,689. Insist on a written scope before you compare prices, because two quotes for 'a bathroom remodel' are rarely quoting the same bathroom.
By the numbers
- Census American Housing Survey (2023 microdata): across 1,290 contractor-done, owner-occupied bathroom remodels, the median cost $8,497 in 2025 dollars (90% confidence interval $7,884 to $9,109). A quarter came in under $4,248. A quarter ran over $15,689. The top tenth passed $28,707. That 7x spread between the quarter marks is not noise, it is the honest shape of the thing: 'remodeled bathroom' is defined by the homeowner and covers everything from a shower retile to a full gut.
- 2022 Economic Census: a US residential remodeler takes in about $104 for every hour of field labour, against $23.73 of construction-worker wage. That is a measured 3.95x markup, not the usual 'contractors mark up two or three times' folklore. Plumbing contractors bill about $114 an hour of field time, electricians $112, tile setters $83. Overhead, insurance, the van, the office and the profit all live inside that number.
- BLS OEWS (May 2025): a plumber's median wage is $30.67 an hour and a tile setter's is $26.77. That is what the worker earns, not what you are billed, and OEWS does not even cover the self-employed, who are much of the trade. Anyone who multiplies a trade wage by a number of hours and calls the answer a labour price is understating it by roughly three to four times.
- Doing it yourself: the median DIY bathroom remodel in the AHS cost $2,124 in materials. The survey asks for the cost 'not counting your time', so that figure is materials only, and DIY jobs skew smaller than contractor jobs. It is not a like-for-like $6,000 saving.
- Our line-item model lands near the survey, and we want to be careful about how much credit we take for that. Priced off Economic Census billed rates, a standard remodel comes to $13,196, against an AHS mean of $13,559: a 2.7 percent gap. The model's implied materials share, 31 percent, sits a little under the Census-measured 35.9 percent. Read that as reassurance, not as proof. The labour hours in the model are our own estimate, and hours are a dial we could have turned to land on any total we wanted. The billed rates either side of them are measured, and the survey is measured; the hours in the middle are not. That is precisely why the survey's median and mean are printed next to your estimate instead of buried in a footnote.
What is sourced here, and what is ours. The three benchmark figures (the median, the mean and the regional multipliers) are sourced. We recomputed them from the Census American Housing Survey's 2023 public-use microdata: 1,290 contractor-done, owner-occupied, completed jobs, weighted, with standard errors from Census's own 160 replicate weights. The line-item estimate above is our model. No free source publishes labour hours for a bathroom remodel, so the hours are ours, and so are the fixture and tile prices. There is no federal series for what a vanity costs, and a price index cannot invent one. The billed rates, though, are not guessed: we derive them from the 2022 Economic Census, which reports each trade's value of work, its materials, its subcontracts and its construction-worker hours. Use our model to read a quote line by line. Use the AHS figures to sanity-check the bottom of it.
Sources: Census/HUD, American Housing Survey 2023 National PUF · Census, 2022 Economic Census (construction sector) · BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics · BLS PPI, inputs to construction industries (deflator)
How this estimate is calculated
- The benchmark figures are recomputed from the 2023 AHS national public-use microdata: contractor-done, owner-occupied, completed jobs only, weighted to the population. Jobs finished between 2021 and 2023 and are deflated to 2025 dollars, the latest complete year.
- The line-item estimate is our model. The hours are our own estimate for a 40 sq ft reference bathroom and scale with the size you enter. Floor, tile and debris scale with the area; valves and light switches largely do not, so those scale more gently.
- Billed labour rates come from the 2022 Economic Census: each trade's value of construction work, less materials and less subcontracted work, divided by its construction-worker hours. That gives about $104 per field hour for a residential remodeler and $114 for a plumbing contractor in 2025 dollars. Overhead, insurance and profit are already inside that rate, so we do not add a contractor markup on top of it. Doing that would count the same margin twice.
- Fixture, tile and rough-material prices are ours. We publish the whole table in data/bathroom-benchmarks.json so you can disagree with a specific line rather than with the total.
- The 'typical range' under the headline is ours too: we show your estimate less 25 percent to plus 35 percent, an estimating tolerance for how far real quotes for one written scope tend to spread. It is not a measured confidence interval, and it is deliberately not the survey's interquartile range, which is far wider (roughly half the median to nearly twice it) mostly because different homeowners mean different jobs by 'bathroom remodel'. You have already told us your scope, so that part of the spread does not apply to you.
- The regional multipliers are measured, not invented: each is a Census region's AHS median divided by the national AHS median. We apply them to the whole job, which is the unit the index is built from. The Midwest figure carries a wide error band, so treat it as roughly national.
- Dollars are brought to 2025 with a composite of the construction-inputs price index and the construction employment cost index, weighted by the Census-measured 35.9 percent materials share of a remodeler's job. The choice of weighting is ours, and it moves the median by about 5 percent either way.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a bathroom remodel cost?
The median US bathroom remodel done by a contractor cost $8,497, in 2025 dollars, on Census American Housing Survey microdata. A quarter of jobs came in under $4,248 and a quarter ran over $15,689. The mean is $13,559, much higher than the median, because a small number of very large jobs pull it up. Which figure applies to you depends almost entirely on scope: keeping your layout and tile is a different project from taking the room back to studs, and the calculator above prices both.
Why is the calculator's estimate higher than the median you quote?
Because a full-scope remodel is not the median job. Price out the textbook version of this project, new tub or shower, new tile, new vanity, same layout, and our line-item model lands near $13,200. That is close to the AHS mean of $13,559 and well above the AHS median of $8,497. Two independent federal datasets agree with each other here: a household survey of what people paid, and establishment revenue, hours and wages from the Economic Census. The reason the median is so much lower is that half the jobs homeowners call a bathroom remodel are simply smaller than the word suggests, a retiled shower rather than a new room. If your scope is genuinely the full job, budget nearer the mean and ignore the median. If you just want the room to look new, the refresh option is a different project at a different price.
Why do cost guides say the average bathroom remodel is about $12,000?
Because they are quoting a mean, usually without saying so. The AHS mean in the nominal dollars the survey collected is $12,639, which is the ballpark those guides land in. The trouble is that a mean is the wrong summary for a distribution with a long tail. The top 10 percent of bathroom remodels run past $28,700 and they drag the average up above what most people spend. The median, $8,497, is the figure that actually splits the country in half, and it is roughly a third lower. Neither figure is wrong. Quoting the mean and calling it typical is.
How much of a bathroom remodel is labour?
In our model, for a 40 sq ft bathroom at the Census billed rate, it swings from about a third of the job to about three quarters, and what moves it is not the labour at all: it is how expensive your fittings are. A basic-grade standard remodel comes out around 69 percent labour. Put a stone-top vanity and designer fixtures in the same room and labour falls to 38 percent of the total, because the denominator grew, not because anyone worked less. Change the room size or the billed rate and the share moves further still: a large basic-grade gut runs past 80 percent labour, because floor area buys you tiling hours rather than fittings. The related trap is that most cost guides price labour by looking up a trade wage and multiplying. A plumber's median wage is $30.67 an hour, while a plumbing contractor takes in about $114 for every hour of field labour, on Census Economic Census figures. The gap is not greed: it is overhead, insurance, the van, the office, the warranty, the unbillable hours and the profit. Wages also exclude the self-employed, who are much of the trade. If a quote's labour line looks like three times the wage, that is the market working normally.
Does a bathroom remodel add value when you sell?
We are not going to give you a number, because no free and neutral source produces one. The 60 to 70 percent resale figure you have seen everywhere comes from industry cost-versus-value surveys, which are built from contractor and realtor estimates rather than from recorded sale prices, and which are published by firms that serve the remodeling trade. That is a source with a commercial interest in the number being large. We would rather leave the box empty than fill it with something we cannot check. Remodel a bathroom because you have to use it every day. If you are doing it purely as an investment, get that advice from someone who is not paid by the outcome.
How much can I save doing it myself?
Less than the headline gap suggests. The median DIY bathroom remodel in the AHS cost $2,124 against $8,497 for a contractor, but those are not the same job. The survey explicitly asks for the cost 'not counting your time', so the DIY number is materials only, and DIY jobs skew towards smaller, simpler work. The honest read is that you save most of the labour on the parts you are genuinely competent to do. Tiling badly is expensive, and in most places you cannot legally sign off your own plumbing or electrical work anyway.
How much does a small bathroom remodel cost?
A powder room or small full bath, at 18 to 25 sq ft, cuts the tile and the demolition roughly in proportion to the floor area, but not the plumbing or the electrical: a small bathroom still needs the same valves, the same fan and the same toilet. Set the size in the calculator above and you will see the total fall by much less than the square footage does. That non-proportionality is why small bathrooms feel expensive per square foot.
What makes a bathroom remodel expensive?
Moving water. Keeping the toilet, shower and sink where they are is the single biggest saving available to you, because relocating them means opening the floor, rerouting the drain at the right fall, and often a permit and an inspection. In our model, going from a full gut on the same footprint to a full gut with a new layout adds close to 40 hours of trade labour before a single tile is laid. Everything else, the vanity, the tile, the fittings, is a preference you can dial up or down. The layout is not.