How to write a quote for a bathroom refit (with a real worked example)
A mate of mine quoted a full bathroom refit off the top of his head, standing in the customer's hallway. Six grand, sounded about right, shook hands on it. Three weeks in he'd found a rotten joist under the old bath, the customer had upgraded to a £900 shower screen, and the tiler he'd lined up wanted £40 a day more than he'd budgeted. He finished that job about £1,400 down.
Not because he's a bad fitter. He's a good one. He lost money because the quote was a guess, not a calculation.
A bathroom is one of the best jobs a small firm can take on. Tidy margin, repeat work, good word of mouth. It's also one of the easiest jobs to lose money on, and the difference is almost always the quote. This guide walks through how to price one properly, with a full worked example down to the line.
TL;DR
- Price the job by work package, not one round number. Strip-out, plumbing, tiling, electrics, plastering, decorating, each priced on its own and added up.
- A mid-spec full bathroom refit, supplied and fitted, runs around £7,000 to £9,000 in 2026. The worked example below lands at £7,168 before VAT.
- Put a PC sum (an allowance) on anything the customer hasn't chosen yet, tiles especially. It stops their upgrades coming out of your price.
- Charge VAT only if you're VAT registered (turnover over £90,000). A normal domestic bathroom is standard-rated at 20%.
- Take a deposit that covers the materials you buy up front, then stage the rest. Don't fund the customer's bathroom out of your own pocket.
Quote by work package, not a round number
The single biggest reason trades lose money on bathrooms is the hallway number. The customer asks "rough idea what we're looking at", and out comes a figure that feels about right. That figure then becomes the price, and every surprise after it eats your margin.
The fix is to build the quote up from packages. A full bathroom refit breaks down into the same six or seven chunks every time:
- Strip-out and disposal, ripping out the old suite, tiles, and any rotten boards, and getting it off site.
- First fix plumbing, moving or renewing pipework and waste runs for the new layout.
- Electrics, the extractor fan, lighting, shaver socket, and any new circuits, almost always a job for a registered electrician.
- Plastering, walls and ceiling made good and ready to tile or paint.
- Tanking and tiling, waterproofing the wet areas, then walls and floor.
- Second fix and fitting the suite, the bath, toilet, basin, taps, and shower going in.
- Decorating and snagging, paint, silicone, and the final once-over.
Price each package, then add them up. You still present the customer one fixed figure, but now it's a figure you can stand behind, and you've a line-by-line breakdown in your notes for when a question comes up later.
How to price the labour
Work out your day rate first, then use it as the basis for each package. If you're billing yourself out at £220 a day, a package that takes you two days is a £440 line. The customer never sees the day-rate maths. They see a fixed price for "fit the suite and second fix plumbing", which reads as a finished outcome rather than a meter running.
A standard full bathroom takes a small firm 7 to 10 working days start to finish. That's not 10 days of solid graft, it includes the dead time while plaster dries and tile adhesive goes off. Build that drying time into the programme. Promise a customer the bathroom in four days and you'll either skip the drying or work weekends to save face, and neither helps you.
Two packages you'll usually subcontract:
- Electrics. Bathroom electrics are notifiable work under Part P of the Building Regulations. Either your electrician self-certifies through a scheme like NICEIC or NAPIT, or the work goes through building control. Price the electrician's day plus the cost of the certificate, and put it in the quote as its own line.
- Plastering. Unless you skim yourself, a plasterer doing the walls and ceiling is usually a day to a day and a half. Get their price before you send your quote, not after.
Get the subbie prices confirmed up front. A quote built on "the sparky will probably be about £400" is a quote built on a guess, and guesses are where the £1,400 losses come from.
How to price materials (and the markup question)
Price materials at cost plus a markup, normally 10% to 20%. Quoting materials at cost is giving away money for no reason. You're the one sourcing them, collecting them, storing them, handling returns when the basin turns up cracked, and standing behind them if something fails. That's worth something, and 10% to 20% is the fair, standard rate for it.
It also protects your cashflow. You pay the merchant on your account terms, the customer pays you on completion, and the markup covers the gap and the faff. There's no two ways about it, a bathroom you supply and fit should always make more than a bathroom where the customer hands you their own boxes.
For anything the customer hasn't picked yet, don't guess the price. Use a PC sum instead, which is covered below.
The worked example: a full bathroom refit quote, line by line
Here's a real-shape quote for a standard family bathroom, roughly 2.4m by 2.0m, mid-range spec, everything supplied and fitted. Numbers are realistic UK trade figures for 2026.
Labour, priced by package
- Strip-out and disposal: £360
- Plumbing, first and second fix, fit the suite: £1,540
- Tanking and tiling, 18 m² walls and 5 m² floor: £900
- Electrics, subcontract electrician, first and second fix, Part P certificate: £450
- Plastering, subcontract, walls and ceiling: £390
- Decorating and snagging: £180
- Labour subtotal: £3,820
Materials, at cost plus 20%
- Bathroom suite (bath, toilet, basin, taps, thermostatic shower, glass screen): £1,150
- Wall and floor tiles: £620
- Adhesive, grout, backer board, tanking kit: £280
- Plumbing sundries (pipe, fittings, valves, wastes): £180
- Electrical materials (extractor fan, four downlights, shaver socket, cable): £160
- Plaster, sand, cement, sundries: £90
- Skip hire: £240
- Paint and decorating sundries: £70
- Materials at cost: £2,790
- Markup at 20%: £558
- Materials to customer: £3,348
The total
- Labour: £3,820
- Materials: £3,348
- Quote total before VAT: £7,168
If you're VAT registered, you add 20% on top. That's £1,433.60 of VAT, for a total of £8,601.60. If you're under the £90,000 threshold and not registered, the price stays at £7,168, but remember you can't reclaim the VAT on the £2,790 of materials you bought, so that VAT is a real cost sitting inside your figure. Either way, state clearly on the quote whether the price includes VAT or not. "Plus VAT" surprises are how good jobs turn into arguments.
PC sums and provisional sums, the two lines that protect you
Two things derail bathroom quotes: the customer changes their mind on the finish, and the wall hides a problem. A PC sum and a provisional sum cover both.
The PC sum (for what they haven't chosen)
A PC sum, short for prime cost, is an allowance for an item the customer hasn't picked yet. On a bathroom it's nearly always the tiles, sometimes the taps or the suite. You quote, for example, "tiles allowed at £25 per square metre" and adjust the final invoice once they choose.
Say you allowed £25 a square metre across 23 square metres of walls and floor. The customer walks into the tile shop and falls for a porcelain at £40 a square metre. That's £15 more per square metre, across 23 square metres, so £345 gets added to the final bill, plus your markup. Without the PC sum line, that £345 comes straight out of your margin, because as far as the customer remembers, the quote said "tiles included".
The provisional sum (for what you can't see)
A provisional sum is an allowance for work you can't fully price until you open up. Old bathrooms hide all sorts: rotten floorboards under the bath, a soil pipe that needs re-routing, lead pipe that should've gone out in 1990, no isolation valve anywhere. You put a line like "provisional sum: £300 for subfloor repair, adjusted to actual on completion". If the floor's sound, the customer doesn't pay it. If it's soft, you're covered and there's no awkward mid-job conversation about extra money.
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Deposit and stage payments
A bathroom ties up real money in materials before you've earned a penny. The suite and tiles alone in the example above are £1,770 at cost. Don't carry that for the customer.
A sensible structure on a £7,168 job:
- Deposit on acceptance: enough to cover the suite and tiles you order in, so roughly £1,800 to £2,000.
- Stage payment at first fix sign-off: a chunk of the labour, say £2,500, once plumbing and electrics first fix are done and signed.
- Balance on completion: the rest, due when the job's finished and the customer's walked round it with you.
There's no legal cap on a deposit, but a fair one covers your materials and sits at or under about a quarter of the job. For the detail on deposits and the cancellation rules that catch trades out, see the deposit guide linked below.
What NOT to do (the 5 mistakes that cost you)
- Don't quote a round number in the hallway. The figure you say out loud becomes the price, and you've not seen behind the bath yet. Tell them you'll send a proper itemised quote within a day or two, then do exactly that.
- Don't quote materials at cost. You're sourcing, collecting, storing, and standing behind them. 10% to 20% markup is the standard, fair rate. Skipping it is just unpaid work.
- Don't leave customer-choice items open-ended. No PC sum on the tiles or taps means every upgrade they fancy comes out of your price. Allow a rate, adjust on the invoice.
- Don't ignore the unknowns behind the old suite. A provisional sum and one clear exclusion line on the quote turns "the floor was rotten, that's extra" from an argument into a line they already agreed to.
- Don't rely on a verbal quote. No written scope means every "while you're at it, can you just" is unpaid, because there's nothing to point at. The scope on the quote is what protects you when the job grows.
The habit that wins the job
Get the quote to the customer within a day or two, itemised and tidy, while they're still picturing the new bathroom. A clear, professional quote that lands quickly beats a cheaper one scribbled on the back of a delivery note that turns up a week later. Customers reading two quotes side by side go with the one that looks like the firm has its act together, even when it's not the lowest number.
That's the bit most trades leave on the table. The work is rarely the problem. It's the gap between the job ending and the paperwork going out. TradeStash lets you build a packaged bathroom quote from the van, drop in the PC sums and provisional sums, and send it before you've left the customer's drive. Quote fast, quote properly, and you win more of the jobs worth winning.