What a full house rewire actually costs, and why

What the price is made of

A rewire is labour with materials attached. The materials, cable, back boxes, accessories, a consumer unit, are a modest share of the total. The rest is the time taken to lift floors, chase walls, get into lofts, drop cables through joists, terminate, test, certify and tidy up.

That means the price tracks difficulty, not square footage alone. A three bedroom 1930s semi with suspended timber floors, a boarded loft and lath and plaster walls is a very different job from an identically sized 1990s house with chipboard flooring and plasterboard partitions, even though both quotes will say three bedroom rewire.

• Number of circuits and accessories, not just number of rooms
• Floor construction: suspended timber is easier than solid concrete
• Wall construction: plasterboard is quicker than stone or lath and plaster
• Whether the property is occupied or empty during the work
• Consumer unit, bonding and any supply side work required

Full or partial

A full rewire replaces every circuit from the board out. A partial rewire replaces the circuits that need it, commonly the lighting where the original imperial cable survives, or the ground floor sockets in a house where upstairs was done during a previous refit.

Partial is legitimate and often the right call, but it needs an EICR first to establish what is genuinely failing. Where circuits are mixed vintages, a report tells you which parts have life left. Deciding to do half the house on a feeling is how people end up paying for two disruptive jobs instead of one.

The making good question

This is where quotes diverge most and where disputes come from. Chasing walls and lifting floors damages finishes. Some quotes include filling chases to a paintable standard, some include plastering, almost none include decorating, and some include none of it. Two quotes several thousand pounds apart are often quoting for different scopes rather than different quality.

Ask each quote the same three questions in writing: are chases filled and to what standard, are floors relaid and are carpets refitted, and is plastering included or is that a separate trade. Then you are comparing like with like.

• Confirm whether chases are filled, plastered or left open
• Confirm who lifts and relays flooring and carpets
• Decorating is nearly always the homeowner's cost
• An empty property is quicker and therefore cheaper to rewire

Timescale and living through it

For a typical three bedroom house, the electrical work is usually five to ten working days, with larger or more awkward properties taking longer. Add time afterwards for plastering and decoration, which are separate trades on their own schedules.

You can live in the house during a rewire. It is dusty, the power goes off room by room, and floors come up. Most people manage it by clearing rooms ahead of the sequence and accepting a fortnight of disruption. Where a property is empty between tenants or before moving in, do it then: it is faster, cheaper and considerably less unpleasant.

How to compare quotes fairly

Get three written quotes from registered electricians who have all visited the property. Check each one lists the number of circuits, the consumer unit specification, whether bonding upgrades are included, what happens to floors and walls, and the payment stages. Verify each firm's registration on the scheme's public register.

Be wary of the outlier at the bottom. In our experience the cheapest rewire quote is usually the one that has assumed no bonding work, no remedial work, no making good and fewer circuits than the house actually needs, and the difference reappears as variations once the floors are up. You should receive an Electrical Installation Certificate with a full schedule of test results and building regulations notification at the end, whichever firm you choose.