How to Price a Bathroom Remodel Job (Step-by-Step Guide)
Price a bathroom remodel by costing five buckets separately — demo and rough-in, tile and waterproofing, fixtures and vanity, finish work, and permits and disposal — adding overhead, then pricing to a target margin with the cost ÷ (1 − margin) formula. Put a stated allowance on every selection the customer has not made yet, price the subfloor and the wall cavity as unknowns rather than guessing them into the number, and collect a deposit that covers the tile and fixture order before anything ships. CRMb builds the quote from the job's material list and crew hours, sends it with a link the customer can accept from their phone, and then reports the margin the job really earned against the margin you quoted.
A bathroom is the smallest room in the house and one of the most expensive per square foot to remodel, because almost everything in it is wet, plumbed, or tiled. It also hides more than any other room: a tub surround that comes off to reveal a rotten subfloor, a vent stack that was never vented, a shower valve set in a wall with no access. Price it like a bedroom repaint — square footage times a number — and the first open wall erases the margin.
Why square footage is the wrong starting point
Most bathrooms fall between 35 and 100 square feet. A hall bath and a primary bath can be the same size and differ by $25,000 in cost, because the cost of a bathroom is driven by what is in it and what moves, not by floor area. A tub-to-shower conversion, a relocated toilet, a double vanity where a single stood, or a curbless shower with a linear drain each change the price far more than ten extra square feet of tile.
Use square footage for exactly one thing: sanity-checking the tile and flooring quantities after you have built the number from the scope. Never generate the number from it. The kitchen remodel guide makes the same point for the same reason, and the two jobs share most of their pricing structure.
The five cost buckets
Break the job into buckets that behave differently, and estimate each one on its own terms.
Demo and rough-in. Tearing out the old tub, tile, vanity, and flooring, then any framing, plumbing, and electrical changes before the walls close. This bucket holds most of the job's risk, because it is where you find out what the last contractor left behind. Estimate it in crew-hours at your loaded rate, and decide now whether plumbing and electrical are yours or a sub's — see how to price a plumbing job and how to price an electrical job for how those trades build their own numbers.
Tile and waterproofing. Shower pan or base, waterproofing membrane, backer board, tile for the walls and floor, grout, and the labor to set it all. Tile labor is the single largest labor line in most bathroom remodels and the one most often underestimated. Niche shelves, mosaic floors, large-format tile, and herringbone patterns can double the set time for the same square footage. Price the pattern, not just the area — the flooring pricing guide covers how layout changes the labor.
Fixtures and vanity. Toilet, vanity and top, faucet, shower valve and trim, tub or shower base, lighting, mirror, exhaust fan, and accessories. This bucket is almost entirely customer selection, which makes it the bucket most likely to be priced as an allowance. Get supplier pricing for what has been picked, and set a stated allowance for what has not.
Finish work. Drywall patching, paint, door and trim, caulk, final plumbing and electrical trim-out, and the cleanup. Small lines individually, and consistently forgotten as a group when the estimate is built from the big three above.
Permits, disposal, and other job costs. Permit fees where required, a dumpster or dump runs, and any protection of the rest of the house. A bathroom demo fills a dumpster faster than its size suggests, because cast iron tubs and tile on mortar beds are heavy.
Allowances: pricing selections that do not exist yet
A bathroom remodel is usually quoted before the customer has picked a tile, a vanity, or a faucet. An allowance is how you price a selection that is not final: a stated dollar figure built into the price now and reconciled against the real invoice later.
Three rules keep allowances from becoming the argument that ends the job:
- State each allowance as a number, on the quote, next to the item. "Wall tile: $1,800 allowance" is a term. "Nice tile" is an invitation to disagree about what nice means.
- Set allowances from supplier pricing in the grade the customer is actually looking at. A $900 vanity allowance against a customer who has been browsing furniture-grade vanities will be low the day they choose.
- Write down both directions. A selection above the allowance is a signed change order for the difference plus your markup. A selection below it is a credit. Both belong in the contract before demo day.
The allowance figure should already include your materials markup, the same as any materials line on any job — see how much to mark up materials. An allowance quoted at your cost is a line you have agreed to sell at zero margin.
The unknowns: subfloor, wall cavity, and venting
The bathroom is the job where "we won't know until it's open" is literally true. Three findings account for most of the surprises:
- A rotten or soft subfloor around the tub or toilet flange, from years of a slow leak. Replacing a section of subfloor and sistering a joist is a few hundred to a few thousand dollars of work the quote did not include.
- Plumbing that cannot be reused. Galvanized supply lines, a drain that is not vented, a shower valve with no access, or a toilet flange set too low for the new floor height.
- Electrical that is not to code. No GFCI protection, a fan on the light circuit, or no dedicated circuit where one is now required.
Do not guess these into the price. Quote the job on what you can see, and write the unknowns into the scope as exclusions with a stated unit price for each: "Subfloor replacement, if required, $X per square foot; galvanized supply replacement, if required, $Y." The customer knows before signing what each finding costs, and you are not absorbing it or arguing about it with the wall open. How to write a scope of work covers the inclusions-and-exclusions language that makes this hold up.
This is also the one place where time and materials makes sense inside a fixed-price job. The visible scope is fixed-price with allowances; the hidden conditions are priced per unit as they are found. The comparison of the two models is in time and materials vs fixed price contracts.
Pricing to a margin, not a markup
Once the five buckets and the allowances are estimated, add overhead and price to a target margin:
Price = total cost ÷ (1 − target margin)
Bathroom remodels commonly carry a target margin of 25% to 35%, higher than repair work, because the job runs over several days to a few weeks, involves three or four trades in sequence, and has a real chance of a hidden-condition change order. Adding a flat markup to cost instead of pricing to a margin is the rounding error that markup vs margin explains, and on a $20,000 job it is a four-figure error.
The overhead line needs a real number behind it. Overhead per labor hour comes from your annual overhead divided by the direct labor hours you actually sell, not from a percentage you heard at a supply house — see how to calculate overhead rate. The loaded labor rate underneath it comes from wages plus the burden of taxes, insurance, and paid time off — see how to calculate labor burden rate.
A worked example
A hall bathroom, about 50 square feet: tub-to-shower conversion in the same footprint, new tile on the shower walls and floor, a new vanity, toilet, and lighting, no relocated plumbing. Plumbing and electrical are subcontracted; the crew handles demo, tile, drywall, paint, and installation.
| Bucket | Cost |
|---|---|
| Demo and haul-out | 14 crew-hours × $44 loaded rate = $616 |
| Plumbing rough-in and trim-out (sub) | $2,400 |
| Electrical: GFCI, fan circuit, vanity light (sub) | $1,150 |
| Shower base, waterproofing, backer board | $1,340 |
| Tile and grout (customer-selected, allowance-based) | $1,900 |
| Tile labor: walls, niche, and floor | 46 crew-hours × $44 = $2,024 |
| Vanity, top, faucet, toilet, mirror, fan, lighting (allowance-based) | $2,750 |
| Drywall, paint, trim, install, cleanup | 28 crew-hours × $44 = $1,232 |
| Permit and disposal | $680 |
| Total direct cost | $14,092 |
| Overhead ($19/labor hour × 88 crew-hours) | $1,672 |
| Total cost | $15,764 |
| Price at 30% target margin (cost ÷ 0.70) | $22,520 |
Three things worth noticing. First, tile labor is the largest single line, larger than the plumbing sub, and it is the line most likely to be wrong if the pattern changes after the quote; a herringbone floor instead of a straight-set one adds hours the table does not show. Second, the two subcontracted trades are quoted to you and then carried through to the price at the job's margin like any other cost — see how to track subcontractor costs. Third, the tile and fixture allowances together are $4,650 of a $22,520 price. If the customer picks $2,600 of tile against the $1,900 allowance, the $700 plus markup is a change order signed before the tile is ordered, not discovered at the final invoice.
The crew-hour figures are only as good as the history behind them. A shop that has done twenty tub-to-shower conversions knows its tile hours to within a few; a shop pricing its first one is guessing, and should say so by carrying a wider margin. How to estimate labor hours for a job covers building that history from real punched time.
Change orders: where the bathroom remodel loses money
A family living without a bathroom, or sharing the only other one, makes decisions quickly and under pressure. "While the wall is open, can we add a niche" and "can we move the vanity light while you're in there" each sound like ten minutes of work. Fifteen of them is a day.
Two habits keep them from eating the job:
- Price and sign every change before you do the work, including the small ones. A bathroom with a dozen verbal extras has a dozen places where the contract price and the final invoice stopped matching, and the customer remembers agreeing to none of them.
- Show the customer the running total as it grows, not a single larger number at the end. A customer who has seen each change priced rarely disputes the sum. A customer who sees it all at once, after two weeks without a shower, disputes all of it.
How to handle change orders on a job covers the process end to end, and how to catch a job going over budget covers the other half: knowing by day three that tile hours are running past the estimate, while there is still time to do something about it.
Deposit and payment structure
A bathroom remodel is shorter than a kitchen, but it is still material-heavy at the front: tile, the shower base, and the vanity are ordered before demo and paid for before the first invoice. A single deposit and a final payment leaves you financing all of it.
Structure it in three stages:
- Deposit at signing, sized to cover the tile and fixture order, which is the money you commit first and the longest lead time in the job.
- A draw after rough-in inspection, when plumbing and electrical rough-in has passed and the walls are ready to close. Labor already performed is no longer riding on the final payment.
- Balance on completion, after a walkthrough and the punch list is cleared.
This is progress billing scaled down to a two-week job, and the first stage is covered in detail in how to collect a deposit before work. On a job this size, "balance due upon completion" with a card link on the final invoice is the term that actually gets paid the week the work ends.
Pricing by bathroom type
The buckets stay the same; the weight of each one shifts.
Hall bath refresh (same layout, new tile, vanity, toilet, and paint): the lightest version of the example above. Tile labor and the fixture allowance dominate. Commonly $12,000 to $25,000 all-in, depending on tile and fixture grade.
Tub-to-shower conversion: adds a shower base or a custom pan, waterproofing, and usually a glass door, which is a selection with its own allowance and often its own installer. The plumbing sub's scope grows if the valve moves.
Primary bath remodel (double vanity, separate tub and shower, relocated fixtures): every bucket grows, and the demo-and-rough-in bucket grows the most. Relocating a toilet or drain means opening the floor, and in a slab house that means cutting concrete. This is the bathroom that can run $40,000 and up, and the one where the hidden-condition exclusions matter most.
Accessibility remodel (curbless shower, grab bar blocking, wider door, comfort-height fixtures): the curbless shower changes the floor structure, not just the tile, and the blocking has to go in before drywall. Price the framing as its own line; it does not show up in a square-foot number at all.
FAQ
How much does a bathroom remodel cost? It depends far more on scope and selections than on size. A hall bath refresh in the same layout commonly lands between $12,000 and $25,000 for materials and labor; a primary bath with relocated plumbing, a separate tub and shower, and a double vanity runs $40,000 and up. Tile grade, fixture grade, and whether any plumbing moves are the three biggest drivers.
How do contractors price a bathroom remodel? By estimating five buckets separately: demo and rough-in, tile and waterproofing, fixtures and vanity, finish work, and permits and disposal, then adding overhead and pricing to a target margin. Selections the customer has not made yet are priced as stated allowances, and hidden conditions like a rotten subfloor are written in as per-unit exclusions rather than guessed into the price.
What is the biggest labor cost in a bathroom remodel? Tile setting, in most bathrooms. Walls, a niche, a shower floor, and the bathroom floor together commonly take more crew-hours than demo, drywall, paint, and installation combined, and the pattern matters as much as the area. Large-format tile, mosaics, and herringbone layouts can double the set time for the same square footage.
Should I quote a bathroom remodel fixed-price or time and materials? Fixed price with stated allowances for the visible scope, and per-unit pricing written into the contract for hidden conditions such as subfloor replacement or galvanized supply lines. Customers want a firm number before giving up their bathroom for two weeks; the per-unit exclusions protect you when the wall comes off.
How much deposit should I ask for on a bathroom remodel? Enough to cover the tile, shower base, and fixture order, since those are committed and paid for before demo starts. Many contractors use three payments: a deposit at signing, a draw after rough-in inspection, and the balance on completion.
What margin should I target on a bathroom remodel?
Commonly 25% to 35%, higher than straight repair work, because the job runs several days across multiple trades and carries real hidden-condition risk. Price to that margin with cost ÷ (1 − margin) rather than adding a flat markup to cost.
What is a bathroom remodel allowance? A stated dollar amount built into the contract price for an item the customer has not selected yet, such as tile or the vanity. When the selection is made, an overage becomes a signed change order for the difference plus markup, and an underage is credited back. The allowance figure should already include your materials markup.
What should I exclude from a bathroom remodel quote? Anything you cannot see: subfloor and joist repair, replacement of supply or drain lines that turn out to be unusable, electrical brought up to code beyond the stated scope, and mold remediation. List each one as an exclusion with a per-unit price so the customer knows the cost of each finding before it is found.
Getting started with CRMb
A bathroom remodel is a short job with a long list of places to lose money: an allowance quoted at cost, a verbal change order, a tile pattern that took twice the hours, a sub's invoice that never made it onto the job.
CRMb keeps the whole job on one record. The quote is built from the job's material list, pulled from inventory at real average cost, and its crew hours at your loaded rate, then sent with a link the customer can accept from their phone. The crew's hours punched in Punch land on the job as labor cost as they happen, so Reports show the margin the job is really earning against the margin you quoted while the tile is still going up, and flag a job whose labor is tracking over the estimate while there is still time to raise a change order. Invoices go out with a Pay Now link once Stripe is connected, and the A/R aging report shows which balances are still open.
Start a 14-day free trial at crmb.io and price your next bathroom remodel from five buckets and a set of allowances instead of a square-foot guess.