Based on aggregated data, a small bathroom remodel costs $3,000 to $15,000, with a typical project landing near $9,000. Materials account for roughly $1,500 to $7,000 of that total and labor for $1,500 to $8,000, and a typical job runs 2 to 3 weeks.
“Small” on this page means the room most American houses actually have: a three-piece bathroom — toilet, sink and a tub or shower — packed into a 5x7 to 5x8 foot footprint, about 35 to 40 square feet. It has a shower or a tub, which is what separates it from a powder room; the no-shower version is priced separately in the half bath remodel cost breakdown. And it is the whole room, not one fixture.
The reason the range spans a factor of five is not the tile. It is scope. A small bathroom that keeps its plumbing where it sits and swaps finishes is a $3,000 to $6,000 job. The same room, gutted to the studs with the toilet moved three feet, is a $12,000 to $15,000 job. Everything below is built to show exactly where those dollars go, line by line.
The Line-Item Budget: Where the Money Actually Goes
This is the spine of a small bathroom budget — a 5x8 room, three fixtures, full scope. The three columns are the same room done three ways, and each column sums to the aggregated national low, typical and high.
| Line item | Low ($3,000 job) | Typical ($9,000 job) | High ($15,000 job) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Demolition and disposal | $250 | $800 | $1,300 |
| Plumbing (reconnect vs. relocate) | $300 | $1,000 | $2,200 |
| Electrical (light, fan, GFCI outlet) | $200 | $600 | $1,000 |
| Floor tile or flooring, 35–40 sq ft | $250 | $800 | $1,400 |
| Tub or shower + surround | $1,000 | $2,500 | $3,800 |
| Vanity, sink and faucet | $500 | $1,500 | $2,200 |
| Toilet | $200 | $400 | $700 |
| Fixtures, mirror, hardware, accessories | $150 | $700 | $1,200 |
| Paint and drywall repair | $100 | $400 | $600 |
| Permits and inspection | $50 | $300 | $600 |
| Total | $3,000 | $9,000 | $15,000 |
Three things fall out of that table immediately.
The wet wall is the budget. The tub or shower plus its surround is $2,500 of a $9,000 job — more than a quarter of the total, and the single largest line at every tier. Every other decision in the room is a rounding error next to what happens on that one wall.
The toilet is not the budget. It is $400 at mid-range, about 4 percent of the job. A homeowner who spends three weekends choosing a toilet is optimizing the ninth-largest line item.
Nothing scales down with the room. A 35 square foot bathroom needs the same demolition crew, the same plumber, the same electrician and the same waterproofing detail as a 100 square foot bathroom. That is why per-square-foot math behaves so strangely here.
Small Bathroom Remodel Cost per Square Foot
At 35 to 40 square feet, the $3,000 to $15,000 range works out to roughly $75 to $430 per square foot — a band so wide it is nearly useless as a planning tool.
The band is wide because only the tile scales with the room. At $17 to $30 per square foot installed, doubling a 40 square foot floor adds roughly $700 to $1,200 to a job whose fixtures and rough-in already account for about $9,500 — which is why the per-square-foot figure falls as a bathroom gets bigger. The arithmetic is worked through in bathroom remodel cost per square foot.
Labor is the majority of the bill and the only part of it that changes when you move: $1,500 to $8,000 of a $3,000 to $15,000 remodel, or about 56 percent. The task-by-task breakdown is in the bathroom remodel labor cost guide.
| Footprint | Area | Low | Typical | High | Typical per sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5x6 | 30 sq ft | $3,000 | $8,000 | $13,000 | ~$265 |
| 5x7 | 35 sq ft | $3,000 | $9,000 | $15,000 | ~$255 |
| 5x8 | 40 sq ft | $3,200 | $9,000 | $15,000 | ~$225 |
| 6x8 | 48 sq ft | $3,600 | $9,800 | $16,000 | ~$205 |
| 6x10 | 60 sq ft | $4,200 | $10,500 | $18,000 | ~$175 |
Notice the direction of travel: the per-square-foot figure falls as the room gets bigger, because the fixed costs — one toilet, one vanity, one valve, one fan, one permit, one plumber’s minimum call-out — get spread across more floor. The extra 10 square feet between a 5x6 and a 5x8 costs a few hundred dollars in tile and adds almost nothing else.
This is the practical consequence: a small bathroom is not cheap because it is small. It is less expensive than a large bathroom while being more expensive per square foot, and any quote defended purely with a per-square-foot rate is hiding the scope question that actually sets the price.
The Three Budget Tiers
Aggregated pricing separates cleanly into three tiers, and the boundary between them is not taste — it is how deep into the wall the work goes.
Tier 1 — Cosmetic refresh: $3,000 to $6,000
Nothing structural, nothing moved, nothing opened. New paint, new floor tile, a new vanity and sink, a new toilet, new faucets, new light fixture and fan, new mirror and hardware. The tub stays and is either cleaned up or reglazed; the shower surround is regrouted rather than rebuilt — shower regrouting runs $300 to $2,000 against $1,200 to $7,000 for a new tile shower, and it is the reason this tier exists at all.
Demolition here is a half-day, not a week: pull the vanity, pull the toilet, pull the floor. Permits are usually not triggered. This is the tier where a homeowner’s own labor moves the number most.
Tier 2 — Pull and replace: $6,000 to $12,000
Everything comes out, everything goes back in the same place. New tub or shower unit, new surround, new substrate behind it, new floor, new vanity, new toilet, new fixtures, new fan. The drains and supply lines stay exactly where they are; the plumber reconnects rather than re-routes.
This is the tier the typical $9,000 project describes, and it is where most small bathroom remodels land. It is also the tier with the most honest value: the room is functionally new, and the plumbing budget stays near $1,000 instead of $3,000.
Tier 3 — Full gut with layout change: $12,000 to $15,000+
Down to the studs, and the fixtures move. A new rough-in, new supply and drain runs, possibly a wall opened or a door relocated, a custom tile shower in place of the tub, a heated floor, stone counters. The permit is not optional here.
The ceiling is soft. A small bathroom with a fully custom tile shower (up to $7,000), a walk-in shower build (up to $20,000) or full bathroom plumbing rough-in ($1,500 to $5,000) can exceed the $15,000 aggregated high — at which point the project has stopped being a small bathroom remodel and is priced like a full bathroom remodel that happens to sit in a small room, which aggregated data puts at $10,000 to $30,000.
Moving the Plumbing: The One Decision That Sets the Price
There is exactly one fork in a small bathroom budget that is worth more than every finish choice combined.
| Plumbing scope | Cost | Effect on a $9,000 job |
|---|---|---|
| Reconnect in place (same drains, same supply) | $300–$1,000 | Baseline |
| Swap a tub for a shower on the same drain | $3,000–$10,000 | Replaces the tub line, not the plumbing line |
| Move the vanity/sink drain | +$500–$1,500 | ~$9,500–$10,500 |
| Move the toilet flange | +$1,500–$3,000 | ~$10,500–$12,000 |
| Full re-rough (all three fixtures moved) | $1,500–$5,000 | ~$11,000–$14,000 |
The toilet is the expensive one to move, and the reason is physical, not commercial: it drains through a 3-inch or 4-inch pipe that has to run downhill at a fixed pitch. Moving it means opening the floor, cutting into the joist bay below, re-pitching the drain, and often re-routing a vent stack. Moving a sink — a 1.5-inch line with far more routing freedom — is a fraction of the work.
The corollary is the most reliable money-saving fact in the whole project: a small bathroom that keeps its three fixtures on their existing drains saves $2,000 to $4,000 against the identical room re-plumbed. A tub-to-shower conversion ($3,000 to $10,000) is the common exception that stays affordable, because it reuses the tub’s existing drain and valve location.
Cost of Every Line Item, Broken Out
Each line below is priced as a standalone job — which is what it is if it is the only thing being replaced. Inside a full remodel, the same work costs somewhat less per item, because the demolition, the trip charges and the trade minimums are shared across the whole room.
| Component | Standalone cost range | Typical | What moves it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toilet installation | $200–$700 | $400 | One-piece vs. two-piece; flange condition |
| Bathroom sink installation | $280–$1,400 | $650 | Drop-in vs. undermount vs. vessel |
| Vanity replacement | $500–$3,000 | $1,500 | Stock 24–36 inch vs. custom; stone top |
| Bathtub replacement | $1,500–$8,000 | $2,500 | Acrylic alcove vs. cast iron vs. freestanding |
| Shower installation | $1,000–$8,000 | $3,500 | Prefab unit vs. built shower |
| Tile shower installation | $1,200–$7,000 | $2,700 | Waterproofing method; tile size; niche |
| Shower pan installation | $500–$3,500 | $1,400 | Prefab pan vs. mudded pan |
| Shower valve replacement | $200–$900 | $425 | Access panel vs. open wall |
| Shower door installation | $400–$3,000 | $1,000 | Framed vs. frameless glass |
| Bathroom tile installation | $1,500–$7,000 | $3,500 | Floor only vs. floor + wet walls |
| Lighting installation | $150–$800 | $400 | Vanity bar vs. recessed cans |
| Room painting | $300–$1,200 | $700 | Drywall repair after demo |
| Shower remodel (shower only) | $1,500–$15,000 | $5,000 | The whole wet-wall scope in one line |
An exhaust fan swap prices like other small electrical fixture work, at the marginal cost of a visit the electrician is already making — the $150 to $500 band above, before any new duct run. As a standalone call-out the same job is $200 to $1,200, typically near $550, because a $165 fan cannot absorb a trip charge on its own. Where a bathroom has no fan at all, running duct to an exterior wall or roof is the cost, not the fan.
Two of these lines are worth staring at. The wet-wall cluster — tile shower, pan, valve, door — can total $2,300 at the bottom and $14,400 at the top by itself. And tile is the line that quietly doubles: floor-only tile in a 40 square foot bathroom is a few hundred dollars of material and a day of labor, while tiling the floor plus the shower walls plus a wainscot is a $3,500 job at typical pricing.
One line is missing from the table above, and it is missing from most fixed-price remodel bids for the same reason: the room already has a door. Replacing it while the crew is in the room and the trim is already off is a marginal cost — the half bath data prices the door, casing and baseboard together at $150 to $600, typically $350. Bought afterward as its own visit it is a different number: bathroom door installation runs $150 to $2,500 with a typical job near $600, because a standalone door carries its own trip charge, its own casing labor and its own paint call. The top of that standalone range is not a better door at all — a pocket door retrofit into a finished wall is $1,000 to $3,500, of which roughly three quarters is opening the wall and closing it again.
How a Small Bathroom Compares to the Other Bathroom Projects
The word “bathroom” covers four very different budgets, and picking the wrong benchmark is the most common way a homeowner arrives at a quote that feels wrong.
| Project | Cost range | Typical | What defines it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Half bath remodel | $1,500–$12,000 | $4,500 | No shower, no tub — toilet and sink only |
| Small bathroom remodel | $3,000–$15,000 | $9,000 | Three-piece room, 35–40 sq ft |
| Accessibility remodel | $5,500–$20,000 | $12,000 | Curbless entry, grab bars, wider door |
| Full bathroom remodel | $10,000–$30,000 | $20,000 | Larger footprint, often double vanity, separate tub and shower |
The gap between a half bath at $4,500 and a small bathroom at $9,000 is almost exactly the wet wall — the shower or tub, its surround, its pan, its valve and its waterproofing. That single component is the difference between the two rooms, and it is why a powder room is the cheapest room in the house to remodel and a three-piece bathroom is not.
The gap between a small bathroom at $9,000 and a full bathroom at $20,000 is not mostly floor area. It is fixture count and fixture grade: a double vanity instead of a single, a separate soaking tub and a shower instead of one tub-shower combo, a larger tile field, and usually a longer plumbing run. A small bathroom done to a high standard costs less than a large bathroom done to a low one.
Surprise Costs and the Contingency Line
Every figure so far describes work that was planned. The other category is what demolition finds, and in a bathroom — the wettest room in the house, usually the oldest plumbing in the house — it is not rare.
| Surprise | Typical cost | Why it appears |
|---|---|---|
| Rotted or soft subfloor | $120–$400 decking, plus $150–$325 per joist sistered | Slow leak at the toilet flange or tub apron |
| Water damage in the wall cavity | Variable | Failed grout, failed pan, failed valve seal |
| Old cast-iron or galvanized pipe | $500–$3,000+ | Corroded, cannot be reconnected to new fixtures |
| No GFCI protection / undersized circuit | $150–$800 | Pre-1970s wiring meeting a modern code inspection |
| No exhaust ventilation | $150–$800 | Fan absent, or ducted into the attic instead of outside |
| Asbestos in old floor tile or mastic | Variable | Homes built before the 1980s |
| Out-of-level floor or bowed studs | $300–$1,500 | Large-format tile will not sit flat on them |
The number that makes these survivable is a contingency of 10 to 20 percent — $900 to $1,800 held back on a $9,000 job. It is the most-skipped line in a homeowner’s budget and the most-recommended one in the trade, for a simple structural reason: a bathroom is the only room where the failure mode of the previous installation is hidden inside the exact walls the remodel is about to open.
A budget written at $9,000 with no contingency is really a $9,000 budget with a 30 percent chance of becoming a $10,500 budget. A budget written at $9,000 plus $1,500 held back is a $10,500 budget that comes in at $9,000 when nothing goes wrong.
Does a Small Bathroom Remodel Pay Back?
A bathroom remodel is consistently among the mid-tier remodeling projects for cost recovery at resale — well behind the small, cheap exterior jobs and well ahead of the large discretionary ones. The National Association of Realtors tracks recovery by project type in its Remodeling Impact Report, which is the figure worth checking against a specific market rather than a number taken from a national average.
What the cost data itself says is narrower and more useful. The tiers do not recover equally. The $3,000 to $6,000 cosmetic refresh changes what a buyer sees on a walkthrough — new floor, new vanity, new fixtures, fresh paint — for a fraction of the money, and it is the tier where dollars spent and impression made line up most closely. The $12,000 to $15,000 gut with a moved toilet buys code compliance, a functioning wet wall for the next 20 years, and a layout the household actually wants; it does not usually buy a proportionally larger jump in perceived value, because a buyer cannot see a re-pitched drain. Spending toward the top of the range makes sense as a decision about living in the house, and less sense as a decision about selling it.
Materials vs. Labor
| Component | Low | Typical | High | Share of typical job |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Materials (fixtures, tile, vanity, paint) | $1,500 | $4,000 | $7,000 | ~44% |
| Labor (demo, plumbing, electrical, tile, finish) | $1,500 | $5,000 | $8,000 | ~56% |
| Total project | $3,000 | $9,000 | $15,000 | 100% |
Labor is the larger half at every tier, and the split barely moves — which is unusual, and it is a direct consequence of the room being small. There is not enough floor area for material costs to run away. Upgrading from $3-per-square-foot ceramic to $12-per-square-foot porcelain across 40 square feet adds about $360 to a $9,000 job — four percent. The same upgrade in a 400 square foot kitchen would add $3,600.
What labor buys in a small bathroom is trade count, not hours. A three-piece bathroom needs a demolition crew, a plumber, an electrician, a tile setter and a painter — five trades, each with a minimum, each needing to show up in sequence, in a room where only one of them can physically work at a time. That sequencing constraint is why a 40 square foot room takes 2 to 3 weeks and why the labor line does not shrink with the floor plan.
Trade labor for this work is billed against the same wage base the city figures below are drawn from: aggregated data puts bathroom remodeling labor near $115 per hour as a national blended rate.
Finish Grade: Where an Upgrade Is Worth It in a Small Room
Because the floor area is tiny, material grade behaves differently in a small bathroom than in any other room in the house. Upgrading a material that is sold by the square foot is cheap here. Upgrading a material that is sold by the unit is not.
| Choice | Budget | Mid | High | Cost of upgrading, 40 sq ft room |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Floor tile (per sq ft, material) | $2–$5 ceramic | $5–$12 porcelain | $15–$40 stone | +$120 to +$1,400 |
| Wall tile in the shower (per sq ft) | $2–$5 | $5–$12 | $15–$40 | +$200 to +$1,200 |
| Vanity (unit) | $500 stock | $1,500 semi-custom | $3,000 custom + stone | +$1,000 to +$2,500 |
| Tub or shower (unit) | $1,000 acrylic | $2,500 prefab + surround | $3,800+ built tile | +$1,500 to +$2,800 |
| Toilet (unit) | $200 two-piece | $400 | $700 one-piece / comfort height | +$200 to +$500 |
| Faucet and shower trim (unit) | $150 | $700 | $1,200 designer | +$550 to +$1,050 |
The pattern is unambiguous: the per-square-foot upgrades are the bargain and the per-unit upgrades are the bill. Moving the floor from builder-grade ceramic to good porcelain across 40 square feet is a few hundred dollars — in a small bathroom, the most visible material in the room can be upgraded two full grades for less than the cost of a nicer faucet set. Meanwhile the vanity, the tub and the trim package are priced per unit, and their price does not care that the room is small. A “high-end” small bathroom and a “budget” one often share the same tile and differ entirely in the fixtures.
That also explains why premium materials cannot rescue a bad layout. Stone tile on 40 square feet adds roughly $1,400 to the bill; moving the toilet three feet adds $1,500 to $3,000. The cheap-looking bathroom and the expensive-looking one are usually separated by a few hundred dollars of tile and a few thousand dollars of plumbing.
What Drives the Price
- Moving a drain — $500 to $3,500 per fixture on a framed floor. The largest single swing available. Inside a remodel, where the floor is coming up anyway, a toilet moved 3 to 6 feet adds $1,500 to $3,500 of plumbing and a slab move up to $6,000; a sink is $500 to $1,500. On its own in a finished room, moving a toilet also carries a retiled floor at $700 to $2,000.
- Rotted subfloor — $120 to $400 of decking in a 5x8 room, plus $150 to $325 per joist sistered. Found during demolition under the toilet or the tub apron in a meaningful share of gut jobs. Subfloor replacement is the most common single surprise line in a bathroom, because the leak that caused it has usually been slow and silent for years.
- Tile scope — $250 to $7,000. Floor-only in a 40 square foot room is the $250 to $1,400 line in the budget table. Adding wet walls, a niche, a curbless entry or large-format tile is what turns tile into the second-biggest line after the shower.
- Tub vs. tile shower — $1,000 to $5,500 of difference. A prefab acrylic tub-and-surround drops into the same footprint in a day. A built tile shower needs a pan, a waterproofing membrane, a mortar bed, and 3 to 5 days of a tile setter’s time.
- Vanity size and top — $500 to $3,000. A stock 24 to 36 inch vanity with an integrated top sits at the low end. A custom cabinet with a stone counter and an undermount sink sits at the high end, and in a small bathroom it is the most visible dollar in the room.
- Ventilation — $150 to $800. The International Residential Code requires bathrooms to be ventilated, by an openable window or by mechanical exhaust to the outside. A room with neither, or with a fan ducted into the attic instead of through it, is a code item that surfaces at inspection.
- Permits — $50 to $600. Triggered by moved plumbing, new circuits or altered walls; not usually by finishes.
- Age of the house — $500 to $3,000+. Galvanized supply lines, a cast-iron drain stack, undersized 15-amp wiring with no GFCI, or lead paint in a home built before 1978 all add scope that has nothing to do with the remodel the homeowner wanted.
- Water damage and mold behind the surround — variable. Aggregated data on water damaged floor repair is the closest anchor; the cost depends entirely on how far the water travelled.
DIY vs. Pro, Task by Task
A whole-bathroom DIY is a false frame — nobody sensibly does the demolition and the drain re-route and the waterproofing. The real question is which tasks come off the labor line. Labor is $5,000 of a typical $9,000 job, and it is not evenly distributed.
| Task | Pro labor cost | DIY material/tool cost | Realistic saving | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Demolition and haul-away | $250–$1,300 | $150–$400 (dumpster bag, pry bar, respirator) | $200–$900 | Low — the highest-value DIY hour in the project |
| Painting | $200–$600 | $60–$150 | $150–$450 | Low |
| Vanity + sink install | $250–$1,300 | $0 (fixture cost is the same either way) | $250–$1,300 | Low–medium |
| Toilet install | $100–$350 | $15–$40 (wax ring, bolts, supply line) | $85–$310 | Low–medium |
| Floor tile, 35–40 sq ft | $300–$900 | $120–$250 (mortar, trowel, saw rental, spacers) | $180–$650 | Medium |
| Fixture and hardware swaps | $150–$500 | $0 | $150–$500 | Low |
| Shower valve replacement | $150–$550 | $20–$350 (valve) | Low — soldering in a closed wall | High |
| Shower waterproofing and pan | $350–$1,500 | $150–$400 | Not advisable to chase | High — a failure is invisible for years |
| Drain relocation | $500–$3,000 | — | — | Licensed work in most jurisdictions |
| Electrical circuit / GFCI | $100–$500 | — | — | Permit and inspection territory |
Realistically, a homeowner doing demo, paint, fixture swaps, the toilet and the vanity removes roughly $800 to $2,500 from the labor line of a mid-range job — bringing a $9,000 remodel to around $6,500 to $8,200, while leaving every wet, buried and inspected task with the trades. That is the honest DIY math for a small bathroom. Doing the tile floor as well adds a few hundred more and adds a week.
Demolition deserves the top spot. It is unskilled, it is the cheapest possible hour of a homeowner’s time to convert into savings, and it is the one task where a small room is an advantage rather than a penalty. What it carries: dust containment, the possibility of asbestos in floor tile or mastic in homes built before the 1980s, and crystalline silica dust from cutting old tile and mortar.
Cost by City
Fixtures, tile and vanities are priced nationally — a toilet costs the same in Houston as in Chicago. Labor is $5,000 of the typical $9,000 job, and that half moves with the local trade wage base. Applying the formula City Adjusted Cost = National Average × City Labor Adjustment Factor:
| City | Labor Adjustment Factor | Adjusted Typical Project | Adjusted Full Gut | vs. National |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago, IL | 1.33 | $11,970 | $19,950 | +33% |
| Seattle, WA | 1.29 | $11,610 | $19,350 | +29% |
| New York, NY | 1.23 | $11,070 | $18,450 | +23% |
| Houston, TX | 0.93 | $8,370 | $13,950 | −7% |
| San Antonio, TX | 0.85 | $7,650 | $12,750 | −15% |
Labor adjustment factors are derived from BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025): the median ratio of local to national hourly wages across the trades that do this work. How this is calculated.
Chicago carries the highest factor in the dataset at 1.33 — higher than New York at 1.23 — which puts the same 5x8 bathroom about $4,320 apart between Chicago and San Antonio (0.85) at typical pricing. That ordering surprises people, because it does not track cost of living; trade labor is priced by union density and local contractor supply. Phoenix at 0.99 is the closest metro in the dataset to a national benchmark. The calculator above applies any city’s factor to a specific scope.
Timeline
A 2 to 3 week typical duration in a 40 square foot room is not a measure of how much work there is. It is a measure of how many trades have to queue.
| Phase | Duration | What is happening |
|---|---|---|
| Demolition | 1–2 days | Everything out; the surprises appear here |
| Plumbing and electrical rough-in | 2–4 days | Longer if fixtures move; inspection if permitted |
| Substrate and waterproofing | 2–3 days | Cement board, membrane, curing time |
| Tile and grout | 3–5 days | Setting, curing, grouting, sealing |
| Fixtures, vanity, paint, trim | 2–4 days | Reconnect, hang, caulk, punch list |
Cure times are the hidden schedule cost: mortar and grout will not be rushed, and a bathroom that is the household’s only bathroom is out of service for the whole window.
How to Reduce a Small Bathroom Remodel Cost
- Keep the three fixtures on their existing drains. This is worth $2,000 to $4,000 — more than every material downgrade in the room combined.
- Reglaze or keep the tub instead of replacing it; the tub-and-surround line is $2,500 of a typical job.
- Do the demolition. It is $250 to $1,300 of billable labor and the lowest-skill task in the project.
- Tile the floor and the wet walls, and paint everything else. Full-height tile on all four walls is the most common way a small bathroom quietly doubles its tile line.
- Choose a stock 24 to 36 inch vanity with an integrated top over a custom cabinet with a stone counter — a $1,000 to $1,500 swing in the most-looked-at object in the room.
- Get the demolition, plumbing, tile and fixture lines itemized separately, so two bids can be compared on identical scope rather than on a single number.
- Have every fixture on site before demolition day. A backordered vanity idles the whole trade queue, and the schedule is the expensive part of a small bathroom.
Related Bathroom and Flooring Costs
A small bathroom remodel is the sum of about ten smaller jobs, and each one prices differently on its own. The bathroom remodeling cost overview covers the full trade. Where the project is really just the wet wall, shower remodel ($1,500 to $15,000) is the narrower scope, and a tub-to-shower conversion ($3,000 to $10,000) is the version that reuses the existing drain.
On the floor: tile installation and porcelain tile installation cover the material most bathroom floors use, subfloor replacement covers what gets found under a leaking toilet, and the best waterproof flooring comparison covers the alternatives to tile in a wet room.
The cost calculator above applies a city factor to a specific scope, and the methodology page documents where every figure on this page comes from.
Last updated: October 2026. All figures reflect aggregated national cost data and are not a quote for a specific bathroom. Actual pricing depends on scope, fixture selection, the condition of what is behind the walls, and local market rates. See the methodology page for how figures are calculated and sourced.