How much does it cost to rewire a 3 bedroom house?

A full rewire of your house is a large undertaking and it’s important to know all that is involved, what impacts the cost and why you might need your home rewired. If you have not read our blog covering the reasons your home might need re-wiring you can find it here.

The main things that impact the cost are:

• Amount of sockets
• Amount and type of lighting
• Number of circuits in the house
• Ease of wiring
• If the house is occupied during the work
• Finish of sockets and switches
   

When getting your home rewired you can choose the number of socket outlets in each room and their placement throughout your home. Obviously the more outlets that you have installed the more that your rewire will cost. Also consider though, that deciding you need extra points at a later date, post re-wire, will cost a lot more, not to mention the damage and upheaval again after replastering and decorating. 

For this reason, we always recommend properly planning this part of your project: consider how you will use each room now and in the future. It is better to install more while having the work completed than needing extra at a later date.

Consider your lighting options when planning your home rewire, be it standard white pendants, feature lights, wall lights, LED spotlights, external wall lights, if the lights need to be dimmable and how many switches you need.

Each installation is different and some need more circuits than others. A standard installation would include a circuit for each of the following:

• Downstairs sockets
• Kitchen sockets
• Upstairs Sockets
• Cooker
• Heating
• Immersion
• Downstairs Lighting
• Upstairs Lighting
• Smoke Alarms

However, some installations can also have extra circuits such as:

• Garage supply
• Shed supply
• Induction Hob
• Coffee Machine
• Electrical vehicle charger
   

No two homes are the same so when it comes to a re-wire and routing the cabling around the house, and certain things have an impact on this. Type of flooring is a big factor, flooring has to be lifted when routing cabling around your home so rooms with wooden or laminate flooring can be challenging and normally need to come up, tiled floors mainly seen in bathrooms would mean that a new cable route needs to be found.

Fabric or make up of the wall in a house will also be a consideration when looking at time taken to complete the works. Properties have been constructed out of various materials over the years and some are harder to work with that others. We find that homes made out of poured concrete are the most challenging for us as they are harder to chase out and fix socket and switch back boxes to.

The amount of furniture in a property can impact on the time need to rewire a property, if rooms are fairly empty or the furniture can all be moved into the middle of rooms the process is fairly simple and straight forward. But, if there is a lot of furniture big wardrobes, beds, bookshelves, tables, desks etc it really slows the whole process down as we would need to keep moving items to lift floors or to get into areas where new outlets are going.

If the house is occupied throughout the work it can make a rewire take a couple of extra days as we need to keep getting power on at the end of each day and get the house back into an orderly fashion with floorboards and furniture back in place for health and safety. If the house is un-occupied we can save the time getting the house back in order each day and trying to get some power on which saves a lot of time.

A standard installation on a 3 bedroom home for us normally looks something like the following:

• Hallway – One double socket outlet, one pendant light fitting controlled via a switch.
• Living Room -Four double socket outlets, one pendant light fitting controlled via a switch.
• Dining Room – Four double socket outlets, one pendant light fitting controlled via a switch.
• Kitchen – Four double socket outlets, one oven supply, power to appliances (washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher), one pendant light fitting controlled via a switch.
• Landing – One double socket outlet, one pendant light fitting controlled via a switch from upstairs and downstairs.
• Bathroom – One IP rated bathroom light fitting, one extractor fan.
• Bedroom 1 – Four double socket outlets, one pendant light fitting controlled via a switch.
• Bedroom 2 – Four double socket outlets, one pendant light fitting controlled via a switch.
• Bedroom 3 Four double socket outlets, one pendant light fitting controlled via a switch.
• Other – Two smoke alarms fitted and wired together situated in downstairs hallway and upstairs landing, power to Boiler and Immersion and a light in Loft.
   

Some additional or extra things we get asked to install are:

• LED spotlights (normally in the Kitchen and Bathroom)
• Movement sensored light fitting by front door
• LED floodlight at the rear of the house
• External double socket
• Power to garage or shed
• Shaver/toothbrush charger in Bathroom
• TV Points
• Reading wall lights in Bedrooms
• Two way-controlled light switching in Bedrooms.
   

The final thing that has an impact on the final cost of your rewire is the finish you choose for you outlets throughout your home. You can now get sockets and switches in a multitude of colours, and so no longer do you just have to stick with white plastic outlets. Now you can get to choose from finishes like Chrome (polished or brushed), nickel, antique brass, matt white, matt black, screwless and flatplate. I always recommend that most sockets should be white plastic as you do not see them because they get hidden behind furniture and if you are looking to spend money on a nicer finish this could just be switches and then sockets in a room where you see them, such as in the Kitchen.

Now that we have outlined what things impact on the cost you can see that there are a lot of variables to take into account. To give a rough a guide for a rewire of a three bedroom property the price on recent projects that we have completed of the same nature have ranged from £4000- £6000+Vat.