What is the most expensive part of a bathroom?

Labour is the most expensive part of a bathroom, and within the labour it is plumbing and tiling that take the biggest share. The suite itself usually comes in well below what people expect. You can buy a perfectly good bath, basin and WC for less than you will pay the tradespeople who fit them.

Tiling is slow, and slow is expensive. Setting out so the cuts land in the right places, levelling walls that are out of true (most Victorian walls in Crystal Palace and Dulwich are), cutting large-format tiles without wastage, matching a pattern across a whole wall. Floor-to-ceiling tiling in a family bathroom can keep a tiler busy for the best part of a week. Plumbing stacks up the same way when soil pipes move or shower valves get complicated.

Among the things you can see, the big spenders are shower enclosures and valves, stone or porcelain surfaces, and bespoke vanity units. Mid-range brassware performs fine. We fit it constantly and callbacks are rare.

The single best lever for controlling spend is keeping the layout as it is. Same positions, shorter pipe runs, fewer days on site. A full refit starts from £7,000 with the layout unchanged. What a whole project should cost overall is a separate question, and we answer it properly with a free site visit and a fixed written quote.