Electrician · Full or partial rewire
How much does a house rewire cost?
What a full house rewire costs in the UK in 2026, what changes the price, what a proper rewire includes and how to get an accurate quote from an electrician.
per three-bedroom house
Published UK trade day rates and merchant material prices, September 2026. Not yet based on Hard Hat Way quote data.
What changes the price
- Size of the house. More rooms, more circuits, more cable and more days
- Number of points. Every socket, switch, light and outside point is a fitting, a cable run and a box to chase in
- Empty or occupied. A rewire in an empty house is faster than one where furniture, carpets and people have to be worked around
- Access to floors and walls. Lifting floorboards is quick; lifting laminate or tiles, or chasing solid walls, is slow
- Consumer unit and bonding. A new consumer unit with RCD protection and main bonding to gas and water is part of every rewire
- Making good. Plastering over chases and filling holes is often quoted separately from the electrical work
A rewire is the biggest electrical job a house ever has. It means replacing every cable, socket, switch and light point, fitting a new consumer unit and bringing the whole installation up to current regulations. It’s disruptive and it isn’t cheap, but old wiring is one of the main causes of house fires, and once it’s done it’s done for decades.
What drives the price
Size is the starting point. A rewire is priced on the number of circuits and the number of points, and both go up with the number of rooms. A three-bedroom house is the common benchmark; a flat is less, a large detached house considerably more.
Then it’s how hard the cables are to get in. In an empty house with floorboards and plasterboard walls, an electrician can move fast. In a lived-in house with fitted carpets, laminate floors, tiled kitchens and solid walls that need chasing, every run takes longer, and the electrician has to work round furniture and keep some circuits live.
The specification matters too. More sockets per room, outside lights, an EV charger point, a cooker circuit, a shower circuit, smoke and heat alarms hard-wired in. Each one is more cable and more labour. And after the electrical work, the chases in the walls need plastering and the holes filling, which is often a separate quote from a plasterer.
What a good job includes
- A new consumer unit with RCD or RCBO protection on every circuit
- New cable throughout, with old cable removed where it’s accessible
- Main bonding to the gas and water pipes checked and brought up to standard
- Sockets, switches and light points where you agreed them, at the right heights
- Hard-wired smoke and heat alarms, interlinked, which current regulations require in many cases
- Cable runs that are safe and sensible, in chases or under floors, not tacked along skirting boards
- The whole installation tested, with the results on an Electrical Installation Certificate
- Building Regulations notification through the electrician’s registration scheme, and the certificate sent to you
- Floors and boards put back, and a clear statement of whether making good the plaster is included
How to get an accurate quote
Say how many bedrooms and reception rooms the house has, whether it’s occupied or empty, and what the floors and walls are made of. Photograph the existing fuse box or consumer unit, a typical socket and any visible old cable. List what you want: roughly how many sockets per room, any outside points, cooker, shower, EV charger. That’s enough for an electrician to give an honest starting price. The final price comes after a site visit, when they can see the routes and count the points properly.
No page can promise what your rewire will cost. Post the job with photos and get real quotes from local electricians whose work is rated by other electricians.
Common questions
How do I know if my house needs rewiring?
Signs include an old fuse box with rewirable fuses, rubber or fabric-covered cables, round-pin sockets, sockets that are warm or discoloured, lights that flicker or fuses that trip regularly. If the house hasn't been rewired in decades, an electrician can do an electrical installation condition report (EICR) and tell you whether it needs a full rewire or just some circuits.
Do I need to move out?
Not always, but it's much easier if the house is empty. A rewire means floorboards up, chases cut in walls and the power off for periods. If you're staying, the electrician will usually work room by room and keep essential circuits live where possible, but expect dust and disruption for a week or two.
What paperwork should I get at the end?
An Electrical Installation Certificate for the whole installation, and a Building Regulations compliance certificate, which a registered electrician can issue through their competent person scheme. Keep both. You'll need them when you sell, and your insurer may ask.
Free for customers. Quotes by email and in the app.