From about $6,000–$11,000 for a straightforward powder room update to $50,000+ for a larger primary bathroom gutted and rebuilt.
For the full bathrooms most homeowners are talking about, $20,000–$33,000 is a realistic range for a cosmetic remodel, while a full gut generally runs $30,000–$45,000 with standard finishes.
Bathrooms are small rooms.
They are not cheap rooms.
You’ve got plumbing, electrical, tile, waterproofing, cabinetry, fixtures and several different trades working inside a relatively small space. And unlike a bedroom or living room, a mistake in a bathroom can involve water.
That’s why the first thing I want to know isn’t what tile you like. It’s how far we’re taking the bathroom apart.
A 25-square-foot powder room and a 100-square-foot primary bathroom shouldn’t be in the same pricing conversation. For our purposes, I break bathrooms into three pretty simple categories.
That distinction alone changes the amount of tile, cabinetry, plumbing, glass and labor going into the room. Then we need to figure out what we’re actually doing to it.
You don’t automatically need to gut a bathroom because it’s ugly. If the plumbing is staying where it is and we don’t have a reason to tear every wall open, a cosmetic remodel can make a lot of sense.
We’re replacing surfaces and fixtures — new tile, vanity, toilet, faucets and paint. The walls only come open where they have to.
For a typical full bathroom, that generally runs $20,000–$33,000 with standard finishes. A powder room is considerably less at around $6,000–$11,000. A larger primary bathroom starts around $26,000–$40,000 for the same basic scope.
And cosmetic doesn’t mean cheap. It means we’re deliberately leaving parts of the bathroom alone because there’s no reason to tear them apart.
We recently completed a cosmetic full bathroom for about $27,000. It got a new tiled shower, new floor and paint without turning the project into a full gut. Sometimes that’s exactly what the room needs.
Then there are the other ones.
The shower has been leaking.
The floor has movement.
The plumbing needs reworked.
Or the bathroom has simply reached the point where trying to preserve what’s there doesn’t make sense.
That’s a full gut. Everything comes out to the studs. Now we can inspect the subfloor, rework plumbing and electrical, and rebuild the waterproofing from scratch.
For a full bathroom, a full gut generally runs $30,000–$45,000 with standard finishes. A powder room is around $11,000–$17,000. A primary bathroom generally starts around $35,000–$52,000.
Those numbers climb as selections get more expensive, but there’s another reason a gut costs more. We’re rebuilding the parts of the bathroom you won’t see when we’re finished. In a bathroom, those parts matter.
This is probably one of the most important things to understand before comparing bathroom estimates.
Tile is not waterproofing.
Neither is grout.
The system behind the tile is what keeps water from getting into the framing and subfloor. You’ll never see it in the finished bathroom. You’ll see the tile, shower fixtures and glass. But behind all of that needs to be a properly built waterproofing system.
We’ve seen what happens when that part is done badly. Leaks don’t necessarily show up the next morning — water can get where it shouldn’t be for a long time before the homeowner realizes there’s a problem. By then, fixing the shower may also mean fixing everything the water damaged around it.
We don’t install shower inserts. Every shower we build is tiled, and the waterproofing behind the tile is part of the price. It’s not something we treat as an upgrade later.
Take the same full bathroom. One homeowner chooses a stock vanity, standard tile and good, straightforward fixtures. Another chooses a semi-custom vanity, larger-format tile, a built-in shower niche, upgraded fixtures and a glass shower door. Another wants custom cabinetry, stone surfaces and frameless glass.
Same room. Very different amount of money going into it.
| Full gut, full bathroom | Range |
|---|---|
| Standard finishes | $30,000–$45,000 |
| Upgraded finishes | $35,000–$53,000 |
| Luxury finishes | $44,000–$65,000 |
And I wouldn’t automatically recommend the most expensive option. If you don’t care about custom cabinetry, don’t buy custom cabinetry. If a standard tile gives you exactly the look you want, use it.
I’d rather put the money into the parts of the bathroom that determine whether it lasts than spend it upgrading things you don’t actually care about.
Primary bathrooms have more of almost everything.
More floor.
More tile.
More cabinetry.
More plumbing fixtures.
Often more glass.
| Primary bathroom | Range |
|---|---|
| Cosmetic, standard finishes | $26,000–$40,000 |
| Full gut, standard finishes | $35,000–$52,000 |
| Full gut, upgraded finishes | $41,000–$61,000 |
| Full gut, luxury finishes | $51,000–$75,000 |
And that’s before things like moving fixtures, adding a freestanding tub or installing heated flooring.
One of our more involved primary bathrooms came in around $45,000–$50,000. That project included a tiled shower, tiled floor and freestanding tub, and was more complicated than the average bathroom. That’s a much better reference point than some national “average cost per square foot” number.
You look at the bathroom and think the toilet would make more sense on the other wall. Maybe it would. But you’re not moving a chair — you’re moving plumbing.
Depending on what’s changing, relocating fixtures can add roughly $4,000–$10,000.
Sometimes it’s absolutely worth it. Moving things may give us room for a better shower, fix a terrible layout or make a cramped bathroom work considerably better. But I wouldn’t move plumbing just because we can. If moving a fixture doesn’t make the bathroom noticeably better, I’d rather leave it alone and spend that money somewhere else.
Freestanding tubs are popular in larger primary bathrooms. Before putting one in, I’d think about whether anybody in the house actually takes baths. If you do, great. If nobody has taken a bath since 2017, I’m not sure I’d give up floor space and several thousand dollars just because the tub looks good in a rendering.
Build the bathroom for the way you live.
You absolutely don’t need it. But this is one of those upgrades you actually notice. A tiled floor in Central PA in January is cold. A heated one isn’t.
If you’re trying to hold the budget down, skip it. If the budget allows for it and you like the idea, the time to install it is while the floor is already being rebuilt.
This is where I want to be careful, because homeowners naturally assume a price range includes everything they can picture in the finished room. The base ranges above do not include:
| Not included | Add |
|---|---|
| Moving fixtures | $4,000–$10,000 |
| Freestanding tub | $3,000–$7,000 |
| Heated floor | $2,500–$5,000 |
Your finish level matters too. The standard ranges assume a stock vanity, standard tile, a tiled shower and quality but ordinary fixtures. If you’re looking at semi-custom cabinetry, larger-format tile, upgraded fixtures, built-in niches and upgraded glass, use the upgraded ranges. If you’re choosing custom cabinetry, stone surfaces and frameless glass, don’t compare your project against the standard number.
That’s how a $40,000 expectation turns into a $60,000 bathroom.
If you’re trying to decide whether this project is even financially realistic, this is where I’d start.
| What you’re planning | Standard finish range |
|---|---|
| Cosmetic powder room | $6,000–$11,000 |
| Full-gut powder room | $11,000–$17,000 |
| Cosmetic full bathroom | $20,000–$33,000 |
| Full-gut full bathroom | $30,000–$45,000 |
| Cosmetic primary bathroom | $26,000–$40,000 |
| Full-gut primary bathroom | $35,000–$52,000 |
Then account for the finish level and anything you’re adding or moving. You don’t need to know the exact faucet yet. You just need to know whether you’re planning a $25,000 bathroom or a $60,000 bathroom. That’s enough information to make some decisions.
Bathrooms are one place where I’d be particularly careful comparing two estimates by the number at the bottom. Ask what they’re actually building.
A bathroom can look good in pictures on the day it’s finished and still be built badly. Waterproofing doesn’t photograph particularly well. Neither does plumbing inside the wall. And those are exactly the things that can force you to tear apart a finished bathroom if they fail.
We’ve helped a Central PA homeowner through exactly that situation after another contractor’s bathroom work had to be torn back out — here’s what happened.
The plumbing leaked.
The tile had severe lippage, which means neighboring tiles were sitting at noticeably different heights instead of creating a reasonably even surface.
The shower sill was cracked.
The expensive bathroom isn’t always the one with the higher estimate. Sometimes it’s the one you have to build twice.
If you’re planning a bathroom remodel around Selinsgrove, Lewisburg, Sunbury, Northumberland, Danville, Shamokin Dam, Milton, Watsontown or elsewhere in the Susquehanna Valley, don’t start with a national average. Start with your actual bathroom.
Powder room, full bath or primary?
Cosmetic or full gut?
Standard, upgraded or luxury finishes?
Are we moving plumbing? Adding a tub? Adding heated floors?
Once you answer those questions, the range gets a lot narrower. And that’s really the purpose of publishing these numbers. You should be able to find out whether the project is in your budget before spending three weeks collecting bids.
If you’re still six months or a year away, start with the cost calculator. Answer a few questions and it’ll give you a starting range based on the same pricing we’ve been talking about here.
If that range works for you, the next step is a fifteen minute phone call. No reason to spend hours designing a $60,000 bathroom if you were planning to spend $25,000. Get the number in the right neighborhood first. Then worry about the tile.
Fifteen minutes on the phone. You’ll have a realistic range before we hang up — and if we’re not the right people for it, I’ll tell you.