What should you expect during a bathroom remodel?

Expect the room to be fully out of service through a fixed sequence: demolition first, then plumbing and electrical rough-in, then fixtures, then tile and flooring, then paint and finish — This Old House's checklist order. Midrange scopes run 6-10 weeks and full guts 8-16 weeks in the national baseline, with inspections punctuating the trade transitions. Our order-of-operations and timeline guides walk each phase.

How much does a bathroom vanity cost installed?

Homewyse's national average for installing a midrange bathroom vanity is $576 to $871 per vanity — basic mid-range labor with in-stock materials, excluding plumbing or electrical modifications, contractor overhead, and permits.

Does a bathroom remodel include the permit?

Not automatically — permits are commonly excluded from line-item pricing (Homewyse's unit-cost estimates, for instance, exclude them), and whether your scope needs one depends on what moves. A trustworthy contract states who pulls the permit; our permit guide covers when one is required and what it costs.

National guide

What does a bathroom remodel include?

Updated Aug 20267 sources

The short answer

It depends which of three tiers you buy. A cosmetic refresh includes paint, a new vanity, mirror, faucets, and fixtures. A midrange remodel — the Cost vs. Value standard scope — includes new tub or shower surrounds, toilet, vanity, and flooring, keeping the layout. A full gut includes demolition to the studs, new plumbing and electrical rough-in, waterproofing, tile, and all-new fixtures. Each tier includes the one below it, plus the trades that make it stick.

What an average can't tell you

A market-average range compresses very different projects into one number, and most of what sets your price is invisible to it. It cannot tell you which scope tier your project belongs to — a cosmetic refresh, a partial remodel, and a full gut renovation are priced from different baselines whose midpoints sit far apart — and it does not know your bathroom’s square footage, which moves every one of those baselines.

It also cannot see whether any plumbing is being relocated, the finish level you would actually choose, or the age of your house — homes from different construction eras tend to conceal different problems, and those surface once the walls are open. Even within one metro, labor pricing shifts from ZIP code to ZIP code in ways a single average flattens out.

Those are answerable questions, and they are exactly the estimator’s inputs. It starts from sourced national cost data and recomputes the range for your scope, size, plumbing, and finishes — the factually correct next step after any market average.

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The three scope tiers, precisely defined

Cosmetic refresh: NerdWallet's sub-$5,000 renovation scope is a concrete checklist — painting; replacing a vanity, mirror, or medicine cabinet; and swapping faucets and fixtures. Nothing is demolished, no trade rough-in changes, and This Old House describes the same tier as cosmetic changes like painting and hardware swaps.

Midrange remodel: the industry's benchmark definition comes from the Cost vs. Value Report's standard project (quoted by Opendoor) — a 5×7 ft bathroom getting new tub/shower surrounds, toilet, vanity, and flooring, at $26,138 nationally. The layout stays; the surfaces and fixtures change. The Houzz survey's parallel definition of a 'major' remodel is one where at least the shower is upgraded.

Full gut: everything above plus demolition and removal, updated plumbing and electrical, wet-area waterproofing, and tile — This Old House's remodel checklist orders it as demolition, then plumbing and electrical work, then fixtures, then tiling and flooring, then paint and finish. This is the tier where permits and inspections are almost always in scope.

National planning range for a midrange (partial) remodel that replaces the wet area and fixtures in place: $13,150 to $51,750.

ESTIMATE

Computed by the shared estimate engine from the national 'Partial remodel' baseline line item ($14,609–$45,000, sourced from This Old House and the 2025 Houzz study). No sourced local adjustment is applied, so the engine widens the range (×0.9 low, ×1.15 high) and rounds to the nearest $10.

What a remodel includes that a quote may not

Read any bid for what sits outside it. Homewyse's vanity-installation pricing, for example, explicitly excludes plumbing or electrical modifications, contractor overhead, and permits — and that exclusion pattern repeats across line-item pricing everywhere. Waterproofing membranes, disposal fees, permit costs, and discovery work behind opened walls are the classic quietly-excluded items that turn a clean quote into an over-budget project.

Timeline is part of scope too. In the national baseline our estimator uses, a cosmetic refresh runs about 2 to 4 weeks, a midrange remodel 6 to 10 weeks, and a full gut 8 to 16 weeks of project time — if a bid's schedule is dramatically shorter than its tier suggests, something in the scope above is missing from it.

Get a local answer

National ranges only go so far — labor rates, permit rules, and housing stock move the numbers in every metro. See the local guides, each with a cost estimator:

Sources

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