Comparisons
Bathroom renovation or refit: which do you need?
How to tell whether your bathroom needs stripping back or simply refreshing.
Not every tired bathroom needs gutting. We turn down full renovations fairly regularly because the room in front of us only needed re-tiling and resealing.
This guide sets out the signs that push a room into full renovation territory and the ones that do not.
What a refit involves
Keeping the layout and often the sanitaryware, then replacing the tiling, resealing the wet areas, making good the plaster and updating brassware or a screen. Shorter, cheaper and far less disruptive.
What a full renovation involves
Stripping the room to the walls and floor, altering plumbing, correcting the substrate, waterproofing, tiling and fitting an entirely new bathroom. It is the only route if the layout is wrong or the room is failing behind the surface.
Signs you need the full job
These are the ones we treat as decisive at survey.
- Tiles sounding hollow or lifting across a whole wall
- A floor that flexes underfoot
- Damp or staining reappearing after redecoration
- A layout that does not work for the household
- Pipework that has been added to repeatedly over the years
Signs a refit will do
Sound fittings, a layout you are happy with, and problems confined to grout, silicone or tired decoration. In that case, spending on a full renovation buys you very little you did not already have.
The middle option
Sometimes the answer is partial: re-tile the shower area properly with new tanking, keep the rest. It is not a compromise if the untouched parts are genuinely sound, and it frees budget for a better shower.
Questions
Frequently asked
Will you tell me if I do not need a full renovation?
Yes. We would rather quote the right sized job and keep a good reputation locally.
How much cheaper is a refit?
Considerably, because the plumbing and preparation are largely untouched. The exact difference depends on how much tiling is replaced.
Can you reuse my existing bath and toilet?
If they are sound and you like them, yes. Removing and refitting them carefully takes time but costs far less than replacing.
Is regrouting ever enough?
Only when the tiles are firmly fixed and the substrate is dry. If water is getting behind them, regrouting hides the problem briefly.
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