Which? on the crew
Rewiring often takes at least two people.
It may be done more quickly with more staff, but costs (total man hours) are likely to be the same.
Three UK guides price a 3 bed rewire somewhere between £4,000 and £18,000.
The work takes 4 to 10 days.
The rest of the bill pays for new cable throughout, sockets and switches, a metal consumer unit, which is the modern fuse box, and the testing and certificate at the end.
Every price on this page is printed exactly as its guide prints it, and the one sum that is ours is marked where it appears.
What the guides say a rewire costs
Whole job prices, labour and materials together, by the house sizes each guide uses.
No range here has been turned into a midpoint or blended with another guide's.
Checkatrade prices removal of the old wiring and fittings, new wiring throughout, standard white sockets and switches, a metal consumer unit, and testing and certification.
It leaves out major plastering, redecorating and flooring, which most rewires disturb.
| Guide | Property | Price as published |
|---|---|---|
| Checkatrade | 1 bed flat | £3,000 to £4,800 |
| Checkatrade | 2 bed flat | £3,800 to £5,800 |
| Checkatrade | 3 bed house | £4,450 to £8,000 |
| Checkatrade | 4 bed house | £6,080 to £9,380 |
| Checkatrade | 5 bed house | £7,500 to £12,500 |
| MyJobQuote | Flat or maisonette | £3,200 to £5,500 |
| MyJobQuote | Terraced house | £3,800 to £6,200 |
| MyJobQuote | Semi detached house | £6,000 to £7,500 |
| MyJobQuote | Detached house | £6,500 to £10,500 |
| MyJobQuote | Old house | £7,500 to £12,500 |
| MyBuilder | Any house | £3,000 to £9,000 |
| MyBuilder | 3 bed house | £4,500 to £8,000 |
| Which? | 2 bed terraced house | £3,000 to £12,000 |
| Which? | 3 bed semi detached house | £4,000 to £18,000 |
| Which? | 4 bed detached house | £5,000 to £25,000 |
Dates and VAT as each guide states them: Checkatrade June 2026, before VAT; MyJobQuote 7 September 2026, VAT not stated; MyBuilder 21 August 2026, VAT not stated; Which? 1 May 2026, before VAT.
Your next step
For the electrician pricing the rewire, the next step is a day rate that covers your own costs.
The Rate Sorted calculator opens on electrician, builds that rate from your overheads and turns it into a rewire quote you can send.
Cite this page
The prices belong to the guides named beside them, and the per electrician sums are ours.
Downloadrewire-costs.csvEvery published price and job length, with the labour each length comes to.
Cite this pageThe Day Rate Report, what it costs to rewire a house as UK guides publish it, read 30 September 2026, https://thedayrate.co.uk/cost-to-rewire-a-house/
The comparison and the per electrician arithmetic are free to cite with a credit and a link back, under CC BY 4.0.
How long it takes to rewire a house
Days on site as each guide prints them.
For a 3 bed house they run from 4 to 10 days, so the slowest estimate is more than twice the quickest.
The guides do not agree.
| Guide | Property | Days as published |
|---|---|---|
| MyJobQuote | 1 bed flat | 2 to 3 |
| Checkatrade | 1 bed flat | 4 to 7 |
| MyJobQuote | 2 bed house | 3 to 4 |
| Which? | 2 bed terraced house | 5 to 8 |
| MyJobQuote | 3 bed house | 4 to 5 |
| MyBuilder | 3 bed house | 5 to 7 |
| Checkatrade | 3 bed house | 6 to 10 |
| Which? | 3 bed semi detached house | 6 to 10 |
| MyJobQuote | 4 bed house | 5 to 7 |
| Which? | 4 bed detached house | 10 to 15 |
| MyJobQuote | 5 bed house | 6 to 8 |
| Checkatrade | 5 bed house | 10 to 15 |
Checkatrade gives a 4 bed house as 1 to 2 weeks, which is left out here because turning weeks into days needs a working week it never states.
What the labour in a rewire comes to
None of the guides read publishes the man hours in a rewire, and the construction register this site uses for plastering and tiling has no figure for it either.
What the guides do publish is the days, so the table below multiplies each 3 bed estimate by the £280 electrician day rate this site benchmarks.
That sum is ours, and it is for each electrician on site.
| Guide | Days | One electrician, ours | Two electricians, ours |
|---|---|---|---|
| MyJobQuote | 4 to 5 | £1,120 to £1,400 | £2,240 to £2,800 |
| MyBuilder | 5 to 7 | £1,400 to £1,960 | £2,800 to £3,920 |
| Checkatrade | 6 to 10 | £1,680 to £2,800 | £3,360 to £5,600 |
| Which? | 6 to 10 | £1,680 to £2,800 | £3,360 to £5,600 |
MyJobQuote on the crew
In most properties a full rewire can be carried out by a single electrician, although larger or more complex renovation work may require two electricians working together.
The labour prices a guide publishes itself
MyJobQuote prices the labour in a 3 bed rewire at £3,000, with £1,050 of materials on top.
Spread over its own 4 to 5 days, that is more than one electrician at any day rate it publishes, which runs £200 to £400.
So its labour price only works if at least two people are on the job.
| City | Labour only, 3 bed house |
|---|---|
| London | £3,200 to £4,400 |
| Bristol | £3,200 to £3,850 |
| Leeds | £2,750 to £3,400 |
| Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow | £2,750 to £3,300 |
| Liverpool | £2,600 to £3,300 |
| Nottingham | £2,500 to £2,750 |
Where a guide disagrees with itself
Printed rather than tidied away, because a reader comparing quotes deserves to know.
| Guide | It says | And it says |
|---|---|---|
| MyJobQuote | A 3 bed house averages £6,500. | Its own 3 bed breakdown is £3,000 labour and £1,050 materials, which adds up to £4,050. |
| MyJobQuote | A semi detached house costs £6,000 to £7,500 in its table. | The illustration on the same page says £5,500 to £8,000. |
| MyBuilder | It opens by saying a rewire might cost around £1,900. | Every whole house range on the same page starts at £3,000 or more. |
MyBuilder's 1 bed flat and 5 bed ranges also match Checkatrade's to the pound, so those two rows are not two guides agreeing.
Common questions
The same answers the structured data on this page gives a search engine, word for word.
How much does it cost to rewire a house in the UK?
Checkatrade puts a 3 bed house at £4,450 to £8,000 before VAT, labour and materials together, updated June 2026.
MyBuilder publishes £4,500 to £8,000 for the same size of house.
Which? publishes the widest range of the four, £4,000 to £18,000 for a 3 bed semi before VAT, from 19 Which? Trusted Traders it surveyed.
This site publishes no whole job price of its own.
How long does it take to rewire a house?
For a 3 bed house the four guides say anything from 4 to 10 days.
MyJobQuote is the quickest at 4 to 5 days.
Checkatrade and Which? both say 6 to 10.
Which? adds that an occupied house takes longer to rewire than an empty one.
How much is the labour to rewire a 3 bed house?
MyJobQuote publishes £3,000 of labour for a 3 bed house, and its labour only table by city runs from £2,500 in Nottingham to £4,400 in London.
At the £280 electrician benchmark, the 4 to 10 days the guides publish comes to £1,120 to £2,800 for each electrician on site, which is our arithmetic and not a published figure.
Over MyJobQuote's own 4 to 5 days they only meet if two electricians do the job, which Which? says often happens.
Do you need to move out while a house is rewired?
None of the four guides says you must.
Checkatrade says knowing how long a rewire takes helps you judge whether temporary accommodation may be needed.
Which? says an occupied house takes longer to rewire than an empty one, so staying in usually stretches the job rather than stopping it.
Does the price of a rewire include plastering?
Not in the prices Checkatrade publishes.
It leaves out major plastering, redecorating and flooring, which most rewires disturb.
Budget for making good the walls separately.
The electrician day rate behind the sumsThe benchmark, the spread the guides publish, and all 30 town figures.Electrician day rates →Why a job price is not days times a rateThe gap between the two, worked through for decorating.Day rate or price per job →Fitting a new boiler too?How long each kind of boiler job takes, and what the guides charge for it.Boiler installation →Every guide hereThe pages that answer a question rather than publishing a rate.All the guides →