Published price guides put a full rewire of a typical three-bedroom UK home at roughly £3,500 to £7,500, and none of the three we compared says whether VAT is in that figure. The number that counts is your own itemised quote. It should name the consumer unit, count every socket and light, say who repairs the walls afterwards, and promise an Electrical Installation Certificate. In England and Wales it should say how the work gets signed off under the Building Regulations too.
Prices first. Then how to read what you've been handed.
On this page
What a full rewire costs, by size of house
Three price guides publish real numbers for this job, and they don't agree. MyJobQuote gives averages by bedroom count. WhatToCharge gives ranges. C-Lec Electrical, a firm working across Bedford, Milton Keynes and Northampton, publishes its own price for a three-bed semi or terrace. Line the three-bed prices up and the house rewire cost runs from £3,500 to £7,500.
That spread isn't sloppiness. It's what happens when a price depends on the floors, the plaster, the number of sockets and whether anyone is living in the house while the work goes on.
Two things to hold on to before you get to the numbers. On VAT, none of the three commits either way. And MyJobQuote's own page prices a three-bed at £6,500 in its table, then breaks the same job down as £3,000 of labour plus £1,050 of materials, which comes to £4,050. A guide that disagrees with itself by £2,450 is the start of an argument, not a price.
| Source | 2-bed house | 3-bed house | 4-bed house | What the source says is in the price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MyJobQuote cost guide | £4,500 average | £6,500 average | £8,500 average | Standard fittings, usually labour and materials. Decorating, full plastering, flooring and a skip are usually extra |
| WhatToCharge cost guide | £2,500 to £4,500 | £3,500 to £6,000 (semi) | £5,000 to £8,500 (detached) | Labour and materials: new wiring, consumer unit, sockets, switches and lights. Replastering after chasing is separate |
| C-Lec Electrical, an electrician covering Bedford, Milton Keynes and Northampton | Not published | £4,500 to £7,500 (semi or terrace) | Not published | New metal consumer unit, RCD protection, testing, certification and Part P notification. Says some quotes include patch plastering and some don't |
None of the three says whether its figure includes VAT.
Why two quotes for the same house can be thousands apart
Same house, same brief, two prices thousands apart. It happens constantly, and the reasons are usually physical.
Floors come first. C-Lec puts solid ground floors at £400 to £900 in extra materials on its own jobs, because cables can't be dropped between joists and have to take a longer route. Hard pre-1960 plaster is the other big one. That firm adds £300 to £600 for the extra time chasing it.
Then there's you. An occupied house slows everything down, because the furniture has to be shifted ahead of the electrician from one room to the next and the power has to go back on every evening before anyone goes home. An empty house is quicker, so it's cheaper.
The finish matters more than it sounds. Sockets with flat plates or USB ports need deeper back boxes. That means chasing further into the wall, and the labour goes up.
Extra circuits you want while the walls are open all add: an electric shower, a car charger, a supply to the shed. So does making good, when it's in the price at all.
Pro tip: Ask how the price was built. Some electricians estimate the working days a rewire will take and charge for those. Others charge a fixed amount per point, meaning every socket, switch and light. Neither is wrong. You can only compare two quotes once you know which kind you're holding, and a per-point price moves every time you add a socket.
The plastering and decorating the price usually leaves out
MyJobQuote and WhatToCharge both put plastering and decorating outside their figures, and C-Lec says making good varies from quote to quote. So the electrician's price is rarely the whole bill.
Our own cost profiles put a number on what comes after. Across 600 jobs, the plasterers average £2,269, from £598 to £5,965. Across 707 jobs, painters and decorators average £2,365, from £471 to £6,089. Those cover plastering and decorating work of every kind rather than rewire patching alone, so read them as the size of the trade, not the size of your patch.
The useful move is to ask each electrician one plain question. Do I get walls I can paint, or walls I have to pay someone else to fix first? A quote that leaves you with chased channels in every room and no plasterer booked is cheaper for a reason.
VAT, and when an empty home cuts it to 5%
Most rewires carry VAT at 20%. A firm below the £90,000 registration threshold may not be VAT-registered, which is one honest reason a quote can come in low.
There's one exception worth knowing about. Under HMRC's VAT Notice 708, work on a home that nobody has lived in for the two years before it starts can be charged at 5%. Wiring sits on its list of building materials. A letter from the council's Empty Property Officer saying the place has been empty for two years is enough proof on its own. One catch: if the job needs building control approval and hasn't got it, the notice puts the work back to the standard rate.
The money involved is real. A £6,000 rewire before VAT comes to £7,200 at 20%, and £6,300 at 5%. That's £900 of difference, which buys a lot of plastering.
Does the house need a full rewire, or a report first?
Before you pay for a rewire, get a report on what's actually there. An Electrical Installation Condition Report, or EICR, is an inspection and test of the wiring you already have. It records whether the installation is satisfactory and what defects need attention.
The report comes back with a code against each fault, and the codes are the part most people find baffling. We've set out what the codes on a condition report mean separately.
Old wiring isn't automatically unsafe
Electrical Safety First is blunt about this. "There are no set guidelines as to when a property should be rewired," the charity says, and "just because your wiring's old, it doesn't mean it's unsafe." It advises an inspection at least every 10 years in an owner-occupied home, and every five years in a rented one.
Age on its own isn't a verdict. What changes the answer is whether you're about to renovate. If the plaster is coming off and the floors are coming up anyway, doing the wiring first saves cutting into fresh walls later.
Be careful with the thing people trust most. A shiny consumer unit with a recent sticker doesn't prove that the cables behind the wall are new or safe. Sellers sometimes point at one to say the house is fine. Ask for the condition report instead.
There's also a middle option that rarely appears in a quote. A partial rewire may be enough if the existing cabling is sound and can carry the extra loads. The condition report helps the electrician decide whether repair, partial renewal or a full rewire is justified.
What an electrician looks for
You can do a walk round before anyone comes out. Electrical Safety First's inspection guide names the things that date an installation.
Look at the fuse box first. An old one with a wooden back, cast-iron switches, or a mix of both needs replacing. Then the sockets and switches: round-pin sockets, round light switches, fabric-covered flex hanging from a ceiling rose, black switches or sockets set into the skirting boards. All of that is old.
Cables give the game away where you can see them, in a loft or under the stairs. Black rubber coating was phased out in the 1960s. Lead or fabric coating is older still.
Look, but don't open anything up: taking covers off sockets or the fuse box is the electrician's job, not yours.
What a fair rewire quote spells out
Before anyone prices the job, walk the house with a pencil. Mark where you want sockets, where the TV is going, which wall the bed will be against, and every spot where you've been reaching for an extension lead for years. Hand the same marks to every electrician who quotes. Otherwise you get three prices for three different jobs and no way to compare them.
Then hold each quote against this list. A fair one names most of it without being asked.
- The consumer unit model, and whether circuits get their own RCBOs, arc fault detection devices or surge protection.
- A room-by-room count of sockets, switches and light points, matched to marks you've made on the walls.
- Smoke and heat alarms: how many, which type, and where they go.
- Any extra circuits you want while the walls are open, such as an electric shower, an EV charger or a garden supply.
- The finish of sockets and switches, since flat-plate and USB fronts can need deeper back boxes and more chasing.
- Whether cables are chased into the walls or run in surface trunking, and who lifts and relays floorboards and carpets.
- Who makes good afterwards: patch plastering included, or walls left ready for your own plasterer.
- What happens to the old cables: taken out, or permanently disconnected where they can't be removed.
- Rubbish removal, including any skip.
- Testing, and an Electrical Installation Certificate with its schedules of inspections, circuit details and test results.
- How the work gets approved in England and Wales: the competent person scheme named, or a building control application and who pays its fee.
- VAT as its own line, plus the start date, the days on site and the days without power.
Get all of it in writing before anyone starts, and keep the quote somewhere safe. A rewire is the classic job where the number grows once the floorboards come up, and there are rules about when a final bill can go past the quote.
Red flag: If the paperwork promised at the end is an EICR, ask again. The IET's model certificate says new work gets an Electrical Installation Certificate, and a condition report is for inspecting an existing installation.
The paperwork a rewire should leave you with
The invoice proves you paid. The certificates record how the work was designed, installed, inspected and tested, and a buyer's solicitor, insurer or future electrician may ask to see them. Keep them somewhere you'll still find them in ten years.
One date is worth knowing if your job runs into the autumn. The IET, which co-publishes the wiring regulations with BSI, says Amendment 3 of BS 7671 "remains a valid standard until 15 October 2026" and that until then "electrical installers may work to either edition". On a rewire finishing near that date, ask which amendment your certificate cites.
What you end up holding depends on where the house is.
| Where the home is | Does the rewire need building approval? | Who confirms the work complies | What you should be handed |
|---|---|---|---|
| England | Yes. New circuits and a new consumer unit make it notifiable work | A registered electrician self-certifies through a competent person scheme, or building control inspects | An Electrical Installation Certificate, plus a Building Regulations compliance certificate or a building control completion certificate |
| Wales | Yes. Wales runs its own version of the rules, and a rewire isn't on its list of exempt minor jobs | The same two routes as England | The same two documents as England |
| Scotland | Usually no building warrant for work inside a house. Flats, maisonettes and some taller houses fall outside that exemption | Where a warrant applies, the council's building standards team, which must accept a certificate from an approved certifier for the electrics | An Electrical Installation Certificate, and where a warrant applies, an accepted completion certificate |
| Northern Ireland | No. Its building regulations have no part covering electrical installations | No building-control body signs off the wiring | An Electrical Installation Certificate to BS 7671 |
England and Wales: two certificates and a 30-day clock
A rewire adds new circuits and replaces the consumer unit. In England, that is exactly what regulation 12(6A) of the Building Regulations 2010 makes notifiable. Wales runs its own version of regulation 12, and its short list of exempt minor electrical jobs stops at things like replacing a damaged cable on a single circuit. A whole-house rewire with a new consumer unit isn't on it either.
Two routes, then. A registered electrician can self-certify through a competent person scheme, which GOV.UK says keeps your price down because there are no building control fees. Or you apply to building control before work starts and collect a completion certificate at the end.
If your electrician self-certifies, regulation 20 gives them 30 days from finishing to hand you a copy of the compliance certificate and to tell building control. GOV.UK's own guidance says to expect that certificate within eight weeks. If nothing has landed after 30 days, ask which scheme they notified, and ask in writing.
Separately, you should get the Electrical Installation Certificate itself, with the schedule of inspections, the circuit details and the test results attached. Its Section D says when the next inspection is due, which is the date to diarise.
Before you hire a firm, check it on the Registered Competent Person Electrical register, which covers homes in England and Wales. Our guide to how to check a tradesperson's registration does the same for the other trades.
One more for anyone selling. The Law Society's TA6 notes say all electrical work since 1 January 2005 must follow the building regulations, and they ask sellers to hand over the completion certificate, the compliance certificate or the Electrical Installation Certificate.
Scotland: usually no warrant for a house, but the same standard
Scotland has no Part P. It has building warrants, and Schedule 3 of the Building (Scotland) Regulations 2004 lets "any work to or in a house" go ahead without one, as long as the work still meets the building standards.
Read the exceptions before you relax. The same schedule pulls out work that adversely affects a separating wall, and work to a house with a storey more than 4.5 metres up. "House" also has a narrow meaning here: a home divided from every other part of the building only vertically. A flat or a maisonette is divided horizontally, so it sits outside the exemption.
If you're in a flat, a tall house or the work may affect a separating wall, ring the council's building standards team before work starts. It's one call and it settles the question.
Where a warrant does apply, an approved certifier of construction for electrical installations can certify the electrics, and the council has to accept that certificate. The Scottish Government keeps the register of those certifiers. Either way, you still want the Electrical Installation Certificate in your hands at the end.
Northern Ireland: no Part P, so keep the certificate safe
Northern Ireland's building regulations have no electrical part at all. Its Part P covers sanitary appliances and hot water, not wiring, and Electrical Safety First puts the position plainly: there's no statutory equivalent of Part P there.
That doesn't mean the wiring standard stops at the border. The work should still be designed, installed and tested to BS 7671, which is the standard across the UK.
It does mean one thing for you. Building control won't sign off the wiring, so the Electrical Installation Certificate is the main compliance record for a future buyer, insurer or electrician. Put it in the quote, and keep it with the deeds.
How the work runs, and whether you can stay at home
The order matters more than people expect, and it's why a rewire eats weeks of calendar time for days of actual work.
Start with the condition report. If the house was built or refurbished before 2000 and the work may disturb suspect materials, check for asbestos before work begins. HSE says any building from before that year may contain asbestos, including in the textured ceiling coatings people call Artex, and that changes where cables can run and what anyone can drill.
Then first fix: floorboards up, walls chased, new cables pulled through, back boxes set. Then the plastering, which is somebody else's trade and somebody else's diary. Then second fix, sometimes weeks later, when sockets and switches go on, the consumer unit goes in and the whole installation gets tested. Then the certificates.
For a three-bed, MyJobQuote estimates four to five days and WhatToCharge estimates five to seven. Treat those as guide-page estimates, not a promise about the calendar span once plastering is scheduled.
Can you live in it? Usually yes, and plenty of people do. The electrician has to make the power safe again each evening and work around your furniture, which stretches the job out. An empty house is faster and cheaper. If you're staying, expect dust in every room and no power at all in the room being worked on.
Don't chase the walls or fit back boxes unless the electrician has agreed the routes and box depths first. Flat plates and USB sockets can need deeper boxes, so agree the accessories before anyone cuts into the wall.
So, in order: book the condition report, then get three itemised quotes priced against the same checklist. Electrical Safety First recommends at least three before any major electrical work. You'll find electricians near you in our directory, and here's how we check the businesses we list.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to rewire a 3 bed house in the UK?
Between roughly £3,500 and £7,500, depending which guide you read. WhatToCharge puts a three-bed semi at £3,500 to £6,000, MyJobQuote gives a £6,500 average, and C-Lec quotes £4,500 to £7,500 for a semi or terrace. Plastering and decorating are usually extra, and none of the three says whether VAT is in the number.
How long does it take to rewire a house?
For a three-bed, MyJobQuote says four to five days of electrical work and WhatToCharge says five to seven. That's time on site, not calendar time. The job splits into first fix, then plastering, then second fix and testing, so the whole thing often spans a few weeks. An occupied house takes longer than an empty one.
Can you live in a house while it's being rewired?
Usually yes, and plenty of people do. Expect the power off for most of each working day, dust everywhere, and the electrician making things safe again each evening before leaving. Furniture gets moved from room to room as the work travels through the house. It's slower and dearer than rewiring an empty house.
Does a rewire need building regulations approval?
In England and Wales, yes. Either a scheme-registered electrician self-certifies it, or you apply to building control. In Scotland, work inside a house usually needs no building warrant, though it still has to meet the building standards, and flats and some taller houses should check with the council. Northern Ireland's building regulations don't cover electrical work at all.
What certificate should I get after a rewire?
An Electrical Installation Certificate, with its schedules of inspections, circuit details and test results. In England and Wales you should also get a Building Regulations compliance certificate within 30 days of completion, or a building control completion certificate. GOV.UK says to expect that one within eight weeks. For a normal rewire, the completion document is an EIC, not an EICR, which assesses an existing installation.
How often should a house be rewired?
There's no set age. Electrical Safety First says there are no set guidelines for when a property should be rewired, and that old wiring isn't automatically unsafe. What it does advise is an inspection at least every 10 years in an owner-occupied home, and every five years in a rented one. Your certificate's Section D gives the next date.
Do I need to rewire my house to sell it?
No. In England and Wales the TA6 property form asks about electrical work done since 1 January 2005 and for its certificates, and the Law Society's notes say an EICR isn't a legal requirement for a sale there. That form covers England and Wales only, so ask your solicitor about a Scottish or Northern Irish sale. A buyer who plans to let will want a current report.