Bathroom & Wet Room Costs in Southampton (2026)
Updated: Oct 4
If you've started pricing up a bathroom renovation in Southampton, you've probably found five different numbers on five different websites, and none of them tell you what your bathroom will actually cost. Real pricing depends on things a generic calculator can't see: the age of your pipework, whether the floor needs strengthening for a wet room, and how much of the existing layout you're keeping. We get asked for a "rough figure" over the phone most weeks, and giving one without seeing the room does nobody any favours.
We work on bathrooms and wet rooms right across Southampton and the surrounding areas, from Portswood and Shirley to Bitterne, Woolston and Chandler's Ford, and costs here vary more than people expect. A good chunk of that comes down to the city's housing stock. Plenty of Southampton's Victorian and Edwardian terraces have timber floors and old soil stacks, and that changes the job before anyone's even picked a tile. A 1930s semi in Highfield behaves very differently to a new-build flat near the marina. What follows is what we're actually quoting Southampton homeowners this year, not a national average pulled off a comparison site.
What a bathroom renovation costs in Southampton right now
The figures below reflect what we'd expect to charge for a typical Southampton job in 2026, based on current material and labour costs on the south coast plus our standard margin, not a bare national average. Your own quote will depend on the survey, but these are a realistic starting point for budgeting, and they include labour, materials, waste removal and our standard 2-year workmanship guarantee.
Straightforward refresh: like-for-like suite, new tiling, existing layout kept. Typically £4,200 to £6,000, over 4 to 6 working days.
Full renovation: reconfigured layout, walk-in shower, upgraded lighting and extraction. Typically £8,000 to £12,000, over 8 to 12 working days.
Wet rooms cost more, and here's why
A wet room isn't a bathroom with the shower tray taken out. It needs full tanking across the floor and walls, a formed fall down to a hidden drain, and on a lot of Southampton's older timber-floored properties, extra joist work to take the weight and give the drain somewhere to run. Skip any of that and you get damp coming through the ceiling below within a couple of years, which costs a lot more to put right than doing it properly the first time. We've seen this on jobs where a previous fitter tiled straight over an untanked floor, and by the time we got called back in, the joists underneath had started to go soft.
Standard wet room: level-access shower, roughly 2m by 2.5m. Typically £7,500 to £9,500, around 5 to 7 working days.
Larger or period-property wet room with underfloor heating and structural floor work. Typically £11,000 to £15,000, over 8 to 10 working days.
What actually pushes the price up or down
A few things move the number more than anything else on the spec sheet:
Moving the toilet or basin. This moves drainage, not just a pipe, and it's the single biggest cost driver we see on a bathroom job.
What's behind the old tiling. Southampton's older housing stock often hides damp or timber rot that only shows up once we strip back to the wall, which is exactly why we survey before we quote rather than after.
Underfloor heating. Worth it in a wet room for the comfort alone, and it typically adds £600 to £900 depending on the floor area.
Access. A ground-floor bathroom with easy skip access costs less to strip out than a loft en suite or a second-floor bathroom in a terrace.
What's included in every Complete Builds quote
Every quote we give covers the same ground, so you're comparing like for like rather than guessing what's missing. Rewiring a shower circuit, adding a compliant extractor fan, or running a new supply for underfloor heating all fall under our plumbing, heating and electrical work, and it's priced into one fixed number rather than left for you to coordinate between separate trades.
Full strip-out and disposal of the old suite and tiling
All plumbing, waste and, where needed, drainage alterations
Tanking and waterproofing to current Building Regulations standards
Electrical work, including a compliant extractor fan and shower circuit
A 2-year workmanship guarantee on the finished room
Related reading
Get a fixed price for your Southampton bathroom or wet room
If you're planning a bathroom or wet room anywhere in Southampton, or elsewhere across Hampshire and Dorset, book a free survey with Complete Builds and we'll give you a proper fixed price based on what's actually behind your walls, not a guess over the phone.
Comments