What factors will affect the cost of my bathroom remodel?

Are you considering a bathroom remodel? Have you been wondering what factors affect the cost of a remodel?

What drives the cost of a bathroom remodel? What will cause costs to increase? How can you keep cost down?

Today we are going to do a deep dive into the factors that drive the cost of a bathroom remodel!

Will the location of my home affect my remodeling costs?

We have all heard real estate professionals say “location, location, location.” as they discuss which homes are sought after, and which are widely ignored by home buyers. Where a home is located has a huge effect on its value.

The same principle applies to remodeling, but in a slightly different way. The location-based factors that affect the costs of remodeling the most are the availability of skilled tradesmen, the cost of living in the area, and the logistics of getting tradesmen and materials to the work site.

How will the availability of skilled tradesmen affect the cost of my remodel?

Some areas have a surplus of tradesmen, while others have a shortage of them. For example, many rural areas are predominantly made up of blue-collar workers like farmers, factory workers, mechanics, and of course, building tradesmen. In these areas, finding people with the skills necessary to complete a bathroom remodel is often easy.

Other areas, like many urban areas, are primarily made up of white-collar professionals, like doctors, lawyers, accountants, or salesmen. In these areas, finding people with the skills necessary to successfully complete a construction project will often be a lot more difficult because there is a shortage of these types of workers.

The law of supply and demand plays out here, causing the work done by highly sought-after tradesmen in predominantly white-collar areas to cost considerably more than it would in a different area where there are more blue-collar workers.

How will the cost of living in my area affect my remodel costs?

The cost of living in your area will affect the cost of your remodel as well. Simply put, contractors need to pay their workers enough to care for their families and be satisfied with their lifestyle.

In an area with a low cost of living, a tradesman can have a good life for himself and his family for a fairly low cost.

In a high-cost-of-living area, a tradesman needs to be paid more in order to have the same standard of living.

The salary needs of tradesmen in high-cost-of-living areas will raise the cost of construction services in those areas.

How will the accessibility of my home affect my remodeling costs?

In order to successfully complete a remodel, workers, tools, and materials need to be brought in and out of the worksite. Anything that slows the flow of these people and items will add to the cost of the project.

In a suburban housing development, for example, a tradesman can often park his van in front of the home, grab the tools he needs from the van and get to work! He can work out of his van efficiently because it is close to the work area. Likewise, the delivery driver can bring the materials he needs, drop them off, and be on his way quickly and efficiently.

Meanwhile, in a busy city, a tradesman may need to unload all of his tools at the work site and park his van a few blocks away. The delivery driver will spend a lot of time in traffic, so he won’t be able to make as many deliveries in a day. Getting the materials and tools into the home may also be more challenging, due to the poor accessibility of many urban homes.

The inefficiency of getting materials, tools, and workers to the work site will often cause remodeling in a dense urban area to be more costly than it would be in a location where accessibility is better.

Will the size of my bathroom affect how much it costs?

The size of your bathroom will have an effect on cost as well. That said, the size of the space isn’t as significant a factor as many people expect.

Honestly, the number of fixtures in the space will have a bigger effect on the cost than the square footage of the space will. Fixtures are one of the largest drivers in the cost of a bathroom remodel.

This means that square-foot prices can be very misleading when it comes to bathrooms. Doubling the size of the space isn’t necessarily going to double the cost of the project. The space may be twice as large, but if the same number of fixtures are going into the space, the scope of work isn’t going to be twice the size.

Of course, some tasks & materials are affected by the size of the bathroom. The most notable of these are insulation, drywall, flooring, and paint. There is a direct relationship between the size of the space and how much of these products are needed to create the space. A larger space will require more materials and more work to install them, and a smaller space will require fewer materials and less labor to finish the space.

Do product selections affect how much a bathroom costs?

Fixtures and finishes are a huge driver of cost in a remodel. As we mentioned in the previous section, bathroom fixtures are one of the most expensive aspects of a remodel, second only to labor costs.

Does the number of fixtures in a bathroom affect its cost?

The number of fixtures in your space will often be the biggest factor that will affect the cost of your remodel. Your bathroom needs certain fixtures in order for it to be functional. As you add fixtures beyond this core group, costs can increase rapidly.

Adding that second vanity, or making a stand-alone tub with a separate shower stall can improve the function of your space considerably, but those additional fixtures will come at a cost.

How does the quality of products affect the cost of a bathroom remodel?

Do we even need to talk about quality? We all know that high-quality products cost more than low-quality products! What can we even add to the conversation?

We know, thanks for indulging us. We’ll try to make it quick…

Manufacturing technologies keep getting better and better! Every year, manmade materials look more like natural products, and inexpensive products look more like expensive products!

This means that people who like the look of marble tile, but need the durability of porcelain tile, for example, have options they never had before! Now, they can buy porcelain tile that looks like marble!

This also means that poor-quality products sometimes look so similar to high-quality products, it is difficult to tell them apart! Today’s builder-grade vinyl flooring, for example, looks similar to yesteryear’s premium vinyl products!

This can make it very difficult to navigate costs as you are selecting products for your project. You can find yourself trying to choose between two similar-looking products without realizing that one of the products costs twice as much as the other!

At the end of the day, the quality of the products you choose for your transformed space will greatly impact your project's cost.

How does the complexity of a remodeling project affect its cost?

Complexity is another big factor when it comes to cost.

Labor is, hands down, the most expensive part of a remodel. If a task requires more work to complete, due to complexity, the project will be more expensive.

Also, more complex projects will often require workers with a higher skill level. These workers will cost more, and that extra cost will make the entire project more expensive.

One bathroom may cost $40,000, but a bathroom that looks almost exactly the same can cost $60,000, just due to the second bathroom being more complex! This is why we used price ranges in our article: How Much Does A Bathroom Remodel Cost? The lower end of the budget range is reasonable for simple projects, but more complex projects will usually end up at the high end of the budget range, due to complexity adding cost.

What factors will add complexity to my remodeling project?

The most common factors that add complexity to a bathroom project are: changing or repairing the structure, moving the plumbing layout, adding electrical circuits, or using custom products. Let’s talk a little bit about each of these items.

Changing or repairing the structure

Anything that changes the actual structure will add complexity to the project. This can include repairing a floor, adding a doorway, moving a wall, recessing a medicine cabinet, and adding niches in a shower, among other things.

Moving the plumbing layout

In the simplest bathroom remodels, all of the fixtures are replaced with similar-sized products that are placed in the same locations as the original fixtures.

Unfortunately, some bathrooms are laid out poorly, and moving the locations of the fixtures in these bathrooms will make them much more functional. Moving the locations of plumbing fixtures will often require running new pipes to the new fixture locations, which adds complexity to the plumber’s work. Sometimes, the placement of these new pipes will affect the structural aspects of the building, so the change will require structural modifications to maintain the building’s integrity. These modifications can also be complex and costly.

Adding electrical circuits

The addition of electrical circuits can add a lot of functionality to a bathroom, whether the circuits are to be used for floor heat, additional lighting, heated towel bars, or other necessities and/or luxuries.

In many instances, getting the new wires where they need to go is simple and easy. In other cases, it will require the electricians to cut holes in the finished walls in other rooms, drill holes through concrete foundations, drill through large beams, or deal with other obstacles that make the process of running wires time-consuming and complicated.

Using custom products

Many building products are standardized, or at least mostly standardized. For example, plywood comes in 4’x8’ sheets, crown molding comes in a handful of standard sizes, and the dimensions of a standard bathtub are 30” x 60”.

Tradesmen are used to using these products on a daily basis. So, they are familiar with the techniques used to install them. When custom products are chosen, it can sometimes throw a monkey wrench into the flow of work.

Custom products are generally more expensive to buy, so the material costs for custom products add to the cost of the project, to begin with. Then, if the installation of these custom products is more complicated, it will add labor costs as well.

Does the timeline for a remodel affect how much it costs?

It seems like the timeline of a project shouldn’t really affect how much it costs. The project will require the same amount of work and the same materials to complete today as it would a year from now, right? So, why would it cost more to complete a project with a tight timeline?

Well, the simple answer is that most contractors have a backlog of work, and they are managing the projects on their schedule in a manner that will allow them to flow from one project to the next with minimal disruptions. If something disrupts this flow, like an additional project getting squeezed in, it adds a lot of “unnecessary” management work.

While a contractor is working on one project, he is usually scheduling workers and ordering materials for his next project. In order for him to “squeeze in” an emergency project (or just an additional project with a tight timeline), he will need to cancel the material deliveries and subcontractors that have already been scheduled. He will then have to reorder and reschedule workers for the same job, once your project is done.

Basically, “squeezing in” an additional job requires the contractor to do twice as much preconstruction work for the projects that are currently in his schedule! In order for that to be worth doing, he will need to charge a premium that will cover the additional management costs, as well as provide some monetary benefit for his company.

Does the quality of service affect how much a contractor charges?

Most contractors pride themselves on the quality of their work. That’s great! When you hire a professional, their work should be high-quality!

While there is a huge difference in cost between contractors who do poor-quality work, and those who run professional organizations, you as a homeowner aren’t interested in hiring someone who isn’t going to do a good job, so we feel that this factor is mostly irrelevant to this discussion.

The side of this that we do find relevant is the fact that there are different levels of management and customer service that a contractor can provide through a construction project.

Some contractors will ask their clients to choose all of the materials, purchase & transport those materials, pull their own permits, and hire their own trade contractors (to learn what the term “trade contractor” means, read our article here: What Kind Of Contractor Do I Need For My Project?). Basically, they expect the homeowner to manage the project themselves.

Other contractors manage the entire project from start to finish. They guide you through the material selections, they purchase & transport all of the materials, they pull all the permits, they schedule all the workers, and they oversee the entire project so that you don’t have to.

While the quality of work done by these contractors may be comparable, the level of service you receive from these contractors is very different!

As much as some people like to beat up contractors that don’t provide a five-star customer service experience, these contractors aren’t necessarily wrong, nor are they horrible people. They simply provide a lower level of service than their competitors.

Most of us understand that we will receive a very different level of service from a fast-food restaurant than we will receive from a five-star restaurant (and the prices between these restaurants will reflect that difference). That’s okay. Sometimes we need fast food and sometimes we need a fine dining experience.

That’s why it’s important to understand the difference between the levels of service that contractors provide. If you need the “manage it all myself” level of service, that will come at a lower cost. If you need a low-stress remodeling experience, the cost of your project will be higher.

What level of service does Rothrock Kitchen & Bath Remodeling provide?

It is our goal to make the remodeling process as simple and stress-free as possible for our clients.

We do this by providing hands-on guidance to our clients in the material selection phase and managing the construction phase of our projects from start to finish. We handle all of the planning, material procurement, worker scheduling, permitting, waste removal, and cleanup. Our clients pay a fixed cost for their projects, with no surprises.

Our price point reflects this level of service.

What other factors can affect the cost of my remodel?

We discussed the largest factors that affect the cost of a remodel: the location of the project, the size of the space, the product used, the complexity of the build, the timeline for the project, and the level of service provided by your contractor.

There are other factors, like the logistics of getting certain products in a volatile material market, or requirements that are specific to your municipality. But, we feel that we covered the factors that are most likely to affect the cost of your bathroom remodel.

If you would like some help navigating your project, we would be happy to schedule a free phone consultation where we can discuss the factors that will affect the cost of your project! Just click the button at the top of the page to fill out the contact form, or give us a call! We would be happy to help you get the information you need!