What a bathroom renovation really costs in Melbourne’s south-east
The trouble with a price range is that it tells you almost nothing. If you have never renovated before, $30,000 is just a number someone hands you, and you have no way of knowing whether it is fair, high, or missing half the job.
So here is the whole thing pulled apart. My name is Michael. I am a registered builder and a licensed plumber, and these are the figures behind the jobs we do in Berwick, Officer, Pakenham, Narre Warren and Beaconsfield. Read this and you will be able to look at any quote you receive, including mine, and understand what you are actually paying for.
Where the money goes in a $30,000 bathroom
| Line item | Typical cost | Share of the job |
| Demolition, strip-out and rubbish removal | $2,000 to $3,000+ | 8% |
| Waterproofing | $1,000 to $1,800 | 5% |
| Tiling, supplied and laid | $4,500 to $7,000+ | 20% |
| Plumbing | $3,500 to $6,000+ | 16% |
| Electrical | $1,800 to $3,500+ | 9% |
| Fittings and fixtures | $4,500 to $8,000+ | 22% |
| Plastering, carpentry, painting, compliance and site management | the remainder | 20% |
Based on a standard bathroom of six to eight square metres in Melbourne’s south-east, with the existing layout kept.
Why most of your money is labour
Around 70 per cent of what you pay for a bathroom goes to trades and time on site. The smaller share goes on the parts you can point at.
That surprises most people, and I understand why. You walk into a showroom at Berwick, you see a vanity for $1,200 and a tapware set for $600, and you start doing sums in your head that land somewhere near ten grand.
Here is what those sums leave out. Start with what an hour on site actually costs. Under the building and construction award, a casual labourer on the lowest classification is $33.34 an hour from July 2026. Add 12 per cent superannuation and about 3 per cent work cover and it costs close to $40 an hour to have that person standing in your bathroom. That is a labourer. No good tradesman works for anywhere near it, and a bathroom needs six of them.
Every person on your job is a specialist. The waterproofer does nothing but waterproofing. The tiler does nothing but tiling. They are quick because that is all they do, and they are expensive for the same reason. My job is to project manage the specialists, which means each one arrives in the right order, on the right day, with the room ready for them. A tiler cannot start until the waterproofing has cured. A plumber cannot fit off the toilet and taps until the tiles are down and the grout has gone hard. That coordination is the last line in the table above.
Get the sequence wrong and the job stops. That is also why most people who take a bathroom on themselves never finish it. I have lost count of the half-done bathrooms I have been called in to rescue.
Then there is the part nobody thinks to quote for. Bathrooms usually sit at the back of the house, so every tile, every sheet of plaster and every bag of rubble travels through your hallway. The floors and walls have to be protected for the whole job and put back the way they were.
You pay with money or you pay with time. There is no third option.
Once you understand this, you can read a quote properly. When two quotes have the same tapware in them and a $10,000 gap between them, the gap is almost never in the tapware.
Demolition, strip-out and rubbish removal
$2,000 to $3,000+
This is the first two days. The old bathroom comes out down to the frame and the substrate, the walls get checked, and everything goes into a skip. A bathroom strip-out produces one to three cubic metres of mixed waste, which is more than most people picture when they imagine one small room.
It sounds like the simple part, and on a newer house it is. On an older house it is where the job either stays on track or does not. A bathroom built in 1988 in Narre Warren may have tiles glued straight onto plaster, thick mortar bedding under the floor tiles, and wall sheets that come away in pieces. Heavy porcelain on a thick mortar bed takes 50 to 100 per cent longer to strip than thin ceramic on adhesive. If the substrate needs grinding back flat afterwards, add a few hundred more.
Two things worth checking on any quote you receive. First, whether the strip-out goes back to the studs or only removes the fixtures and finishes, because those are different jobs at different prices. Second, whether rubbish removal is included. A 4 cubic metre skip in Melbourne runs $250 to $380, and Melbourne is at the higher end nationally because of the landfill levy. We include removal in our price. Plenty of quotes do not, and that line tends to appear after you have signed, when you have no leverage left.
Waterproofing
$1,000 to $1,800
Waterproofing is five per cent of the job, and it is the only line that can cost you the whole renovation twice if it is done wrong.
It is a membrane applied to the floor and up the walls before a single tile is laid. Melbourne waterproofers charge roughly $50 to $100 per square metre, and the work has to comply with AS 3740, the Australian standard for wet areas. It takes one to two days. Day one is preparation, priming and the first coat. Day two is the second coat and the detailing around the drain, the tap penetrations and the shower niche. Once the tiles go on, nobody ever sees it again, including you.
That is exactly why it is the first thing a cheap operator trims. They thin out the coats, they skip the bond breakers at the corners, they do not let it cure because the tiler is booked for Thursday. The bathroom looks perfect on handover day and it will look perfect for a year.
Then a stain appears on the ceiling of the room below, or the skirting outside the bathroom door starts to lift away from the wall. By then the water has been tracking through your floor for months. Fixing it means pulling out the bathroom you just paid for and starting again, and that is before you count the framing repairs.
I have been called out to bathrooms other people built and had to tell the owner exactly that. It is not a conversation anyone enjoys having in someone’s hallway. It is also why we back our waterproofing for ten years in writing.
Tiling
$4,500 to $7,000+
This is the biggest thing you control.
Melbourne tilers charge around $65 to $120 per square metre for walls and $80 to $130 for floors, with the tiles themselves on top of that. Tiles range from about $20 a square metre for a basic porcelain up to $180 and beyond for stone or large format Italian porcelain. A small bathroom of four square metres tiled floor to ceiling on the wet walls works out at 15 to 25 square metres of tiling once you count the walls, the floor, the niche and the bath surround. That number surprises almost everyone.
Three decisions move the price.
How high you tile. Floor to ceiling costs more than half height because it is more tiles and more labour. It also looks better and it is easier to clean, so most people want it once they have seen it. This one decision can shift your total by thousands.
What size the tiles are. Large format tiles look calm and modern, and they need a flatter wall to sit on, so more preparation goes in behind them. If your walls are out, that means levelling and screeding before the first tile goes up. Small tiles and mosaics run at $63 to $125 per square metre in labour because of the cuts and the grout lines. The tile you want is rarely the cheap one.
How they are laid. A straight lay is quicker than a herringbone. A feature wall behind the vanity adds a day. None of this is wasted money if you want the result, but you should be choosing it rather than discovering it.
Plumbing
$3,500 to $6,000+ if the layout stays, considerably more if it does not
There are really only two versions of this line and they are far apart.
If you keep the existing layout, the toilet, shower and vanity stay where they are and the work is mostly replacement. The rough-in sits around $1,500 to $2,500, then the fit-off after tiling adds $1,000 to $2,500. Melbourne plumbers charge $100 to $180 an hour, and most bathroom jobs take them two to four days across two separate visits, weeks apart.
If you move anything, the floor comes up and the drainage gets re-run. Moving a toilet is the most expensive single change you can make, because the waste pipe has to fall the right way and on a concrete slab it means diamond saw cutting. That alone can add $3,000 to $5,000. A full layout change with every fixture relocated can add $5,000 to $10,000 to the plumbing scope. On a timber floor with subfloor access it is cheaper, though the framing sometimes needs work before waterproofing can start.
People often want to move the toilet for reasons that are really about how the room looks. Sometimes it is worth it. Often you can get most of the way there with a different vanity and a bigger shower for a fraction of the money. I will tell you which one you are dealing with when I look at your house, because I would rather that money went somewhere you can see it.
One thing worth knowing. In Victoria, any plumbing work valued at $750 or more requires a licensed plumber to issue a Compliance Certificate of Plumbing Work and lodge it with the regulator within five days. Your bathroom will always clear that threshold. If nobody hands you that certificate, something is wrong.
Electrical
$1,800 to $3,500+
Lighting, power points, the exhaust fan, and whatever heating you decide on. Melbourne electricians charge $80 to $130 an hour, and everything has to meet the wet area zone rules and come with a Certificate of Electrical Safety at the end.
The basics come in around $1,500 to $2,200 for downlights, an exhaust fan and power points. Downlights run $80 to $150 each. A heated towel rail adds $400 to $800 wired in. Underfloor heating for a six square metre bathroom is $1,200 to $2,500.
The exhaust fan is the item nobody thinks about and everybody should. Melbourne bathrooms grow mould because they get wet in winter and never fully dry out. A fan sized properly and ducted outside, rather than blowing into the roof cavity, is a few hundred dollars during the build. A fan that vents into your roof space is pushing warm wet air into a closed cavity where it condenses on the timber, which is how you end up with a mould problem in a room you never use.
Underfloor heating is the same story from the other direction. While the floor is open and the tiles are off, it is a modest addition. Once your new bathroom is finished, it means pulling up the floor you just paid for. If there is any chance you want it, this is the only sensible time to decide.
Fittings and fixtures
$4,500 to $8,000+, and this one is up to you
The vanity, the toilet, the shower screen, the tapware, the mirror, the rails.
Vanities run from about $600 for a stock unit to $4,000 for custom. Toilets are $250 to $2,000, with wall hung suites at the top because of the in wall cistern. Shower screens start around $400 framed and pass $2,500 frameless. Tapware sets run $200 to $1,800.
This is the only part of the job where your budget is your own decision. Two bathrooms can be built identically behind the walls and finish $8,000 apart on fittings alone. A basic vanity and a mid range vanity hold the same towels. One of them just feels different at six in the morning.
My advice, and I give it to everyone: do not save money on what is behind the wall so you can spend it on what is in front of it. Fittings can be upgraded in five years by one tradesman in an afternoon. Waterproofing cannot.
The costs people do not see coming
Here is the part most renovators leave out of their cost articles, which is odd, because it is the part that worries people the most.
Asbestos. If your house went up before 1990 there is a real chance of asbestos in the wall sheeting or under the floor tiles, and it is especially common through the older fibro clad pockets of Dandenong, Narre Warren and Berwick. Testing costs $200 to $500. Removal in Melbourne runs $50 to $150 per square metre, and because licensed removalists carry a minimum job charge of around $1,500 to $2,500, a bathroom typically lands between $1,500 and $5,000 all up. Under Victorian law anything over ten square metres of bonded asbestos, or any friable asbestos at all, must be removed by a licensed removalist and disposed of at an EPA licensed site. This is not a corner anyone gets to cut.
Rot behind the wall. When we strip an old bathroom we sometimes find the original waterproofing failed years ago and the framing has gone soft. Repairs run $1,000 to $3,000, and on a bathroom over twenty years old it is worth having that money set aside rather than hoping.
Old pipework. Plenty of pre 1990 homes still have galvanised steel supply pipes that corrode from the inside out. Replacing them while the walls are open is far cheaper than replacing them later.
Permits. Cosmetic work usually needs none. Structural changes and relocating fixtures generally do, and permits and compliance run $1,200 to $2,000 in Victoria once you count building permit, plumbing compliance and electrical certification.
Nobody can see through your walls at quote stage, including me. What I can do is tell you what is likely given the age of your house, put a provisional figure against it, and show you the problem before I price the fix. You will not get an invoice from us for work you did not agree to.
Most renovators will tell you to hold 10 to 15 per cent as a contingency. On a $30,000 bathroom that is $3,000 to $4,500. If you can carry it, carry it. Almost nobody who set that money aside has regretted it, and the ones who did not are the ones who end up making decisions they hate under pressure.
And if you have a quote for a 1980s house with no allowance for any of this, that quote is not cheaper. It is just less complete.
Where the price bands land
From $25,000 works with your existing layout. The toilet, shower and vanity stay where they are, tiles are a standard format on a straight lay, the wet walls go to the ceiling and the rest to about a metre, and fittings come from the mainstream ranges. Everything in the room is new and everything is done properly. What you are not paying for is the room moving.
$30,000 to $35,000 is a renovation with a new layout and design. Fixtures move, which is almost entirely a plumbing cost, and it comes with floor to ceiling tiling throughout, a larger shower and better fittings. Towards the top of that band the selections lift again, with large format or stone tiles, underfloor heating, a custom vanity and a frameless screen.
Why a south-east job prices the way it does
It is not really about the postcode. It is about how your house was built.
An older home with hardwood framing and solid brick walls is a harder job. Hardwood does not cut or fix the way modern pine does. Solid brick means chasing into walls rather than working between studs, and every service you move has to go somewhere. Those bathrooms take longer to strip and longer to rebuild, and the price reflects it.
A project home from the 2000s is a different job. The framing is pine, the walls are plasterboard on studs, and the plumbing is roughly where you expect to find it. More of the work is cosmetic, so your money goes further.
We work across Berwick, Narre Warren, Beaconsfield, Officer, Clyde North and Pakenham, and both kinds of house sit in every one of those suburbs. That is why a price given over the phone is close to meaningless. Whoever gave it to you has priced a bathroom, not yours.
What to do with this
If you are still months away from renovating, this is exactly the right time to be reading this. Take these seven lines with you when you collect quotes and check that each one appears with a number next to it. The quote missing three of them is not the cheap one, it is the incomplete one.
If you already know what you want and you would rather talk it through with the person who will be on site, you can book a time with me here.
FAQ
How much does a bathroom renovation cost in Melbourne’s south-east? From $25,000 for a renovation working with your existing layout, and $30,000 to $35,000 for a renovation with a new layout and design. Around 70 per cent of that is trades and labour rather than materials.
What is the most expensive part of a bathroom renovation? Tiling and fittings are usually the two largest lines, at roughly 20 per cent each. Plumbing follows at about 16 per cent, and it becomes the largest line of all if you move the toilet or shower.
How much does waterproofing cost? $1,000 to $1,800 for a standard Melbourne bathroom, at roughly $50 to $100 per square metre. It is about 5 per cent of the job and the most expensive thing in the room to get wrong.
How much does it cost to move a toilet? Moving a toilet on a concrete slab can add $3,000 to $5,000 on its own, because the waste has to be re-run and the slab cut. Relocating every fixture can add $5,000 to $10,000 to the plumbing scope.
Why is bathroom labour so expensive? A casual labourer on the lowest classification of the building and construction award is $33.34 an hour from July 2026. Add superannuation and work cover and it is close to $40 an hour before any skill is involved. A bathroom needs six specialist trades, each waiting on the one before it.
How long does a bathroom renovation take? We finish in two to four weeks. Many renovators quote three to six, usually because their trades are subcontracted and have to be fitted around other jobs.
Do I need a permit to renovate a bathroom in Victoria? Cosmetic work usually does not. Structural changes and relocating plumbing generally do. Either way, a licensed plumber must issue a compliance certificate for any plumbing work valued over $750, and an electrician must issue a Certificate of Electrical Safety.
Is rubbish removal included in a bathroom renovation quote? It is in ours. It is not in every quote, so ask before you sign. A skip alone is $250 to $380 in Melbourne.
What happens if you find asbestos? We stop, show you, and price licensed removal before continuing. Testing is $200 to $500 and removal usually lands between $1,500 and $5,000 for a bathroom. It is common in south-east homes built before 1990.
How much contingency should I set aside? 10 to 15 per cent, so $3,000 to $4,500 on a $30,000 bathroom. Older houses should sit at the top of that.
How long should waterproofing be guaranteed? Ours is guaranteed for ten years in writing. Ask any renovator for theirs in writing, because failed waterproofing is the most expensive fault in the trade.