A full rewire is one of the biggest electrical jobs a home will ever need, and the price varies more than most people expect. This guide sets out realistic ranges for 2026, explains what pushes a quote up or down, and helps you work out whether your home needs a rewire at all before you start collecting quotes.
For a like for like rewire, meaning new cables, a new consumer unit and replacement sockets and switches in roughly the same positions, most UK homeowners are paying somewhere in these ranges. Birmingham and the wider West Midlands tend to sit a little below London and the South East, but not dramatically so, because materials cost the same everywhere and labour rates in the city have risen over the last few years.
These figures assume an empty or lightly furnished house. If you are living in the property throughout, expect to add a few days to the programme and a few hundred pounds to the bill, because everything takes longer when furniture, carpets and people have to be worked around.
Two houses with the same number of bedrooms can come in £2,000 apart, and the difference is nearly always down to the building itself and what you want at the end of it. Solid brick walls, which are common in older Birmingham stock around Erdington, Kings Heath and Handsworth, take far longer to chase than plasterboard. Concrete ground floors mean cables have to go up and over rather than under, adding both cable and time.
The specification matters just as much. A basic rewire puts back what was there. Many people use the opportunity to add double sockets in every room, USB outlets, outdoor power, an electric vehicle charger feed, kitchen island supplies or downlights in the bathroom. Each of these is sensible to do while the walls are open, but each adds to the total. Ask for the base price and the extras as separate lines so you can see what you are choosing.
Finally, the rewire quote almost never includes making good. Chases have to be filled, ceilings patched and rooms redecorated. Budget an extra 10 to 20 percent for plastering and painting, or more if you plan to redecorate fully anyway.
Not every old house needs a full rewire, and a good electrician will tell you if a partial upgrade will do. The clearest warning signs are rubber or lead sheathed cables, a fuse box with rewireable fuses or no RCD protection, round pin sockets, and cables that crumble or feel brittle when handled. Frequent tripping, warm sockets or a burning smell need looking at straight away regardless.
The sensible first step is an Electrical Installation Condition Report, usually costing £150 to £300 for a typical house. It grades any faults from C1 (danger present) down to C3 (improvement recommended). If the report is mostly C3 items, a new consumer unit and a few new circuits may be all you need. If it is full of C1 and C2 findings on cabling throughout, a rewire is the honest answer.
Homes wired before the 1970s with no evidence of later work are the most likely candidates. Properties rewired in the 1980s or 1990s are often fine structurally but benefit from a modern consumer unit with RCBOs and surge protection.
A full rewire on a three bedroom house usually takes five to ten working days with two electricians on site. First fix, where the old cables come out and the new ones go in, is the disruptive part. Second fix, fitting sockets, switches and the consumer unit, is much quicker. Power is normally restored to essential circuits each evening if you are living in the property.
Any quote should state that the work will be certified under Part P of the Building Regulations and that you will receive an Electrical Installation Certificate on completion. In England that means the electrician is registered with a competent person scheme such as NICEIC or NAPIT, or that a Building Control notification is being made and paid for. Without that certificate you will hit problems when you sell or remortgage.
Yes, and most people do, but it is noisy and dusty and each room is out of action for a day or two in turn. Clearing rooms in advance and moving out for the first fix week if you can will keep the cost and stress down.
It can save a few hundred pounds, but only if you agree the cable routes with the electrician first and the chases meet the required depths and safe zones. Plastering is the easier saving to make yourself, since it happens after the electrical work is signed off.
It improves safety by adding RCD protection, but it does not fix deteriorated cables, undersized circuits or missing earthing. A condition report will show whether a consumer unit change is enough or whether the cabling itself needs replacing.