Six to ten days for a three-bedroom house. Unusually for this trade, the two major publishers agree exactly: Checkatrade's June 2026 guide and a November 2025 survey of nineteen Which? Trusted Traders both give the same range, despite disagreeing about the price by more than double.
That agreement is worth something. Where a modelled estimate and a survey of real traders converge, the number is doing more than filling a table. Duration is also what you most need in order to plan.
Durations by property
Checkatrade's published figures: a one-bed flat four to seven days, a two-bed flat four to seven days, a three-bed house six to ten days, a four-bed house one to two weeks, and a five-bed house ten to fifteen days.
A flat rewires faster than a house of the same bedroom count for the same reason it costs less. The circuits run on one level, cable runs are shorter, and there is no staircase or second floor to route around.
What changes the schedule
Property age and construction come first. Solid walls have to be chased; stud walls and accessible floor voids do not. A Victorian terrace with lath and plaster ceilings, original floorboards and no usable loft void is at the top of the range before anyone touches a tool.
Then access to the existing wiring. Where old cables can be used to draw the new ones through, work moves quickly. Where they are seized in conduit or buried under a hundred years of alterations, it does not.
Then scope. Every additional circuit, socket, switch and light point is more first-fix cable and more second-fix termination and testing. A rewire specified with generous socket counts and a lighting design is a longer job than a like-for-like replacement.
And then whether the house is occupied. Occupancy is named as a factor that makes rewiring costs vary considerably. No published source quantifies the effect, but the direction is not in doubt: working around furniture, around people and around a household routine takes longer than working in an empty house.
What the days look like
Rewiring is a two-stage job. First fix is the destructive half: lifting floorboards, chasing walls, running new cable through the structure, dropping back boxes into place. Second fix is fitting the accessories, terminating everything at the consumer unit, then inspection, testing and certification.
Power goes off for parts of most days, usually circuit by circuit rather than all at once. Expect dust, expect furniture to move room to room ahead of the work, and expect the house to be noisier than you would like.
Clearing rooms in advance is the one thing a homeowner can do that reliably shortens the job. It is published advice as a cost-reduction tip, and it works because an electrician moving your wardrobe is an electrician not running cable.
Can you live in it?
You can, and many people do, but the published sources treat an empty property as the faster and cheaper scenario rather than the exception. Temporary accommodation appears as a normal line item to budget for, alongside furniture removal and storage.
The honest version: for six to ten days you will have intermittent power, open floors, dust throughout, and tradespeople in every room in turn. With small children or anyone working from home that is a hard fortnight. Where a rewire is part of a larger renovation, or is being done before moving in, doing it empty is materially easier and finishes sooner.
The days after the electrician leaves
This is where schedules slip, and it is not the electrician's fault.
A rewire quote covers removal of old wiring and fittings, new wiring, standard accessories, a metal consumer unit, and testing and certification. It usually excludes major plastering or redecorating and carpet or flooring replacement. Making good is a separate trade on a separate schedule.
So the six to ten days is the electrical work. Add time for a plasterer to fill chases and skim where needed, drying time before decoration, then decorating, then flooring. Nobody publishes a duration for that sequence, and it can comfortably exceed the rewire itself.
Book the follow-on trades before the rewire starts rather than after. A plasterer with three weeks of lead time turns a two-week project into a five-week one.
Certification is part of the job, not an afterthought
A rewire installs new circuits, which is notifiable work. The electrician issues an Electrical Installation Certificate, and where the work is self-certified under a competent person scheme, the scheme notifies your council and issues a Building Regulations Compliance Certificate.
That paperwork arrives after completion rather than on the last day on site, so build it into your expectations. It is also the part worth chasing, because an enforcement notice for non-compliant building work can now be served up to ten years after completion, and the certificates are what put the question to bed.
Planning around a rewire is easier when the dates hold.