There is no single answer, and the honest version is more useful than a picked number. Checkatrade's June 2026 table puts a three-bedroom house at £6,225 on average; the prose on the same page says £4,450 to £8,000; its hourly-rate guide says around £6,950 within £3,900 to £10,000. Which? Trusted Traders, surveying nineteen real traders in November 2025, gives £4,000 to £18,000 for a three-bed semi of eight rooms. Every one of those figures excludes VAT.
Why the two publishers disagree by more than double
They are measuring different things, and knowing which is which tells you where your own house sits.
Checkatrade publishes modelled averages built by estimators. Which? publishes observed ranges reported by traders who did the work. A model produces a tidy central figure; a survey produces the actual spread, including the London Victorian terrace with lath and plaster walls, no accessible loft void and a listed frontage.
That is why the Which? top end is more than twice Checkatrade's. For a South London audience the upper half of the Which? range is the more realistic guide, and the Checkatrade average is closer to a national mid-point than to an SE or SW postcode.
Note also that Checkatrade's rewire page disagrees with itself: the table says £6,225 and the bullet points on the same page say £4,450 to £8,000. Stale tables published under refreshed titles are the usual mechanism.
The property ladder
Checkatrade's June 2026 figures, all excluding VAT: a one-bed flat £3,900, two-bed flat £4,800, three-bed flat £5,650, one-bed house £4,200, two-bed house £4,800, three-bed house £6,225, four-bed house £7,730 and five-bed house £10,000.
A flat costs less than a house of the same bedroom count because the wiring is on one level with shorter runs and no staircase to negotiate. Add 20% VAT to any of these where the firm is VAT-registered.
What quotes include, and the exclusion that catches people
Published guidance is consistent on scope. A rewire quote normally covers removal of old wiring and fittings, new wiring throughout, standard white sockets and switches, a metal consumer unit, and circuit testing and certification.
What it usually excludes is major plastering or redecorating, and carpet or flooring replacement. That is stated explicitly by the publisher, and it is the single most expensive misunderstanding in this topic.
Making good matters because a rewire is destructive by nature. Cables are chased into walls, floorboards come up, ceilings get opened where light points move. The electrician leaves the installation safe and certified; the walls and floors are someone else's job.
No published source puts a number on that making-good cost, and the figures circulating for it are not sourced. What can be said is the structure: the electrical work is what you are quoting, and the plaster, decoration and flooring are usually not. The way to close that gap is to ask each electrician, in writing, what condition the walls and floors will be left in, and to price the plastering and decorating separately before you commit. A plasterer's published rate is £37.50 an hour and a carpet fitter's £240 a day, both excluding VAT, which lets you build your own estimate rather than borrow an unsourced one.
What else moves the number
Property age and construction, whether the existing wiring can be reused as a draw for the new, how accessible the floor voids and loft are, the number of circuits and accessories you specify, and whether the property is occupied while the work runs. Occupancy is named as a factor that makes rewiring costs vary considerably, though no source quantifies the premium.
Surface-mounted cabling in trunking is cheaper and faster than chasing into walls, and it does not look as neat. On a period property where the plaster is original that trade-off is worth a conversation rather than an assumption.
A rewire is notifiable work
Installing new circuits is notifiable under regulation 12(6A) of the Building Regulations 2010, so a rewire has to be either self-certified by a registered electrician whose scheme notifies your council, or notified to building control before work starts. That is why quotes for this work include testing and certification as standard.
Get the certificate arrangement in writing at quote stage rather than at handover. The paperwork is what proves the work was done properly once the plaster is back on.
Does the house need it at all?
No source states a fixed rewiring interval, and the "every 25 to 30 years" claim is not published anywhere authoritative. The recommended test is condition rather than age: an electrical installation condition report will tell you what needs doing, and symptoms like repeated tripping, scorching near sockets or an old fuse box are the prompts to book one.
A rewire is the largest electrical job most homes ever have, so the shortlist matters more than the quote.