You have either just had an EICR come back with a page of C2s, or you have bought something built in 1958 with a fuse box that takes wire, and someone has said the word “rewire” out loud. It is the home-improvement job with the worst ratio of money spent to visible improvement in British housing: you will pay for it, live through it, and at the end your house will look exactly as it did, only with more filler in the walls.
The house rewire cost in the UK typically runs from around £3,500 for a small flat to £9,000 or more for a four-bedroom house, plus making good — and for most homeowners the real question is not the price but whether the installation actually needs replacing or just needs remedial work. A rewire is not a service item on a schedule. It is a response to evidence, and the evidence is an Electrical Installation Condition Report.
That distinction is worth several thousand pounds, so start there.
What a rewire actually costs
Rewiring is priced by the number of circuits, the number of points, and how hard your house is to get cables through — not by floor area alone. A solid-wall Victorian terrace with lath-and-plaster ceilings and no accessible voids costs more per socket than a 1990s estate house with chipboard flooring and stud walls.
Indicative UK ranges for a full rewire:
One-bedroom flat: £3,000–£4,500
Two-bedroom terrace: £4,000–£6,000
Three-bedroom semi: £5,500–£8,000
Four-bedroom detached: £7,500–£12,000
What those figures normally include: new cabling throughout, new consumer unit to current BS 7671 requirements, new back boxes, sockets, switches and light fittings where specified, earthing and bonding upgrades, testing, certification, and notification under Part P.
What they frequently do not include, and where quotes diverge:
Making good. Plastering the chases, filling the floorboard lines, redecorating. This is the cost people forget, and on a whole house it can add a four-figure sum on its own.
Lifting and relaying flooring. Carpet comes up and goes back. Engineered wood, laminate with a glued click-joint, or tiles often do not survive.
Anything beyond like-for-like. Extra sockets, outside power, EV charge point provision, network cabling, smart switching, downlights where there were pendants.
Scaffold or access where the incoming supply or a loft run demands it.
Temporary accommodation, if you decide you cannot live in it.
Get the quote broken into first fix, second fix, consumer unit, making good and extras. A single number for “rewire — £6,800” tells you nothing and is impossible to compare against another single number.
Partial rewires and what they are worth
A partial rewire — usually the upstairs lighting circuit, or the kitchen ring, or replacing the consumer unit and upgrading the earthing — can be the right answer when the EICR identifies specific failures rather than a failed installation.
Budget roughly £1,000–£2,500 for a consumer unit replacement with associated earthing and bonding upgrades, and £800–£2,000 for a single circuit, depending on access.
The trap is spending £2,000 twice. If your wiring is rubber-insulated, or the cable sheathing crumbles when an electrician flexes it, a partial job postpones the full cost by a couple of years while adding to it. Ask the electrician directly: is this installation reaching the end of its serviceable life, or does it have specific faults? A good one will tell you plainly, because they would rather not come back.
The warning signs that matter
Some signs mean book a test. Some mean stop using the circuit tonight.
Act immediately: a burning or fishy smell near a socket or the consumer unit; scorch marks or discoloured sockets and switches; a socket that is warm; buzzing or crackling from a fitting; a shock, however slight, from an appliance, tap or switch. Isolate the circuit and call a registered electrician the same day.
Book an EICR soon: a fuse box with rewireable fuses or cast-iron switches; round-pin sockets; black rubber or lead-sheathed cable visible in the loft or under floorboards; no RCD protection; sockets mounted in the skirting board; a brown bakelite light switch; no visible earthing to the gas and water services; breakers that trip whenever it rains or when you use a particular appliance.
Also worth a test, regardless of what you can see: you have just bought the house; the installation is more than 25 years old and has never been tested; you are about to have a kitchen, bathroom or extension done; you have had building work that involved someone else’s electrician.
Age alone is not a verdict. A carefully installed 1988 PVC installation in a dry house with adequate circuits may test perfectly well today. A badly extended 2004 installation with four generations of DIY spurs may not.
The EICR is the decision, not the electrician’s opinion
An Electrical Installation Condition Report is a formal test and inspection producing coded observations:
C1 — danger present. Immediate action required.
C2 — potentially dangerous. Urgent remedial action required.
C3 — improvement recommended. Not a failure.
FI — further investigation required without delay.
A report with C1s or C2s is marked unsatisfactory. Typical cost for a domestic EICR is £150–£300 depending on property size and circuit count.
Never accept a rewire quote from someone who has not tested the installation, and be wary of the firm that both diagnoses and prices the cure in the same ten-minute visit. Pay for an independent EICR from an electrician who is not bidding for the rewire. It costs a couple of hundred pounds and it is the single best-value spend in this entire process, because it converts “your wiring looks old” into a document listing exactly which circuits fail and why. Take that document to three firms and you are comparing like for like.
What the disruption is really like
A full rewire on an occupied three-bedroom house typically runs 5 to 10 working days, longer for larger or more awkward properties. It comes in two phases.
First fix is the brutal part. Floorboards lift, walls get chased for cable drops, ceilings may be drilled, and the house fills with dust that gets everywhere regardless of sheeting. Power is off for large parts of the day, room by room. Furniture moves to the middle and lives under plastic.
Second fix is calmer: accessories fitted, consumer unit changed and energised, circuits tested, certificate issued.
Then making good — plastering and decorating — usually by someone else, usually a week or two later. That gap is normal and should be in your plan.
Living in it is possible and most people do. It is genuinely unpleasant with a baby, anyone working from home on video calls, or anyone shielding from dust. An empty house is faster and cheaper, which is why a rewire is the first job to do when you buy, before carpets and before decorating. Doing it in the wrong order is how people end up rewiring around a new kitchen at a premium.
The certificate is the bit that survives
Domestic electrical work is notifiable under Part P of the Building Regulations. Your electrician either self-certifies through a competent-person scheme — NICEIC, NAPIT, ELECSA — or the work is notified to Building Control directly. Check the registration number on the scheme’s own register before work starts, not on a card or a van.
On completion you should receive an Electrical Installation Certificate, a schedule of circuits, test results, and a Building Regulations compliance certificate. A buyer’s conveyancer will ask for these. So will your insurer after a fire. Keep them.
What to do in the next 30 minutes
Open your consumer unit cover and photograph it. Rewireable fuses or no RCD is your answer.
Check the loft and under one lifted floorboard for black rubber or fabric-braided cable.
Find any EICR, certificate or invoice from previous electrical work and note the dates.
Book an independent EICR with a registered electrician who is not quoting for the rewire.
Write down every socket you wish existed, before anyone gives you a price — adding them later costs far more.
Store the EICR, the circuit schedule and the Part P certificate against your property record so they are there in three years when a buyer’s solicitor asks, rather than in a drawer. When you are ready to price the work, get rewiring quotes via Trade Pilot from registered electricians who have seen the same report.
