People ask how many days a bathroom takes, expecting the answer to be about labour. It rarely is. On a Central London bathroom the wet trades are the most predictable element of the whole job. What moves the finish date is the paperwork before it starts, the materials that have not arrived, the hours the building allows you to work, and the things that have to dry before anything can go on top of them.
So rather than invent a day count that would be wrong for your flat, this page walks through the actual sequence, explains why each stage cannot start until the one before it is genuinely finished, and identifies where time gets lost. Your fixed quote sets the programme for your specific job, against your specific building — that is the number to rely on, not an internet average.
Before day one: the stage most people skip
Nothing on site should begin until three things are settled: scope, consent and materials.
Scope means the layout is decided and drawn, not being discussed. A bathroom where the basin position is still an open question is a bathroom where the first fix cannot be completed, and an incomplete first fix stops the whole chain behind it.
Consent. If you are a leaseholder, most leases require freeholder or managing agent permission for alterations — commonly a formal licence to alter — and that is typically triggered by moving soil or waste, touching structure, or changing floor finishes. The timescale is not in your control and it varies a great deal between freeholders; many Central London freeholds sit with large estates, and their processes differ, so ask early and check your lease rather than assuming. Our licence to alter guide and freeholder consent guide explain what is usually asked for. If the building is listed, listed building consent is generally required for works affecting its special character, including internally — that is a longer road and it should be started before anything else.
Materials. Tiles, stone, sanitaryware and brassware all have lead times, and the interesting ones have the longest. Natural stone often has to be selected from a batch. Specialist brassware finishes can be made to order. A single missing item — the wrong waste, a back-ordered concealed cistern frame — will hold a room hostage while everything else stands finished around it. Everything should be on site, unwrapped and checked before strip-out begins. Checked matters: damage in transit is common and you want to discover it while there is still time to replace, not on the day it is due to be fitted.
The sequence, and why the order is not negotiable
Protection and set-up
In a mansion block or a period conversion this is a real stage, not a formality. Lift blankets, floor protection through the communal hall and up the stairs, dust screens at the flat door, a route agreed with the porter. Waste removal planned, because there will be no skip outside and often nowhere legal to park. On a townhouse it means protecting the staircase and the original floors on the way in.
Strip-out
Out come the sanitaryware, the tiles, the old substrate, and usually more of the wall than anyone hoped. This is the stage that answers the questions the survey could only ask. Old Central London stock hides lead supply pipe, dead runs, timber that has been damp for a decade behind a bath panel, and tiles bedded in sand-and-cement thick enough to be structural. If something has to change, this is when you find out, and a good contractor stops and tells you rather than improvising.
First fix — plumbing and electrics
All the pipework and cabling that will end up buried. Hot and cold, waste, any shower valve bodies, any underfloor heating, cable routes for lighting, shaver points, extraction and heated rails. This is also where Part G (sanitation and hot water), Part F (ventilation) and Part P (electrics) get built in rather than bolted on — get extraction and cable routes right here and the second fix is uneventful. Our electrical work is carried out to BS 7671; the bathroom regulations guide sets out what applies.
Substrate and levelling
Walls and floors have to be flat, sound and suitable before anything is bonded to them. In period stock they usually are not. Boarding, battening, levelling compound or screed all live here. This is also the first place drying time enters the programme: some levelling compounds and screeds are ready quickly, some are not, and a sand-and-cement screed in particular needs real time before it takes a finish. You cannot argue a floor into being dry.
Tanking and waterproofing
The layer nobody sees and everybody regrets skipping. Wet rooms need a proper tanking system across floor and wall, correctly detailed at the junctions, corners and around the outlet — that detailing, not the membrane itself, is where failures start. It has to cure before tiling. Our tanking guide explains the systems.
Tiling
Setting out first, then fixing, then grouting — and grout does not go on the same day as the adhesive. Large-format tiles and stone are slower: heavier to handle, less forgiving of an out-of-true wall, more cutting, and cuts that have to be right first time. See tiling for the detail.
Second fix
Sanitaryware, brassware, screen, doors, accessories, lights, extraction. Fast, visible, and the stage clients enjoy. It only goes fast because the first fix was right.
Commissioning, testing and certification
Fill, run, test under pressure, check falls, check the extract actually extracts, and issue the electrical certification. A shower tray that ponds is easier to fix now than after the silicone has cured and the client has moved back in.
Snagging
A proper list, walked with you, then closed. Always allow for it. Rooms are not finished until the last item is done, and pretending otherwise is how a job drifts.
What extends the programme — honestly
- Consent. The largest and least predictable variable. Nothing you do on site speeds it up.
- Lead times. Especially stone and made-to-order brassware. Order early or design around availability.
- Access windows. Many blocks restrict working hours, and some restrict noisy work to a narrower window still. A shortened working day lengthens the calendar even though the labour has not changed.
- No parking, no skip. Loading and waste removal by hand takes time that a suburban job simply does not spend.
- Drying and curing. Screeds, levelling compounds, tanking and grout all have their own clocks. They do not care about your dates.
- Surprises in the fabric. Lead pipe, rot, a stack that is not where the drawing said, or an electrical installation that has to be made safe before anything else proceeds.
- Client changes mid-job. The commonest cause of drift by a distance. A tile change after set-out is not a small thing.
- Occupied flats. If it is the only bathroom and the household is staying, the work is staged around them.
The Central London tax on time
It is worth being blunt about how much of a London bathroom programme is spent not building the bathroom. In a house with a driveway, a skip and no restrictions, a trade arrives at seven, parks at the door, and works until the light goes. That job and your job are not the same job.
In a mansion block the day may not start until a permitted hour. Materials come out of a van that cannot legally sit where it is sitting, through a lobby that has to be protected first, into a lift that has to be blanketed and — in some buildings — booked. Rubble goes back out the same way, in bags, by hand, in trips. Noisy work may be confined to a narrower window than general work. If a porter is required to be present, the job runs at the porter's availability rather than yours. None of this is anybody being difficult; it is what living in a shared building means. But it compresses the productive part of the day, and a compressed day stretches the calendar without adding a single hour of labour. Our mansion block bathroom guide goes through the access side in detail.
Period conversions have a different tax: everything is bespoke. Nothing is square, nothing is standard, and every cut is measured off the actual wall rather than off a drawing. That is skilled work and it is not fast. It is also why the finish in a well-run period job looks like it belongs in the building rather than like it was bought in a box.
What shortens it
Decide everything before you start. Have all materials on site and checked. Start the consent conversation weeks before you want to start work, not the week before. Use one contractor who sequences their own trades, so the tiler is not waiting on a plumber employed by somebody else. And keep the scope still once it is agreed. That last one is free and it is the most effective of the lot.
Landlords have a particular version of this problem — a fixed void between tenancies and no slack at all. That is a sequencing exercise as much as a building one, and it is covered on our refurbishing between tenants guide and our estate agent page.
How we set the dates
We survey, then we quote, and the quote carries the programme. Not an optimistic hope — a sequence with the dependencies in it, so you can see what is waiting on what. Bathroom refurbishment starts from £2,800, and the price is fixed against a defined scope before any work begins. If something genuinely unforeseen appears behind a wall, you hear about it, and about what it does to the programme, before we act on it.
One point of contact, trades sequenced by us rather than by you, protection in place from the first day to the last, and the flat left clean. If you want a realistic programme for your bathroom, send us photographs of the room, tell us whether you are leasehold and whether anything is moving, and we will tell you what your building is going to make this take. More on the wider works we run is on our refurbishment page.