Most electricians can count circuits and points accurately enough. That isn’t where rewires go wrong. They go wrong on the chases nobody said who was filling, the two days spent lifting and relaying a chipboard floor, the lath-and-plaster ceiling that came down in sheets, and the customer who genuinely believed “rewire” included decorating.

This is a method for pricing the whole job, not just the cable. Every figure below is illustrative — your rates, your area and the property in front of you decide your numbers. What transfers is the order you survey in, how you break the price up, and the two or three lines of text that stop the argument before it starts.

Survey the building, not just the installation

You’re pricing access as much as electrics. A four-bed with suspended timber floors and a boarded-out loft is a different job to the same house on a concrete slab with a laminate floor throughout.

Walk it with a notepad and record:

What’s there now. Rubber or fabric-insulated cable, lighting circuits with no earth, a rewireable fuseboard, painted-over VIR in the loft. It tells you what you’re stripping out, and whether anything at all is worth keeping.
Wall construction, room by room. Solid brick or block means chasing — slow, dusty, and hard on your gear. Stud and plasterboard means easy drops. Lath and plaster means damage, and you should say so out loud at the survey rather than discovering it together on day three.
Floors. Suspended timber with carpet is the best case. Chipboard sheets screwed and glued, engineered wood, tiles or a screeded solid floor all push cable routes into ceilings, walls or surface containment — a different price and a different look you need the customer to agree to now.
Loft and underfloor access. A boarded loft full of belongings, or one packed with blown insulation, adds hours. So does a crawl space you can’t stand up in.
The supply end. Where the meter and consumer unit are, the length of the tails, the earthing arrangement, and the state of the main protective bonding to gas and water. Bonding upgrades and any work involving the supplier’s equipment are separate chargeable items — don’t bury them in the rewire price.
Occupied or empty. An empty property you can strip out in one hit. An occupied one means working room by room, moving furniture, sheeting up, and leaving the family with power, lights and a working kettle every single night. That’s a real and significant time cost, and it’s the one most often left out.

Photograph everything, especially under the floor and in the loft. You’ll want it when you write the quote and again when the customer asks what changed.

Price circuit by circuit, then room by room

Build a schedule of the new installation before you price anything. Two lists do it:

Circuits. Ring or radial socket circuits by floor, lighting circuits by floor, cooker, shower, immersion, boiler, smoke and heat alarms, outside light, garage or shed supply, EV charge point provision, and any spare ways you’re leaving.
Points per room. Sockets, switches, light points, spurs, TV and data outlets, extractors. Walk the house with the customer and agree it room by room — kitchen island sockets, bedside sockets both sides, a socket in the loft, outside sockets.

Get that list signed off, then price your labour against it. A points schedule gives you two things a lump-sum figure never does: a defensible build-up, and something to price against when the customer adds four more downlights in the hall. That’s the same discipline behind any properly itemised quote.

Where extra points genuinely are cheap to add at first fix, say so in the quote — “additional socket outlets at £X each if agreed before first fix is complete” is a line that earns you money and goodwill at the same time.

Split first fix, second fix and the gap between them

Price the job in three blocks, because that’s how it happens:

Strip-out and first fix. Lifting floors, chasing walls, drilling joists, running cables, fitting back boxes and pattresses, positioning the new consumer unit, temporary supplies to keep the house running.
The plastering gap. Whether it’s your plasterer or theirs, nothing happens on your side while chases are filled and dried. Put it on the programme so nobody thinks you’ve disappeared.
Second fix, test and commission. Accessories on, everything terminated, consumer unit installed and connected, alarms fitted and linked, then full testing.

Write the programme into the quote with rough durations and say plainly when the power will be off. Customers accept a known day without power. They don’t accept a surprise one.

Making good: the line that prevents the biggest argument

This is where rewire quotes cause more disputes than anything else. “Rewire” means different things to the two people in the room, and the customer’s version usually includes a decorated house.

Pick a level and name it explicitly:

Chases and holes filled ready for decoration — you bond up the chases and leave a plasterable finish.
Fully plastered — a skim, usually by a plasterer you’ve priced in.
Plastered and decorated — rare on a rewire, and if you’re offering it, price it as its own stage.

Then exclude the rest in writing. A short paragraph does it:

Making good: chases and fixing holes filled to a plasterable finish.
Excludes plastering, skimming, decorating, and reinstatement of
floor coverings. Floorboards will be lifted and refixed; laminate,
engineered wood, tiled floors and fitted carpets cannot be
guaranteed to be reinstated to their original condition.

That last sentence is the one that saves you. Chipboard floors screwed through and glued at the joints do not come up cleanly, and a customer who has read that line before signing reacts very differently to one who hasn’t.

Testing and certification is its own line

A full house rewire ends with a proper set of tests, schedules and an installation certificate — and on a whole property that’s real time, not something to fold into the last afternoon. Price it as its own item so the customer can see they’re paying for the certification, not just the cable.

Domestic rewiring is notifiable work. Depending on where you are in the UK, that means either certifying it through your competent person scheme or notifying Building Control before you start, with a certificate and notification following on. Requirements change and vary by nation — check the current position with your scheme or your local Building Control rather than going on what was true a few years back. Whatever route applies, the notification and certification cost belongs on the quote as a visible line.

Allow for what’s behind the plaster

Until the floors are up you’re pricing on reasonable assumptions, so name them rather than hedging vaguely. The usual surprises are predictable: buried junction boxes with no access, a cable route blocked by a steel or a concrete lintel, notched joists you won’t add to, a solid floor where the plans suggested timber, or textured coatings and old insulation board that need checking for asbestos before anyone starts drilling — if that’s a possibility, stop and refer to the HSE guidance and a licensed surveyor.

Handle each with a named allowance or a stated caveat, the same way you would on any job where you can’t see everything at survey. An illustrative shape, and your numbers will differ:

First fix       6 days @ £280/day (illustrative)    £1,680
Second fix      4 days @ £280/day                   £1,120
Consumer unit, tails and main bonding                 £480
Materials       cable, boxes, accessories, alarms     £900
Testing, certification and notification               £320
Making good     chases filled to plasterable finish   £350
Contingency     concealed-wiring allowance            £300
                                                   -------
                                                    £5,150
                                          (+ VAT if registered)

Present it with clean inclusions and exclusions

Finish with a short list of what’s in and what isn’t — making good, decorating, floor coverings, moving furniture, appliance disconnection, anything relating to the supplier’s equipment — plus how long the price holds, the staged payments, and the process for agreeing extras in writing. If you also price bathroom work, the stage-by-stage bathroom method uses the same structure in a single room, and the electrician’s side of quoting covers how to lay that schedule out so a customer can read it.

The takeaway

Survey the building and not just the wiring, build a circuit and points schedule the customer signs off, split first fix from second fix, price testing and certification visibly, and put your making-good level in writing before anyone lifts a board. Do that and the job that generates the most disputes in domestic electrical work becomes one of the most predictable on your books.

Queezy is built for this kind of quote — room by room on site, itemised, then sent as a branded PDF before you’ve packed the van. Download it free on iPhone.

How to Quote a Rewire (Step by Step)