How much does a bathroom renovation cost in 2026?

Let’s get to the point: in Málaga, renovating a full bathroom costs between €5,500 and €9,500 excl. VAT. Most 4–5 m² bathrooms with mid-range finishes come in between €6,500 and €8,000, works and services included.

That’s the honest range, and it’s more useful than a flat “it depends”. Now, whether you stay at the lower end or climb to the top isn’t down to chance: it’s six or seven concrete decisions. We explain them all so you know what a bathroom like yours costs, not a theoretical one.

What the price depends on

Two bathrooms with the same footprint can cost €3,000 apart. These are the items that explain it:

• The square metres. Obvious, but it doesn’t scale in a straight line: a 3 m² bathroom doesn’t cost half of a 6 m² one, because plumbing, demolition and labour have a fixed minimum whatever the metres.
• Swapping the bath for a shower tray. It’s the most common request and affects the floor, the waterproofing and the drains. A flush resin tray costs more than a raised acrylic one, but it completely changes how the bathroom looks — and how it’s cleaned.
• The quality of tiling and sanitaryware. There’s a world between a €12/m² tile and a large-format rectified porcelain, and the same between a standard WC and a wall-hung one with a concealed cistern. This is where the budget rises or falls fastest.
• The shower screen. From €250 for a basic sliding one to more than €1,200 for a bespoke fixed tempered-glass panel with black or steel framing. In small bathrooms, the right screen is half the renovation.
• How much plumbing needs renewing. If the flat has some years on it — like many in Carretera de Cádiz or the Centre — the sensible thing is to replace the water pipes and drains while the bathroom is open. A few hundred euros now that save thousands later.
• The labour. Herringbone tiling, cutting large-format porcelain or recessing taps takes craft and hours. Cheap labour shows in the joints, and the joints are looked at every day for twenty years.

Indicative prices by range

For a full bathroom of around 4–5 m² in Málaga, these are the three bands to place yourself in:

A real example from the area

So the ranges stop being abstract: a 4.5 m² bathroom in a flat in Carretera de Cádiz, one of the seventies blocks with a few decades on it. Bath out, shower tray in, and everything new floor to ceiling. The items, in rounded, indicative figures, came out like this:

• Demolition and rubble removal — around €800. Includes stripping the old tiling, the bath and the floor down to a clean shell.
• New plumbing and electrics — around €1,300. Multilayer pipe, new drains, light points and a socket for the anti-fog mirror.
• Waterproofing, tiling and floor — around €2,100. Rectified porcelain on walls and floor, with a waterproofing membrane in the shower area.
• Resin tray, fixed screen and sanitaryware — around €2,000. A 140 cm flush tray, tempered-glass screen and a wall-hung WC.
• Unit, taps and lighting — around €1,000. A wall-hung unit with integrated basin, a quality single-lever tap and perimeter LED on the mirror.
• Ceiling paint, finishes and final clean — around €500.

Total: around €7,700 plus VAT, two weeks of work and a mid-to-high-end bathroom done once and done well. It lands where we said above: in the band where most of the bathrooms we do fall. If you’d like to see how we carry out this exact job, on bathroom renovations you’ll find the full process, from demolition to the last joint.

What a properly made quote includes

Most of the nasty surprises in a renovation don’t come from the price, but from what the paper didn’t say. Before signing with anyone — us or otherwise — check the quote includes:

• Itemised costs, not a lump sum. Demolition, plumbing, electrics, tiling, sanitaryware, screen: each with its amount.
• Specific brands and models of sanitaryware, taps and finishes, or at least the amount set aside for each, so you can really compare.
• Rubble removal and skip, which in some quotes turns up later as an “extra”.
• Who handles the works permits with the council and what they cost.
• The timeline and payment by work stages, not everything up front.
• A written guarantee for the work and the waterproofing, which is what you most want not to fail.

If you’re doing sums for more than the bathroom, our guides on how much a kitchen renovation costs and how much a whole flat renovation costs use the same approach: local ranges and no smoke.