Quick answer
A typical full bathroom takes 7–10 working days to fit. A wet room usually runs 4–7 working days, and smaller jobs — swapping a suite, refreshing a cloakroom, fitting a shower — are often less. Most of that time is craft you can’t rush: letting tile adhesive and grout cure, and waiting on tanking before anything goes back over it.
A day-by-day timeline of a full bathroom fit
Every Plymouth home is a little different, but a standard family bathroom — strip the old one out, plumb and tile a new one in — follows a predictable rhythm. Here’s how a typical 7–10 day fit unfolds.
Days 1–2 · Strip-out
We protect your floors and stairs, then take the old bathroom back to the bare walls — suite, tiles, flooring and any rot or damp we find behind them. It’s the messy bit, but it’s where surprises show up, so we’d rather find them now than halfway through.
Days 2–3 · First fix
New pipework, waste runs and electrics go in while the walls are open — feeds for the basin, bath, shower and any heated towel rail or extractor. Walls and floors are squared up and made ready, and a wet room or walk-in shower gets its former and tanking at this stage.
Days 4–6 · Tiling
The part that can’t be hurried. Tiles are set out, cut and fixed, then left to cure before grouting — and grout needs its own curing time before it’s sealed. Rushing this is how you get cracked joints and lippy tiles a year later, so we let it set properly.
Days 6–8 · Second fix
Now it starts to look like a bathroom. The suite, taps, shower, screen, towel rail, lighting and extractor all go in and get connected, tested and commissioned. Silicone is run, seals are checked, and everything is run hot and cold to make sure it works as it should.
Days 8–10 · Finishing & clean
Decorating, trims, sealant, mirror and accessories — the details that separate a good finish from a brochure one. Then a proper clean-down, a walk-round with you, and your handover pack.
Where the days go
Notice how much of the timeline is waiting — for adhesive, grout and tanking to cure. That’s not slow working; it’s the difference between a bathroom that lasts and one that fails. See exactly what’s included in a full bathroom installation.
What makes a job quicker — or slower
Two bathrooms the same size can take very different lengths of time. These are the things that move the needle, and we’ll flag any of them honestly in your quote rather than spring them on you mid-job.
Things that speed it up
- Keeping the suite and pipework roughly where they are now
- Sound walls and floors that don’t need rebuilding
- All materials and tiles on site before we start
- A clear run for the team without us working around other trades
Things that add days
- Moving the bath, basin or toilet to a new position
- Hidden damp, rot or dodgy old wiring behind the tiles
- Large-format or natural-stone tiles, or intricate patterns
- Replastering, new flooring substrate, or structural changes
Tiling and curing time is the single biggest factor in how long a bathroom takes — and the one part we never rush.
Wet room vs standard bathroom timing
A wet room often comes in a touch quicker than a full traditional bathroom — typically 4–7 working days — because there’s no bath to plumb and box in and fewer fittings overall. The trade-off is the tanking: the whole floor and lower walls are fully waterproofed and that membrane must be given time to cure before tiling starts. Skip that and you’re storing up a leak, so it’s a stage we never shortcut.
A standard bathroom with a bath, separate shower and more tiling tends to sit at the 7–10 day end. If you’re weighing up the two, our bathroom renovation guide walks through the layout and lifestyle differences, and you can see the full range of work on our services page.
How we keep it on schedule
A timeline only means something if it’s kept. Here’s how we make sure the days we quote are the days you get — no drifting, no vanishing act.
One managed team
Your plumber, tiler and electrician are coordinated by a single project manager — no waiting weeks for a sub-contractor to reappear between stages.
Daily updates
You’ll know where the job is each day and what’s happening next. One point of contact, straight answers, no chasing.
A tidy site
We sheet up, clear waste regularly and tidy down at the end of each day, so your home stays liveable while the work’s going on.
Will my home be unusable?
This is the worry we hear most, and the honest answer is: far less than people fear. The work is contained to the bathroom. We dust-sheet the route in, keep our mess to the room, and tidy down every evening — so the rest of your house carries on as normal.
If you’ve only got one bathroom, the main thing to plan for is no shower or toilet in that room for a few days mid-job — roughly from strip-out until the second fix. Plenty of our Plymouth clients borrow a neighbour’s or family member’s shower for a couple of nights, and we’ll always tell you up front exactly which days that’ll be so there are no nasty surprises. If access matters to you, just say — we’ll plan the schedule around it.
Ready when you are
Get a fixed quote with a real timeline
Tell us about your bathroom and we’ll give you a written price and a day-by-day plan — so you know exactly how long it’ll take before we lift a tool.