Kitchen Rewire Cost: What Drives the Price Up or Down

A kitchen rewire typically costs £500 to £1,500 for a partial rewire of an otherwise sound kitchen, £1,500 to £3,000 for a full rewire during a refit, and £3,000 to £4,500 for a complex job with an island supply or a new consumer unit. The board itself adds £680 to £920 plus VAT if the existing one has no spare ways left. The breakdown below shows exactly what pushes a quote to either end of that range.

Ask three electricians about kitchen rewire cost and you will get three different numbers, sometimes thousands of pounds apart, for what sounds like the same job. That is not because anyone is making it up. A kitchen is the most electrically dense room in a house, and the price depends almost entirely on what is going into it: how many appliances need their own circuit, whether an island wants power in the middle of the floor, and whether the consumer unit has any room left to take it all. This guide breaks down what a kitchen rewire costs in 2026, what pushes the price up or down, and the point at which the fuse board itself joins the bill.

We rewire kitchens across Bristol every month, from Victorian terraces in Totterdown to 1930s semis out towards Bishopsworth, so the numbers below are grounded in what these jobs actually involve, not just national averages.

Table of Contents

• Kitchen Rewire Cost at a Glance
• TL;DR
• What Rewiring a Kitchen Actually Involves
• What Drives a Kitchen Rewire Cost Up or Down
• When a Kitchen Rewire Forces a Consumer Unit Upgrade
• Part P, Certification and Who Can Do the Work
• A Worked Example: South Bristol Terrace Refit
• When a Kitchen Rewire Becomes a House Rewire
• How to Keep the Kitchen Rewiring Price Down
• Getting a Kitchen Rewire Quote in Bristol

TL;DR

• A light partial rewire of a kitchen, replacing tired circuits without changing the layout, typically costs £500 to £1,500.
• A full kitchen rewire during a refit, with dedicated appliance circuits, new lighting and repositioned sockets, usually lands between £1,500 and £3,000. National pricing data puts the average at around £2,200.
• Complex jobs with an island supply, underfloor heating or a consumer unit upgrade can reach £3,000 to £4,500.
• If the fuse board has no spare ways, a replacement consumer unit joins the bill. Our fixed prices start at £680 plus VAT.
• Any new circuit is notifiable under Part P, so the work needs a registered electrician who can certify it.
• The single best way to keep the cost down is to rewire while the kitchen is already stripped out, not after the new units are in.

Kitchen Rewire Cost at a Glance

The honest answer on the cost to rewire a kitchen is that it depends on scope, so it helps to split the job into three tiers. Current national pricing guides such as WhatPrice put a typical kitchen rewire between £1,500 and £3,000, with an average of around £2,200, while electricians quoting on MyJobQuote give real-world figures from about £1,000 for a simple job up to £4,500 for a large kitchen with every extra going in.

Labour is the biggest slice. Electricians typically charge £200 to £400 a day, and a kitchen rewire needs one or two of them on site for most of the job. Materials are the smaller share, though copper cable prices have kept nobody’s quote low in recent years.

What Rewiring a Kitchen Actually Involves

A modern kitchen is not one circuit. It is usually four or five, sometimes more, each run back to its own protective device in the consumer unit. A typical full kitchen rewire in one of our jobs includes a socket circuit for the worktop and general use, a dedicated cooker circuit for an oven or induction hob, separate radials for heavy appliances like the dishwasher and washing machine, a lighting circuit with switching for ceiling and under-cabinet lights, and often a supply for the extractor.

Induction hobs deserve a special mention. Many pull far more current than the old gas-with-ignition setup they replace, so a hob that arrives with the new kitchen frequently needs a new 32 amp circuit even when everything else in the room is staying put.

The work itself splits into the same two stages as any wiring job. First fix happens while the room is stripped: chasing walls, running cables, setting back boxes. Second fix happens after plastering and fitting: connecting sockets, switches and lights, then testing everything. We have covered both stages in detail in our guides to first fix electrics and the wider process on our rewiring services page.

There is a safety story underneath all this too. Home Office fire statistics for England recorded 22,877 accidental dwelling fires between April 2024 and March 2025, and cooking appliances were the largest specified ignition category at 44 per cent of them. The kitchen is where a house works its electrics hardest, which is exactly why the circuits behind it need to be sized, protected and tested properly rather than extended off whatever was nearest.

What Drives a Kitchen Rewire Cost Up or Down

Two kitchens of the same size can come in £1,500 apart for perfectly sensible reasons. These are the ones that matter.

Circuit count and appliance load

Every dedicated circuit is another cable run, another chase, another protective device. A kitchen with an oven, induction hob, dishwasher, washing machine, tumble dryer and wine cooler needs far more copper and board space than one with a cooker and a kettle. When a builder sends us a kitchen plan, the appliance schedule is the first thing we price from.

Island supplies

Power in the middle of the floor means getting cable there, and that means lifting floors or chasing a screed. In a terrace with suspended timber floors it is usually manageable. In a solid concrete floor it can add several hundred pounds of labour on its own, which is why we always ask about islands before quoting rather than after.

Underfloor heating and extras

Electric underfloor heating wants its own circuit, a thermostat and usually RCD protection arranged for it. Add an external socket for the garden, low-level plinth lighting or a boiling water tap and the count keeps climbing. None of these are expensive individually. Together they can be the difference between a £1,800 job and a £3,000 one.

Walls, floors and finishes

Chasing solid brick under old lime plaster, which much of Victorian Bristol is built from, takes longer than clipping cables through modern stud walls. And if the new kitchen is tiled or panelled before we arrive, routes that would have taken minutes take hours. The state of the room when the electrician starts is one of the biggest hidden price drivers there is.

Accessory and lighting spec

Standard white sockets and downlights sit at one end. Brushed brass sockets, USB-C outlets, dimmable under-cabinet LED runs and smart switching sit at the other. The wiring behind them is similar, but the hardware cost and the fitting time are not.

When a Kitchen Rewire Forces a Consumer Unit Upgrade

This is the surprise that catches most people out, so we will be plain about it. Every new circuit needs a spare way on the consumer unit. Plenty of Bristol homes still run on boards that were full the day they were fitted, and a kitchen refit that adds three or four circuits has nowhere to put them. At that point the board has to be replaced with a larger one, and the kitchen electrics cost grows accordingly.

National guides suggest £500 to £900 for a straightforward board change. A full-specification metal consumer unit with RCBO protection on every circuit and surge protection sits above that, which is why we publish fixed prices rather than leaving it vague: £680 plus VAT (£816 including VAT) for a 6-way unit, £780 plus VAT (£936 including VAT) for 8 to 12 ways, and £920 plus VAT (£1,104 including VAT) for a 15-way board. Full details are on our consumer unit replacement page.

Is the upgrade avoidable? Sometimes. If the existing board has two or three genuinely spare ways and modern RCD protection, new kitchen circuits can often land in it. But if you are already paying for a rewire, replacing a tired board in the same visit is usually cheaper than doing it separately in two years when the next project fills it.

Part P, Certification and Who Can Do the Work

Kitchen electrics used to have a special legal status. Since the 2013 edition of Approved Document P, kitchens are no longer classed as special locations, which surprises a lot of builders who trained when they were. The rules that remain are still firm: installing any new circuit is notifiable building work, and so is replacing a consumer unit. That work must either be signed off by building control or, far more practically, carried out by an electrician registered with a competent person scheme who can self-certify it.

The technical standard everything is tested against is BS 7671, the IET Wiring Regulations, now amended up to A4:2026, published 15 April 2026, with the previous edition withdrawn from 15 October 2026. In practice that means RCD protection on the new circuits, correct cable sizing for the loads, and an Electrical Installation Certificate handed over at the end. We are NAPIT approved, so our kitchen rewires are self-certified and the building regulations notification is handled for you. If a quote arrives noticeably cheaper than everyone else’s and says nothing about certification, that is usually where the saving was made.

A Worked Example: South Bristol Terrace Refit

Picture a typical job: a Victorian terrace in Southville, kitchen stripped back to brick for a full refit. The new plan has ten double sockets, an induction hob replacing a gas one, a built-in oven, dishwasher, washing machine, an extractor, and LED downlights with under-cabinet strips. The existing consumer unit is an 8-way board with no spare ways, so it is replaced with a 10-way unit at our fixed price. Two electricians handle first fix over two days while the room is bare, then return for a day of second fix and testing once the plastering and units are done.

Take the board out of that picture and the same rewire sits around £2,250, almost exactly the national average. Add an island supply through the floor and you would be nudging £3,600. That is the whole story of kitchen rewire pricing in one table: the wiring itself is fairly predictable, and the extras around it are what move the number.

When a Kitchen Rewire Becomes a House Rewire

Here is the awkward question we sometimes have to raise mid-quote. If the kitchen wiring is in poor enough shape to need replacing, what is the rest of the house running on? Rubber-insulated or early PVC cable does not age differently in the lounge than it does behind the cooker.

A kitchen rewire on its own makes sense when the rest of the installation is sound, or when the kitchen is simply being remodelled and the old layout no longer fits. But if the whole installation is original and the property is being renovated anyway, pricing the full job is worth doing before committing to the kitchen alone, because a whole house rewire typically costs £4,500 to £8,000 for a three bed house, and doing the kitchen separately first means paying for some of the disruption twice. An EICR costing £80 to £350 will settle the question of whether the rest of the wiring has life left in it, and it is a small price for making a several-thousand-pound decision with evidence instead of guesswork.

How to Keep the Kitchen Rewiring Price Down

A kitchen rewiring price responds to planning more than haggling. These habits save real money.

Rewire while the room is stripped. The cheapest time to run cables is when the walls are bare and the floor is up. Retrofitting circuits around a finished kitchen means longer routes, more making good and more labour. If a refit is happening, the electrician should be in before the plasterer, not after the tiler.

Fix the layout early. Decide where the appliances, island and sockets are going before first fix, and resist moving them afterwards. A socket moved on paper costs nothing. A socket moved after plastering costs a patch, a repaint and an hour of labour.

Batch the work. If the board needs upgrading, or an outside socket and new garden lighting are on the wish list, doing them in the same visit shares the setup, testing and certification costs across everything.

Get the quote itemised. A good quote separates labour, materials, the board and the certification, which makes comparing electricians straightforward and stops the vague single-figure quote hiding a missing item that reappears as an extra later.

Getting a Kitchen Rewire Quote in Bristol

Kitchen rewires reward local knowledge. Knowing how Totterdown’s solid walls chase, which 1960s boards south of the river have room left in them, and how to sequence first fix around a builder’s programme is what keeps a quote accurate and a job on schedule. We are a NAPIT-approved contractor based in South Bristol, we price kitchen rewires from the appliance schedule and plan rather than a guess over the phone, and every job ends with the certificate that proves the work was done properly.

If you are a homeowner partway through planning a refit, or a builder who needs the electrics priced from a drawing, call us on 0117 2447 382 or send the plan through our contact page and we will come back with an itemised quote. We are NAPIT registered and based in South Bristol, so the certificate at the end comes from the people who actually did the job. Bring the appliance list. It is the first thing we will ask for anyway.