Redoing a hotel room bathroom costs between €7,000 and €20,000 in 2026, with the mid-range sitting between €10,000 and €15,000 for a 4 or 5 square metre bathroom, and it takes 15 to 22 working days with the room closed. It’s the slowest, most expensive job in the whole renovation, and it alone accounts for 35-45% of the cost of refreshing a room. Anyone planning to do ten rooms in a month hasn’t yet spoken to whoever lays the tiles.
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What it costs, item by item
The figures below refer to a standard room bathroom between 4 and 5 square metres, with a shower, in an Italian property in 2026, VAT excluded, on a site redoing at least eight together. Below five rooms, unit prices rise by 15-25%, because set-up and travel costs are spread across fewer units.
| Item | Basic tier | Mid tier | Premium tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Demolition, clearance and disposal | €550-900 | €900-1,300 | €1,300-1,900 |
| Sanitary plumbing and waste connections | €1,100-1,600 | €1,600-2,500 | €2,500-4,000 |
| Electrics, forced ventilation, light points | €450-750 | €750-1,200 | €1,200-2,000 |
| Screed, infill and waterproofing | €350-550 | €550-800 | €800-1,300 |
| Flooring and wall coverings, material and fitting | €1,300-2,000 | €2,000-3,400 | €3,400-7,000 |
| Sanitary ware and taps | €600-1,000 | €1,000-1,900 | €1,900-4,000 |
| Shower enclosure or fixed glass panel | €400-700 | €700-1,300 | €1,300-2,800 |
| Vanity unit, worktop and mirror | €600-1,100 | €1,100-2,100 | €2,100-4,500 |
| Door, joinery and finishing works | €300-550 | €550-950 | €950-1,800 |
| Accessories, dispensers, grab bars, hairdryer | €150-300 | €300-550 | €550-1,100 |
| Indicative total per bathroom | €5,800-9,450 | €9,450-16,000 | €16,000-30,400 |
There are two items that always get underestimated. Disposal, because demolishing a bathroom produces between 1.2 and 2 tonnes of rubble, and in a historic centre it gets carried by hand all the way to the skip. And the waste pipes, because until you demolish, nobody knows what state the branch pipes and manifolds under the floor are in: budgeting a 10% contingency on that item is prudence, not pessimism.
Within the overall financial picture of a hotel renovation, bathrooms pull the total up more than the rooms do, and whoever cuts the budget almost always cuts in the wrong place, on the wall coverings, when the real money sits in the systems.
Why it takes three weeks and not five days
Time isn’t eaten up by the work, it’s eaten up by the waiting. A bathroom could be done in eight days of actual labour if it weren’t for the screed drying, the waste pipe pressure test, the curing time for the waterproofing membrane and the grout setting.
| Phase | Days | Site note |
|---|---|---|
| Demolition, removing sanitary ware, clearance | 1-2 | riser water is only shut off during agreed hours |
| Marking out and adapting waste pipes | 1 | this is where surprises under the floor turn up |
| Plumbing, pressure test | 2-3 | the test must be left for at least 24 hours before closing up chases |
| Electrics and ventilation | 1 | light points, shaver sockets, extractor switch |
| Screed and infill | 1 to lay | 5-7 days to dry, 24-48 hours with fast-setting premixes |
| Two-coat waterproofing | 1 | 12 hours between coats, 24 hours before tiling |
| Laying flooring and wall coverings | 3-4 | large-format tiles need a perfectly level surface |
| Grouting and sealing | 1 | 24 hours before the shower is used |
| Fitting sanitary ware, shower enclosure, vanity unit | 1-2 | this is where you find out if the survey was right |
| Accessories, touch-ups, testing and cleaning | 1 | drain test, pressure test, checking falls |
Adding up the work and the waiting comes to between 15 and 22 working days per bathroom, which becomes 21-30 calendar days. With two teams working staggered shifts on a ten-room floor, it closes out in six or seven weeks, with an average of three or four rooms out of service at a time instead of ten.
The real bottleneck, though, isn’t the crew, it’s the waste stacks. As long as you stay within the existing footprint and reuse the stacks, the work happens room by room and can be done with the property open. The moment the design moves the bathroom or changes the toilet’s discharge point, the vertical stack has to be redone, and the work involves every floor served by that stack, from the loft to the basement. That’s the point at which the hotel closes a whole wing, and no amount of organisation avoids it.
The maths on a stopped room works like this: an average rate of €110 with 70% occupancy means around €77 of lost revenue a day, so €1,800-2,300 per bathroom redone. Across twenty bathrooms that’s €40,000 in lost revenue, more than the cost of four bathrooms. That’s why seasonality weighs more than a supplier’s discount, and why it pays to fit the works into the low-season window, following the same logic as the property’s seasonal closing and reopening.
Keeping the hotel open while demolishing
It can be done, it’s done often, and it needs rules written down before work starts.
The site should be organised by vertical bands or by wing, never scattered, so occupied rooms stay grouped away from the noise. The rooms immediately above, below and beside a bathroom under demolition can’t be sold: that’s three or four extra rooms of lost revenue for every bathroom opened up, and they need to go into the sums along with the rest.
Working hours are the part that generates the most argument. Noisy work, demolition and chasing into walls, should sit between 9.30 and 12.30 and between 14.30 and 17.30, never before 9 and never during breakfast. Loading and unloading materials happens at 7.30, before guests come down, using a dedicated service lift with panel protection on the cab walls and floor.
Dust is complaint number one, well ahead of noise. You need a double zip-up plastic curtain at the entrance to the room under work, an extractor connected to the power tools, a peel-off adhesive mat at the exit, and the corridor cleaned twice a day, not once. Guest routes need protecting with sheeting or fixed runners, and the lifts used by the site crew need to be kept separate from the guest lifts, even at the cost of slowing the work down.
On temporary soundproofing, few things actually work: mobile acoustic panels on the door of the room under work, mats on the floor of the room above during demolition, and above all, communication at booking stage. A guest told at booking that there’s work on the third floor until 17.30, with a matching discount, leaves very different reviews from a guest caught off guard. The rules for coexistence between crews and guests are the same ones that apply to fitting furniture with the hotel open, and it’s worth writing them once for the whole site.
The three centimetres that throw the whole supply chain into crisis
In a property from the 1980s, the bathrooms are nominally identical. They aren’t. Between two bathrooms of the same type you’ll measure differences of 3 or 4 centimetres in width, caused by plaster of different thicknesses, out-of-plumb partitions, unevenly clad columns. On a 100-centimetre vanity unit with a stone worktop cut to size, 3 centimetres is the difference between a piece that fits and one that goes back to the workshop.
The method that works happens in two stages. First, survey every bathroom individually, with a laser distance meter and checks for plumb and square, and number the pieces room by room: that’s the part of the on-site measurement survey done before ordering that nobody wants to pay for, and that later saves the whole job. Then repeat the survey after demolition and before tiling, because that’s when you know the real finished dimensions.
The second rule is to design furniture with fitting tolerance. A 100-centimetre wall-hung unit for a 104-centimetre space, with two 2-centimetre filler panels, fits anywhere; the same unit designed flush to exact size fits one bathroom in three. The worktop, on the other hand, gets ordered to actual measurements after the wall coverings are laid, with a dedicated delivery: it costs one extra trip and solves 90% of the problems.
Off-site prefabrication is the only serious way to cut down the days a room stays closed. A vanity unit built in the factory, with worktop and undermounted basin already fitted, trap and valve pre-assembled, arrives packaged and is fitted in two hours. The same unit built on site by a joiner means two days of work inside the room, dust, glue, and a worse finish quality. Made-to-measure bathroom furniture for hotels exists for exactly this reason, with water-resistant panels and edging that withstand the constant humidity of a shower used twice a day.
In accessible room bathrooms, the measurements aren’t negotiable: a 150-centimetre turning circle, a basin with clear space underneath, grab bars fixed onto wall reinforcements planned at the marking-out stage rather than added afterwards. Reinforcements go in while the walls are open, and the furniture dimensions for accessible rooms need deciding before demolition, not in front of the bricklayer with the bar in hand.
What’s worth doing, and what isn’t
It pays to redo bathrooms floor by floor, even if the budget suggests proceeding two or three rooms at a time. A fragmented site costs 20-30% more for the same amount of work, because every restart needs set-up, protection, internal scaffolding, and crews travelling back and forth after having moved on elsewhere in the meantime.
It never pays to cut costs on waterproofing and on hidden parts. A properly done membrane costs €200 more per bathroom; a leak that shows up in year two means a closed room, a false ceiling on the floor below to redo, and a unit that has to come apart. On wall coverings, though, cutting costs is legitimate: a technical porcelain tile at €30 per square metre, well laid, performs better than a €90 natural stone poorly laid.
On taps, the position is clear-cut: buy standard, replaceable cartridges, from a range that will stay in catalogue for years. A discontinued mixer tap with an untraceable cartridge costs as much as replacing all the taps on the floor. The same reasoning governs the choice of spare parts and finishes that stay repeatable over time.
Finally, the bathroom needs deciding together with the room, not afterwards. The door’s position, its swing direction and the distance between the bed and the bathroom entrance all depend on the layout scheme chosen for the room, and anyone who renovates only the bathroom while leaving the door where it was often gives up 20 centimetres of clearance they could have reclaimed. For properties moving up in category, bathroom dimensional and fit-out requirements are also a classification matter, and it’s worth checking them first against the detail of what a four-star hotel needs to have.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to redo a hotel room bathroom?
In 2026 a complete hotel room bathroom of 4 or 5 square metres costs between €5,800 and €9,500 at the basic tier, between €9,500 and €16,000 at the mid tier, and over €16,000 with premium wall coverings and high-end taps. Prices refer to sites redoing at least eight bathrooms together, VAT excluded. Below five rooms, the unit cost rises by 15-25%.
How many days does it take to redo a hotel bathroom?
Between 15 and 22 working days per bathroom, which becomes 21-30 calendar days. The actual work would take around eight days: the rest is technical waiting, meaning the screed drying, the pressure test on the systems, the waterproofing membrane curing and the grout setting. With two staggered teams, a ten-room floor closes out in six or seven weeks.
Can bathrooms be redone with the hotel open?
Yes, as long as the vertical waste stacks aren’t touched. If the design moves the bathroom or changes the toilet’s discharge point, the stack serves every floor and the work involves the whole vertical band of the building, so a wing has to close. Staying within the existing footprint means working band by band, keeping the rooms above, below and beside the one under work off sale too.
Why do bathroom units need surveying room by room?
Because in a property built decades ago, two nominally identical bathrooms differ by 3 or 4 centimetres due to uneven plaster and out-of-plumb partitions. Units need designing with 2-centimetre filler panels to absorb the differences, while worktops get ordered to actual measurements after the wall coverings are laid. Without a double survey, before and after demolition, some pieces end up going back to the workshop.
How much does a closed room add to the cost of the works?
With an average rate of €110 and 70% occupancy, each stopped room is worth around €77 of lost revenue a day, so €1,800-2,300 for every bathroom redone. Across twenty bathrooms, lost revenue exceeds €40,000, more than the cost of four complete bathrooms. That’s why choosing the seasonal window matters more than the discount negotiated with a supplier.
