Cost to Regrout a Bathroom in 2026: UK Prices Explained

The cost to regrout a bathroom in 2026 usually lands between £215 and £450 for a standard UK bathroom, with a shower enclosure on its own costing roughly £120 to £250. Those are the numbers most homeowners in Bromley and the wider South East are quoted, and they cover labour, grout, silicone and the rubbish. Regrouting is the cheapest way to make a tired bathroom look sharp again, but it only works when the tiles and the substrate behind them are sound. Get that judgement wrong and you pay twice.

This guide breaks the job into its real parts: raking out, regrouting, resealing, and the extras that quietly push a quote up.

What a regrout actually involves

People use “regrout” loosely. A proper regrout means the old grout is mechanically raked out to a useful depth, usually two thirds of the tile thickness or more, then the joints are vacuumed, cleaned and filled with fresh grout. Skimming new grout over old is a cosmetic patch: it sits thin, it does not bond well, and it starts flaking within a year.

The raking out is the slow part. On 100mm square wall tiles there are a lot of joints per square metre, and a multi-tool or oscillating grout blade has to travel every one of them without chipping the tile edges. On large format porcelain there are far fewer joints, so the same wall costs less to rake.

A regrout is normally paired with a reseal. Grout belongs in tile-to-tile joints only. Every junction that moves, tile to bath, tile to shower tray, internal corners, and the run along the worktop or basin, should be sealed with a flexible silicone rather than grout. That is not a stylistic preference. BS 5385, the British Standard code of practice for wall and floor tiling, calls for movement joints in wet areas to be filled with a curing sealant, because grout is rigid and will crack as a tray or bath flexes under load.

Cost to regrout a bathroom: 2026 UK prices

Most tilers price a regrout by the square metre of tiling, not by the room. Typical 2026 figures:

Regrouting labour: £20 to £35 per square metre including standard cement-based grout.
Raking out old grout: add £20 to £40 per square metre where the grout is hard, deep, or epoxy based.
Shower enclosure only: £120 to £250 as a half-day job.
Bathroom floor only: £80 to £180 depending on floor area and joint width.
Full bathroom, walls and floor: £215 to £450 for a typical three-piece room.

Add roughly 15 to 25 per cent in London and the inner South East, where day rates are higher. A tiler working on a day rate rather than a measured price will usually clear a small bathroom regrout in a day, sometimes a day and a half if the old grout fights back.

Materials are a small slice. A tub of standard flexible wall and floor grout covers a decent area and costs a fraction of the labour. Epoxy grout costs several times more per kilo and takes longer to work, so an epoxy regrout typically carries a 40 to 60 per cent labour uplift on top of the material cost. It is worth it in a wet room or a heavily used family shower, and overkill behind a basin.

Cost to reseal a bathroom

Resealing is the silicone-only version of the job: strip the old sealant, clean and dry the substrate, reapply. As a standalone visit it usually costs £80 to £150, which reflects a minimum call-out more than the material. Bundled into a regrout it often adds only £30 to £60, which is why it is nearly always cheaper to do both together.

The failure most people bring us is mould in the silicone rather than on it. Once the black staining is inside the sealant bead, no cleaner reaches it. The bead has to come out. Sanitary-grade silicone with a fungicide slows that down, but nothing stops it if the room has no working extraction and the shower is used twice a day. If your silicone blackens within twelve months of every reseal, the problem is ventilation, not the sealant.

What pushes the price up

Four things move a regrout quote more than anything else:

Joint width and tile size. Small mosaics have enormous joint length per square metre. A mosaic shower can take twice as long as the same area in 600 x 300 porcelain.

Existing grout type. Epoxy grout is very hard to remove cleanly and often means a slower, more careful rake. Always tell the tiler what is there if you know.

Access. Regrouting behind a fitted bath panel, around a bulky screen, or over a high-sided tray adds fiddly hours. Some tilers will ask to remove the screen, which is sensible and adds a little time.

Colour change. Going from grey grout to white on a light tile is usually fine. Going from a dark grout to a pale one demands a deeper rake, because any dark residue left in the joint shadows through the new grout and the result looks patchy.

Regrout or retile? How to decide

A regrout is money well spent when the tiles are firmly bonded, the layout still works, and the problem is purely cosmetic staining or a few crumbling joints. It is money wasted when any of the following is true.

Tiles sound hollow. Tap across the wall with a knuckle. A drummy patch means the adhesive has let go. New grout will not hold a loose tile, and it will crack again within months.
Grout is failing in long continuous runs, low down in a shower. That often means water has been getting behind the tiles and the board or plaster is soft.
There is visible movement or a step between tiles. Substrate problems do not get fixed at the surface.
You dislike the tiles. Obvious, but worth saying. Spending £350 to freshen tiles you plan to replace in two years is a poor trade.

The rough economics: a regrout is typically 5 to 10 per cent of the cost of retiling the same bathroom. If the tiles are sound and you like them, it is one of the highest-return jobs in the house. For comparison, our cost to tile a bathroom guide sets out what the full job runs to in 2026. If there is any suspicion of water behind the tiles, get the wall opened up and inspected before spending anything on cosmetics, and read our guide to tanking before tiling to see what should have been there in the first place. More guides are on the Bromley Tilers site.

Doing it yourself

A shower regrout is within reach for a patient DIYer. Budget for an oscillating multi-tool with grout removal blades, a grout float, a decent sponge and a bucket, plus the grout and silicone. Materials and a basic tool set come to well under £100, so the saving against a £200 shower regrout is real but not enormous once you count your weekend.

The two mistakes that spoil DIY regrouts are both about patience. First, not raking deep enough, so the new grout is a thin skin that crumbles. Second, wiping the joints too wet too soon, which washes cement out of the surface and leaves a chalky, uneven finish that picks up dirt. Let the grout firm up before the first sponge pass, and change the water often.

Silicone is harder to fake than most people expect. A clean bead needs the old sealant fully removed, a dry surface, steady pressure, and a single continuous pass. Filling the bath with water before sealing the tile-to-bath joint is worth doing: it loads the bath so the joint is sealed at its widest, and the bead is not stretched every time someone gets in.

Frequently asked questions

How often should a bathroom be regrouted?

Cement-based grout in a daily-use bathroom generally lasts five to ten years before it looks tired or starts breaking down at the joints. Silicone has a shorter life, often two to five years in a shower. Rather than working to a calendar, inspect the joints once or twice a year and act when you see cracking, crumbling or staining that will not clean off.

Is regrouting cheaper than retiling a bathroom?

Considerably. A full bathroom regrout at £215 to £450 is a small fraction of a retile, which runs into the low thousands once you include stripping out, making good, adhesive, tiles and labour. Regrouting only makes sense where the tiles themselves are sound and you are happy to keep them.

Can you grout over old grout?

Not properly. Fresh grout needs depth to key into. Spread thinly over existing grout it sits as a skin, cures weak and starts flaking within a year, and it will not bridge a joint that is already cracking. The old grout has to come out to a reasonable depth first.

Should the corners of a bathroom be grouted or siliconed?

Siliconed. Internal corners, and every junction between tiles and a bath, shower tray, basin or worktop, are movement joints. BS 5385 calls for these to be sealed with a flexible curing sealant. Grout in those positions is rigid, so it cracks as the fitting flexes and lets water through.

How long does a bathroom regrout take?

A shower enclosure is normally a half-day to a day. A full bathroom, walls and floor, is usually one to two days depending on how stubborn the old grout is. Allow at least 24 hours after grouting before the shower is used again, and check the silicone manufacturer’s cure time, which is often 24 hours for a full skin.

Does regrouting stop damp or leaks?

Only if the water was getting in through the grout joints themselves, which is uncommon. Most bathroom leaks come from failed silicone at the tray or bath junction, a bad waste connection, or the lack of a proper tanked waterproof layer behind the tiles. If a wall is damp, find the source before regrouting, or you will simply cover it up.

020 8058 5574

contact@bromleytilers.co.uk