How long does it take to tile a bathroom?

The short answer

For a typical UK bathroom of roughly 2m x 2.2m with fully tiled walls and a tiled floor, budget three to five working days of tiling. A shower enclosure area only, with a tiled floor, is usually one and a half to two days. A full wet room with tanking and a formed fall is five to seven days.

That is tiling time alone. It does not include the plumber, the electrician, plastering or the strip-out, all of which sit either side of us in the programme.

Where the days go

Day one is preparation and setting out: checking the walls are flat and plumb, priming, fitting backer board where needed, and working out the tile layout so cuts land in sensible places rather than a 20mm sliver in the most visible corner. Setting out is the part homeowners never see and the part that decides whether the finished room looks right.

Days two and three are the wall tiling. A tiler will usually fix walls before floors so nothing drops onto a freshly laid floor, and because wall tiles often sit down onto the floor tiles at the end.

Day three or four is the floor, then a minimum overnight cure before anyone walks on it. Grouting and siliconing is the final half day. Grout needs the adhesive underneath to have set, which is why grouting almost never happens the same day as fixing.

What adds days

Tanking a wet room adds one to two days on its own, because the membrane needs to cure before tiling starts and it cannot be rushed.

Large-format tiles (600x1200mm and up) take longer per square metre, not less. They need a flatter substrate, back-buttering and levelling clips, and cutting them is slower and needs two people.

Mosaics, herringbone, patterned floors and any tile that needs mitred external corners can double the fixing time for that area.

Underfloor heating adds a day for the insulation boards and mat, plus a commissioning period afterwards where the floor must not be heated at all for at least a week.

Uneven or damp walls, an old bathroom that hid a leak, or a floor that needs an uncoupling membrane are the usual reasons a job runs longer than quoted. A good tiler flags these on the survey, not on day three.

How to keep the job on schedule

Have all the tiles on site before day one, including 10% extra for cuts and future repairs. Waiting on a delivery is the single most common cause of a stalled bathroom.

Agree the trims, grout colour and layout before we start rather than mid-way through. Changing grout colour after day three means the job stops.

Make sure first-fix plumbing and electrics are finished and signed off. Tiling over a pipe that later needs moving costs far more than waiting two days.

What we can tell you before we start

On every bathroom we quote we give a start date, a working-day count and the days the room will be out of use. We work across London, Essex and Cambridge and most bathrooms are booked as a single continuous block so there are no gaps with the room half finished.

Send photos and rough measurements on WhatsApp and we will give you a realistic day count and price without a site visit.