It is well known that remodeling a bathroom is one of the best ways to add value to your home. The average return on investment for a bathroom remodel, including the cost of bathroom tile installation, is around 70%.
Bathrooms are one of the biggest talking points for home buyers today. A drab, outdated bathroom could potentially drive away prospective buyers. On the other hand, a functional, modern, and stylish bathroom can be a huge selling point.
Whether you are planning to put your home on the market or just making improvements for you and your family to enjoy, a bathroom remodel is a wise investment.
In many bathrooms the tile is the star of the show. Everybody loves a beautiful updated shower, and really, no floor covering makes more sense in a bathroom than tile. But first, let’s address the elephant in the room – how much does it cost?
Bathroom Tile Installation Cost: How Much Does it Cost to Tile a Shower?
Well, the answer is, it depends. There are many factors that go into how much it will cost to have a tile shower installed professionally.
Is it a tub/shower combination, a standard walk in shower with a dam or a barrier free shower?
What is the shower pan size?
How many walls are in the shower?
Are there windows in the shower?
Will there be recessed niches for your personal care products?
Will there be a shower bench?
What type of tile will be used?
What is the design or pattern?
What type of drain will be used (linear drain, or point drain)?
Let’s start with the basics.
Tub/Shower Combo
For a standard tub/shower combo with up to an 8 foot ceiling, plan to spend at least $6500 for labor and installing materials. This includes waterproofing and preparing the walls for tile, installing the tile, grouting, and caulking.
For the tile itself, you can potentially spend as little as $300 or up to $8,000 and more.
If you are on a tight budget, we suggest stopping the tile at 6 feet instead of going all the way up to an 8 foot ceiling. This will save you a couple of hundred dollars on your bathroom tile installation project. If you would like to include a recessed niche, plan to add at least another $500.
Standard Showers
For a shower pan up to 15 square feet (typically 3’x5’) and 3 walls with tile going up to an 8 foot ceiling, plan to spend at least $8000 for labor and setting materials. This includes preparing the walls and shower pan for tile, performing a flood test to ensure the shower pan is watertight, installing the tile, grouting, and caulking.
When it comes to the tile itself, you could spend as little as $400 or up to $10,000 and more. If you are on a tight budget stopping the tile at 6’ instead of going up to the ceiling will save you a few hundred dollars.
If you would like to include a recessed niche, plan to add $500 or more. The same goes for windows and benches. Plan to add at least another $500 each.
Bathroom Floors
Regarding floors, some of the factors that play into the overall cost of bathroom tile installation are: the size of the room, how complex the layout of the room is (whether the room is a simple square or are there doorways and odd shapes that will take more time to cut in), concrete slab floor vs raised foundation floor, the floor flatness, bathroom floor only vs bathroom floor plus shower, the type of tile, and the pattern or design.
Plan to spend a minimum of $1500 for labor and setting materials on a small bathroom floor up to 50 square feet.
Oftentimes our clients end up paying between $2000-3000 for their bathroom floors. For the tile itself you could pay anywhere from $3 a foot for something inexpensive but decent on up to $100 per foot and more.
Other Bathroom Tile Installation Options and Upgrades
Incorporate a few extras into your bathroom tile installation.
There is no better time for a tile upgrade than during a bathroom tile installation. In fact, many upgrades MUST be completed at the same time as the overall bathroom tile installation.
One of the most popular upgrades we provide are radiant heated floors. Even here on the Central Coast of California people love heated floors. Oftentimes, for as little as $2000, we are able to install radiant floor heat under our clients’ bathroom floor, which can help warm up a cold bathroom and feels incredible under bare feet.
Consider putting solid surface material like a piece of slab granite or quartz on top of shower dams, ½ walls, benches, and recessed niche shelves. This looks great and is easy to keep clean. Of course, the cost will depend on how many solid surface pieces are needed and how much fabrication is needed. But a simple piece put on top of the dam can be fabricated and installed for as little as $500-800.
A barrier free shower is a showcase piece in bathroom tile installation. This type of shower has many names: barrier free shower, zero entry shower, zero threshold shower, curbless shower, and other names. You get the point.
Barrier free showers have become very popular lately for multiple reasons. For some people, the reason to build a barrier free shower is safety. It’s never too early to consider aging in place. Having a dam at the entrance of a shower can be quite the tripping hazard for many people as they age, as well a tripping hazard for young children. Also if the shower can be built large enough, a barrier free shower may be wheelchair accessible.
For others, the reason to build a barrier free shower is purely aesthetic. Barrier free showers look amazing and offer all kinds of design options. For instance, with a barrier free shower, the bathroom floor can continue directly into the shower without changing the type of material. These types of showers lend themselves very well to incorporating a linear drain or trench drain.
There are so many variables in building a barrier free shower that it’s really hard to discuss what to expect to pay for this upgrade in this article. Sometimes it can be pretty simple and other times it can be quite intensive depending on the size of the shower, whether the floor is a concrete slab or wood subfloor, what the framing looks like underneath a wood subfloor etc. It’s best to discuss this one over the phone or in person.
If you are interested in more information, check out our article, 7 Reasons to Choose a Curbless Shower.
Consider upgrading to a linear drain. Linear drains have become popular for a few reasons.
Some people just like the look of linear drains. There are many beautiful linear drain options out there.
Where linear drains really shine is when a large format tile is desired in shower. Linear drains open up certain possibilities in bathroom tile installation, because they allow a single slope from the high spot in the floor to the drain like a ramp, so to speak, instead of a floor that slopes from four different points down to the drain to create more of a bowl-shaped slope.
With a single-slope shower pan, large format tile is an option. This type of slope keeps the tiles lippage free (that is, evenly laid, without any tiles higher or lower than neighboring tiles). Otherwise, your installer would have to put extra grout joints in the shower pan to accommodate multiple slopes that are required when using a standard point drain in conjunction with large format tile.
Linear drains do add additional labor to a tile installation project, but they can be often added to a project for as little as $500-800 plus the drain itself, which can range from a few hundred dollars to well over a $1000.
Incorporate LED lights to showcase your tile installation. There are options to include lighting at the top of recessed niches or underneath a floating bench in a shower. This is a really cool feature that we doubt your neighbors or friends have in their bathrooms! If you want to raise the bar, consider this high-end upgrade.
To learn more, visit our Pricing Page. Feel free to reach out to us with specific questions.
