Bathroom renos get priced wrong more than any other scope in our shop. Homeowners walk into the first consultation expecting $18,000 and we're writing quotes at $42,000. Or they walk in expecting $80,000 and we're telling them the job they described is actually $35,000.
The reason the guess-and-reality gap is so wide in bathrooms is that bathrooms are tiny rooms full of expensive decisions — fixtures, tile, waterproofing, a glass enclosure, a vent fan, sometimes a window — and the tiny-room framing tricks people into thinking it should be cheaper than the kitchen. It isn't cheaper per square foot. It's close.
This post breaks GTA bathroom pricing into three scopes we actually see. Powder room (half-bath, no shower or tub). Mid-tier main bath (the standard suburban Oakville or Mississauga job — tub, shower, vanity, toilet, full tile). Full gut custom (the aging-in-place curbless conversion, the spa bathroom with a freestanding tub and a walk-in, the primary en-suite rebuild). All numbers are 2026 GTA pricing and all assume a real permit, a licensed plumber, and proper waterproofing.
Powder room — $8,500 to $16,000 CAD
A full powder room reno in the GTA — new toilet, new vanity, new tile floor, new mirror and light, new paint, fresh trim — runs $8,500 to $16,000 CAD in 2026. The $8,500 end is a standard Kohler toilet, a big-box vanity, 30 square feet of 12x24 porcelain floor tile, a new vent fan, and no plumbing location changes. The $16,000 end has a custom vanity, a designer tile, a heated floor, a Toto Neorest toilet, and an Emtek cabinet hardware line. Same room, twice the price, both completely reasonable depending on the rest of the house.
The thing that pushes a powder room from $8,500 to $12,000 without much warning is the vanity. A 24-inch big-box vanity runs $450 to $900. A custom-built shop vanity in the same size runs $2,200 to $3,800 with a stone top. A designer option from Native Trails or Strasser with a Kohler Purist faucet lands around $3,400 to $5,200.
We tell clients this one up front because it's the single biggest lever in a powder room — the rest of the job is fairly fixed on labor, and the vanity choice is where the total number moves.
- Demo and haul: $500 to $900
- Plumbing (no location changes, new shut-offs, new supply lines): $650 to $1,200
- Electrical (new GFCI outlet, new light, new vent fan, ESA permit): $650 to $1,400
- Vanity (big-box) + counter + sink + faucet: $900 to $1,900 installed
- Vanity (custom shop-built with stone top): $2,800 to $5,200 installed
- Toilet (Kohler mid-tier): $600 to $1,200; Toto Neorest: $2,800 to $4,500
- Floor tile (material + labor, 30 SF): $950 to $2,200
- Paint, trim, mirror, hardware, cleanup: $850 to $1,600
- Permit (building + plumbing + ESA): $320 to $680
Mid-tier main bathroom — $24,000 to $45,000 CAD
A standard GTA main bathroom reno — the Oakville or Burlington or Mississauga suburban upstairs 2-piece or 3-piece — runs $24,000 to $45,000 CAD in 2026 for a full gut. You're getting a new tub or shower (not both, this is a 5x8 or 5x10 room), a new vanity, a new toilet, tile floor, tile shower walls, a glass enclosure or shower door, all new fixtures, new paint and trim, an upgraded exhaust fan, and a permit. This is the job we quote most often and the one most homeowners are actually asking about when they say "we want to redo the bathroom."
The big variable on mid-tier is whether you're doing a tub-shower combo (cheaper) or a proper walk-in shower with a glass enclosure (more expensive). Keeping a tub-shower with a new acrylic Kohler Archer tub, new Kerdi-waterproofed tile walls, and a sliding glass door runs the bottom of the range. Tearing out the tub and building a tiled walk-in shower with a frameless glass panel adds $3,800 to $6,400 on top — new framing, a different drain, more tile, and a bigger glass spec. For the full story on which waterproofing system sits behind your tile, we wrote up Kerdi vs RedGard vs hot mop in detail separately.
- Demo and haul: $1,100 to $2,000
- Plumbing (rough-in updates, new shut-offs, new valve, new vanity supply): $1,800 to $3,400
- Electrical (new vent fan, new vanity light, new GFCI, ESA permit): $1,100 to $2,200
- Framing adjustments and subfloor repairs: $800 to $2,400
- Waterproofing (Schluter Kerdi system on walls and floor): $1,600 to $2,800
- Tile, floor and shower walls (mid-tier porcelain, installed): $4,800 to $8,400
- Tub (Kohler Archer / mid-tier acrylic): $900 to $1,600 installed
- Walk-in shower (glass panel, linear drain, bench): add $3,800 to $6,400 over tub-shower spec
- Vanity + counter + sink + faucet (Kohler or Moen): $2,200 to $4,800 installed
- Toilet, mirror, light, hardware, accessories: $1,400 to $2,800
- Paint, trim, punch list, cleanup: $1,100 to $2,000
- Permits (building + plumbing + ESA): $480 to $850
Full gut custom — $48,000 to $110,000 CAD
A full gut custom main bath or primary en-suite in the GTA runs $48,000 to $110,000 CAD in 2026 for the jobs we actually sign. The low end of that range is a curbless walk-in shower conversion with a freestanding tub and a double vanity — the aging-in-place upgrade we cover in our curbless walk-in shower post.
The high end is a primary en-suite rebuild with a heated floor across the whole footprint, a steam shower, a Toto Neorest wall-hung toilet on a Geberit in-wall carrier, a Kohler Purist thermostatic valve system, and full-height book-matched porcelain slab walls. We've done both. Both are real.
The cost driver at this tier isn't labor hours — labor scales more or less linearly with the room size. It's the fixtures and the tile. A Kohler Purist valve trim is $1,800, an Emtek door lever is $140, a Villeroy & Boch freestanding tub is $3,400, a Kohler double vanity faucet pair is $1,200, and book-matched Calacatta Gold porcelain slab on three shower walls is $6,800. Add those up and you're $13,000+ over a mid-tier spec before you touch the tile floor.
That's where the budget goes on full gut custom, and it's why the same physical room can cost $48,000 or $110,000 depending on which catalog the client is ordering from.
The labor premium at this tier is about 15% over mid-tier, not double. We charge more for custom built-in niches, curved shower walls, book-matched slab tiling, and the kind of layout work a high-end design requires — but it's not a different kind of work. It's the same waterproofing, the same Kerdi system, the same plumbing rough-in.
The money goes into product, and that's the honest conversation we have with clients at the first walk-through. A steam shower add-on is $4,500 in equipment and $1,800 in labor. A linear drain is $380 in product and $450 in labor. If you want to build a high-end bathroom for less, you leave out fixtures, not construction steps.
Hidden costs and the lines that catch homeowners
Three lines catch homeowners on bathroom quotes because they don't exist in the flashy part of the budget. Subfloor repairs: when we open an old bathroom floor in a 1970s Oakville bungalow, we often find water damage around the toilet flange or the tub that needs fresh 3/4-inch plywood and sometimes a joist sister. Budget $800 to $2,400 for subfloor work on any house older than 25 years.
Second: the vent fan ducted to the exterior. Ontario Building Code 9.32 requires bathroom vent fans to exit to the outside, not the attic or the soffit intake. Retrofitting a proper exterior vent path on an older house adds $400 to $1,100 in labor and duct.
Third: the glass enclosure. Frameless 3/8-inch tempered glass for a walk-in shower is $1,800 to $3,600 depending on the shape and size and whether we're installing a custom fixed panel with a hinged door or a full three-sided enclosure. Sliding glass doors for a tub-shower combo are cheaper — $900 to $1,600 — and they're the option where "good enough" is legitimately good enough. Frameless glass reads as high-end, but it's a $2,000+ upgrade that some clients decide isn't worth it after they see the line item.
- Subfloor repair around tub and toilet in older homes: $800 to $2,400
- Vent fan ducted to exterior (OBC 9.32): $400 to $1,100 on retrofits
- Frameless glass enclosure (custom, 3/8" tempered): $1,800 to $3,600
- Sliding glass tub door (framed or frameless): $900 to $1,600
- Heated tile floor (Schluter Ditra-Heat, programmable thermostat): $1,400 to $2,800 on a 40 SF floor
- Freestanding tub install (plumbing + framing + delivery): add $1,200 to $2,400 over standard tub
“I didn't know how much of the price was the fixtures until you showed me the sheet. We kept the plumbing and spent the saved money on the vanity.”
The single best advice we can give a homeowner pricing a GTA bathroom in 2026 is: don't sign a quote that isn't line-itemed. If one contractor is $32,000 and another is $46,000 on what sounds like the same scope, the spread is almost always in the fixture tier and the glass spec — not the construction quality. Ask each contractor for the same breakdown we've laid out in this post and you'll see exactly where the difference sits.
Sometimes the higher quote is a genuinely better job. Sometimes it's a Moen valve being called 'luxury fixtures' and a subway tile being called 'designer tile.' A line-item sheet tells you which is which. If you'd like us to write one for your space, start at our bathroom remodels service page.
