How long does a bathroom or kitchen renovation take?

One of the most common questions before a renovation starts is simply how long the disruption is going to last, and the honest answer depends heavily on scope. That said, there are consistent enough patterns across the industry to give a realistic planning range for both bathrooms and kitchens, along with the stages that make up that timeline.

For a bathroom, the on-site work itself — from demolition through to the final fit-off — commonly takes somewhere around three to six weeks. Including the planning and design stage before work starts, and any final touches after the trades leave, the full timeline commonly stretches to somewhere around six to ten weeks from the very first decision to a finished bathroom. Planning and design is commonly the most variable stage, taking anywhere from one to three weeks depending on how quickly decisions get made on layout, fixtures and finishes, and how complex the design is. Demolition itself is generally the fastest stage, commonly taking just two to four days.

Once demolition is done, plumbing and electrical rough-in is commonly the next stage, generally taking around one to two weeks, and this is a genuinely critical stage since moving pipes or wiring incorrectly at this point is far more disruptive to fix later than most other mistakes in a renovation. After rough-in comes waterproofing, which our separate article on AS 3740 compliance covers in detail — the membrane needs to be applied properly by a licensed waterproofer and given adequate time to cure before any tiling begins, and rushing this stage is one of the more common causes of waterproofing failure down the track. Tiling, fixing of fittings, and final touches generally follow once the membrane has cured.

Kitchens follow a somewhat different pattern, driven more by cabinetry and material lead times than by wet-area curing. A straightforward, like-for-like kitchen — similar layout, no structural change — can commonly be completed in around four to six weeks. More custom or high-end kitchens, involving bespoke joinery or extensive layout changes, commonly take closer to ten to twelve weeks. For a standard mid-range renovation sitting between those extremes, the total timeline is commonly around six to ten weeks, though the period of genuine day-to-day disruption — no working kitchen at all — is generally shorter, commonly around three to five weeks.

Material lead times are one of the more common reasons a kitchen timeline runs longer than initially expected. Custom stone benchtops and bespoke cabinetry commonly take around six to eight weeks to arrive once ordered, and if that ordering does not happen early enough relative to the rest of the schedule, the kitchen can sit partly finished waiting on a single delivery. Trade availability adds a similar risk on both bathrooms and kitchens — good waterproofers and plumbers in particular are commonly booked out weeks in advance, so a renovator with a genuinely open diary for next week is sometimes a sign of high demand elsewhere, not necessarily a red flag, but worth asking about.

Given how many stages depend on each other — rough-in before waterproofing, waterproofing cured before tiling, cabinetry ordered early enough to arrive on schedule — most industry guidance recommends building in a contingency of roughly 10 to 15 percent on both time and budget, rather than assuming every stage will run exactly to plan. Scope changes made partway through, whether a homeowner's own decision or something uncovered during demolition, are the most common reason a renovation runs past its original estimate.

The ranges above are general planning guidance drawn from patterns commonly reported across the Australian renovation industry, not a schedule for your specific job. Actual timelines depend on the scope of work, material choices, and how quickly decisions get made along the way. Our directory lists Australian bathroom and kitchen renovators by area if you are ready to start planning.

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