Row of circuit breakers with red, blue and yellow conductors dressed beneath them

Rewiring Cost Calculator

Pick a wiring scope, a quality tier and your house area, and see the range with its breakdown. No email, no phone number.

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The tool

Price your rewire

Material
Quality tier

Finished floor area of the house being rewired, including any basement or attic space that carries circuits. Rewiring is priced against the area the wire has to reach, not the number of rooms.

Add-ons the bid will carry

Indicative multipliers only. The spread inside a region is often wider than the spread between regions.

Estimated installed cost

$5,400 – $9,000

$3 – $5 per square foot, installed

Base, material and labor
$5,400 – $9,000
Total
$5,400 – $9,000
Materials
$1,400 – $2,300
Labor and overhead
$4,000 – $6,700

How it works

Where this rewiring cost calculator gets its numbers

One dataset holds the installed cost of each rewiring scope per square foot, its expected service life, and the share of that cost which is material rather than labor. One calculation module reads it, and every electrical figure on this site comes out of that module: the cost guide tables and this calculator.

The tool prices against floor area because that is what the wire has to reach. Count finished space plus any basement or attic that carries circuits, and remember that rewiring is overwhelmingly a labor trade: copper is the cheap part of the invoice.

  • Installed cost covers wire, boxes, devices and labor on a house with reasonable access.
  • A quality tier selects a slice of that scope’s own range: device grade, circuit count, panel headroom.
  • Add-ons are a share of the base cost: a panel upgrade, plaster walls, code-required devices and an EV charger circuit are the usual companions of a rewire.
  • Totals are rounded to the nearest hundred dollars.

What it cannot know

What this rewiring cost calculator does not know

Every figure here is a national bracket per square foot. What no calculator sees is what your walls are made of and what is already behind them.

Your walls and your attic
Drywall with an open attic above fishes wire fast; plaster and lath over full-height brick does not. Access decides more of a rewiring bill than any material choice, and only an electrician in the house can price it.
What the old wiring is
Knob-and-tube, aluminum branch circuits and back-stabbed devices each change the scope, the urgency and sometimes the insurance conversation. The tool prices the new system; identifying the old one takes an inspection.
Your panel and your service
A rewire often surfaces an undersized panel or a 60-amp service. The panel add-on covers the swap; a new service drop involves the utility, and utility timelines are quoted by no one.
Local code and inspection
AFCI and GFCI requirements, box fill, tamper resistance: code is national, its enforcement is local, and the inspector’s reading is the one that counts. Permitted work is the whole point of paying for a rewire.

Using it well

How to use the estimate against an electrical quote

Rewiring bids swing widely because access is invisible from a quote sheet. The bracket here tells you the national envelope; the walk-through with each bidder tells you where in it your house sits.

A bid well below the range is usually a partial rewire sold as a whole one: new devices on old wire, or the easy floors done and the rest declared fine. A bid above it should name the access problem, in plain terms, room by room.

Ask every bidder what is being left in the walls, whether the permit and inspection are in the price, and how patching is handled. An electrician proud of the job will answer all three without flinching.

For reference

Every rewiring scope the calculator prices

The bands the calculator runs on, per square foot of house rewired.

Material Installed cost per square foot, installed Lifespan Who it suits
Partial rewire $2 – $6 40 – 70 years Kitchen, baths and the circuits that actually fail code, left in walls that mostly stay closed. The pragmatic scope on a house that is otherwise sound.
Full rewire $5 – $17 50 – 70 years Every circuit replaced back to a new panel. The house is opened room by room, which is why the drywall trade follows the electrician everywhere.
Aluminum branch remediation $6 – $17 50 – 70 years The 1960s and 1970s problem. Either every branch circuit is replaced, or every connection is pigtailed with an approved connector, and insurers care which.
Knob-and-tube replacement $8 – $20 50 – 70 years Pre-war wiring with no ground, often buried under insulation that should never have covered it. The most expensive rewire because the demolition is the job.

The panel is priced separately, and it is usually the first line of the job rather than the last.

This calculator returns indicative national brackets, not a quote. Your number depends on wall construction, attic and crawl access, the state of the panel and your local market. Use it to judge a bid, not to replace one.

Cost data

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