Rewiring your house: an essential guide for homeowners

All properties have hidden cables running through the walls and floors to deliver electricity to each room. Over time, these cables will degrade, increasing the risk of electrical faults and hazards. Rewiring is the process of removing old, outdated, or faulty cabling and installing modern replacements. In this essential guide for homeowners, the NICEIC electrical experts explain:

signs your home needs rewiring
factors impacting how much electrical rewiring costs
why you should always use an NICEIC-registered electrician to ensure the job is carried out safely and to a high standard.

What is a rewire? How often should I get a rewire? What are the signs to look out for How much does a rewire cost Do I need a professional?FAQs

What is home rewiring?

Rewiring a house is a significant project that should only be carried out by a qualified, competent electrician, such as one registered with NICEIC. It’s not suitable for DIY and you should never attempt it by yourself. Working with electricity is extremely dangerous and can result in damage to your property, injury, or even death.

According to NICEIC research, botched DIY attempts cost British homeowners over £5 billion a year, with 31% of those who have messed up a job saying they gave themselves an electric shock in the process.

Rewiring involves:

removing old, outdated wiring
installing new, modern wiring
replacing the fuse box or consumer unit
(if requested) replacing existing socket-outlets, switches and light fittings
(if requested), installing additional socket-outlets, switches, and light fittings.

A house rewire can help make your property safer by ensuring it’s fitted with wiring and associated protective devices that meet the latest safety standards and regulations.

It also gives you the opportunity to upgrade your home’s electrical capacity. Today’s homes rely on a growing range of sophisticated, power-hungry devices and appliances which older properties may not be equipped to handle. This can lead to overloaded circuits and other dangerous electrical hazards.

To support this increased demand, your electrician can install a higher capacity consumer unit during the project, allowing your system to safely handle additional circuits, as well as installing additional switches, socket-outlets and light fittings for greater convenience.

How often should a house be rewired?

According to consumer safety charity Electrical Safety First, if your property is over 30 years old and still has its original wiring, it likely will need updating to meet modern standards, including replacing the fuse box/older consumer unit.

However, it’s recommended you also get an Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR) for your home at least every 10 years to identify any signs of age, wear and tear, or damage. An EICR is essentially an MOT for your home’s wiring and electrical accessories, carried out by a registered electrician with the right knowledge, skills, and qualifications.

Based on the results of your EICR, your electrician will be able to tell you whether or not your house needs to be rewired or there are any specific circuits that need attention.

What are the signs my home needs rewiring?

There are some signs that homeowners should be aware of that may signal their home needs to be partially or fully rewired. If you notice any of these, you should contact an electrician immediately as it may be a sign of a serious electrical fault.

These include:

Burning smells – if you can smell burning but you can’t tell where it’s coming from, it may be a sign of an electrical fault.
Buzzing sounds – if you’re hearing a buzzing, humming or arching sound coming from your walls, switches, light fittings, electrical equipment or socket-outlets, this may indicate loose wiring, a faulty socket-outlet, or overloaded circuits – all of which can be major hazards.
Discoloured switches or socket-outlets – if your socket-outlets or switches are brown or discoloured, this indicates overheating – possibly due to loose wiring or overloaded circuits.
Flickering lights – if your lights flicker on the odd occasion, you may just need to change the bulb. However, if your lights constantly flicker or the bulb is always burning out, this may be indicative of a bigger problem.
Your plugs get very hot – the plugs on your appliances shouldn’t feel hot to the touch when plugged into a socket-outlet. If they do, this suggests there’s a problem with your wiring.
Small electric shocks – if you get any kind of electric shock when plugging something in, this is not normal and should not be ignored. It’s a sign of a serious problem with the socket-outlet.
Fuses keep blowing/circuit breakers or RCDs keep tripping – fuses and circuit breakers are designed to cut the power when a circuit gets overloaded or a fault is detected. If this is happening frequently, it’s a sign that your home’s electrical system isn’t coping with the power demand you’re placing on it, or there is an inherent electrical fault. This may mean you need to rewire your home to upgrade its power capacity or remove the electrical fault.

How much does it cost to rewire a house?

It’s really hard to answer this question with any kind of accuracy because there are so many variables that impact the price you’ll pay. These include:

Property size - a one-bedroom flat or a small bungalow will cost less to rewire than a four-bed family house.
Age and state of your existing wiring - if your current wiring is old, unsafe, or previous owners have carried out substandard DIY electrical work, you may need additional repairs before the rewiring process can begin, adding to the cost.
Accessibility - how easy your electrical system is to access will greatly influence the cost of your rewire. Awkward spaces, floors that need lifting, or fitted furniture can all hinder accessibility and increase labour costs.
Whether the property’s occupied or vacant - if you’re planning on living in your home while it’s being rewired, this will require additional planning and care to ensure you and your family stay safe during the project. Not to mention that it’ll also be noisy, disruptive, and leave you without electricity for extended periods of time during the rewire.
Extent - if you need a complete house rewire, this will cost more than a partial rewire that only focuses on the replacement of specific circuits.
Upgrades and future-proofing - many homeowners use rewiring as an opportunity to upgrade their electrical system in one or all of the following ways:
- increasing their home’s electrical capacity so it can handle more circuits
- adding new socket-outlets or switches for increased convenience
- upgrading the fixtures to match their interior design requirements (for example, brushed metal instead of standard white)
- Adding solar PV and battery storage systems to help reduce energy bills.

All these upgrades will add to the cost of your home rewire – but it could be worth it in the long run.

With all these variables at play, you won’t be surprised to learn that a home rewire can range from a couple of thousand pounds for smaller projects to £10,000 or more for larger, more complex rewires.

To understand how much a home rewire might cost for your property, you can use NICEIC’s Find a trusted tradesperson tool to request quotes from NICEIC-registered electricians in your area.

Do I need a professional to rewire my home?

We cannot state strongly enough how important it is to use a professional, registered electrician when carrying out home rewiring. You should never attempt to do it by yourself, as it’s complex electrical work that must by law comply with the relevant standards and regulations in the country of installation.

In England and Wales, home rewires count as ‘notifiable work’ under Part P of the Building Regulations. This means the work must be notified to your Local Authority Building Control for inspection and approval. In Scotland, you’ll need to get a building warrant, a legal permit for notifiable works that confirms your construction work complies with Scottish building standards.

Notifying an installation to your Local Authority Building Control in England and Wales can be expensive and time consuming. So, another option is to have the work carried out by an electrician registered on a competent person scheme (England and Wales) or the Approved Certifier of Construction Scheme (Scotland), which both allow electricians and other professionals to self-certify that notifiable work complies with the relevant regulations and standards. You can find an NICEIC-registered electrician certified on either scheme via the NICEIC Find a Trusted Tradesperson tool.

Note that failure to obtain the correct certificates for, and where required, notify rewires to the relevant authority, could lead to problems when selling your house in the future.

Find a trusted tradesperson

FAQ's

There are lots of factors that influence the time a house rewire will take. You can refer to our section on costs for more detail on these factors, as the variables that influence cost will usually affect the project’s duration as well.

Realistically, you’re looking at anything from a few days to a week or two depending on the size and complexity of the project. A registered electrician will be able to provide a more accurate estimate for your particular property when quoting on the project.

You can, but it may result in a more difficult and costly project. Your electrician will have to take extra care to work around you, which will inevitably slow them down.

It can also be inconvenient for homeowners because your electrician will have to move furniture, lift floorboards, and cut into the walls to access your wiring – all of which will cause mess and noise.

Not to mention that your electrician will have to turn off the power to safely remove and replace your wiring, meaning you could be without electricity in specific rooms or throughout your property for extended periods of time.

We’d recommend discussing the project with your chosen electrician to decide what will work best for you both.

You can prepare by ensuring your fuse box, socket-outlets, switches and light fittings are as accessible as possible for your electrician, for example by:

moving furniture away from walls
covering furniture and belongings to protect them from dust and debris
emptying cupboards and other spaces to clear access to wires
removing decorations from walls.

If you want additional socket-outlets, light fittings and switches as part of your rewire, you should also spend some time planning where you want these to go.

No, you don’t generally need planning permission to rewire your house.

However, the project must be compliant with Part P of the Building Regulations in England and Wales, or the Scottish building standards, depending on where you live. This means the installation must be completed by a competent, qualified professional registered on a competent person scheme (England and Wales), or the Approved Certifier of Construction Scheme (Scotland). Alternatively, it must be inspected and approved by your Local Authority Building Control.

It is typically cheaper and more convenient to hire a CPS/Approved Certifier of Construction-registered electrician, who can self-certify that their work complies with the relevant standards.

You can find an electrician registered on NICEIC’s Competent Person or Approved Certified of Construction Schemes using the NICEIC Find a trusted tradesperson tool.