Calculator
Tiling cost per m², built up properly
The record
- Checked by
- Carl Winson
- Built from
- CIJC Working Rule Agreement
- Wage date
- 20 July 2026
- Grades
- craft rate and general operative
The working
- 1 × tradesperson at £16.40
- £16.40
- Gang wage, per hour
- £16.40
- + 35% on top of wages
- £22.14
- × 8 hours on the tools
- £177.12 a day
- Wallsceramic on a prepared surface£177.12 ÷ 12 m² × 1.20 = £17.71/m²
- Floorsincluding setting out and levelsslid to zero - out of the price
Benchmark
£17.71/m² labour
CIJC rates · tradesperson £16.40/hr · gang of 1 · 35% on top · overheads and profit 20%
Materials, scaffold and supervision are not included in this rate.
What’s in this?
- Employer's National Insurance - 15% above £5,000 a year
- Holiday pay - 12.07%
- Pension, auto-enrolment minimum - 3%
- CITB levy - 0.35% of payroll
- Sick pay, training and employer's liability insurance - the remainder
- At 0% this is a CIS subcontractor's labour price - National Insurance, holiday and pension are then theirs to carry, not the job's.
The location range is authored, not measured - our tender data says what was bought where, not what labour costs there.
Price a whole job with this ratePut in the job size and your lump sums - scaffold, plant, skip, and get the job total.
The minimum starts at a day of the gang, priced - £212.54 - because travel, unloading and setting up make a day the honest floor. Type your own, or 0 for none.
Put a job size in and the total appears here.
Setting out is the job, and it happens before a tile goes on
Where the cut tile lands is the whole visual result. A tiler works out the centre lines, decides which wall carries the cut and how big it is, checks whether the cut lands behind the toilet or straight down the middle of the feature wall, and only then starts fixing.
That is an hour or two of a day where nothing appears to happen, and it is the difference between a bathroom that looks right and one that looks like it was tiled from the corner outwards. It is inside the 12 m² a day, which is part of why the figure is 12 and not 20.
Why a bathroom prices worse per square metre than a big floor
Because area is the wrong measure for a small tiled room. A 10 m² bathroom has a bath to tile around, a window reveal, a shower tray, a basin, a toilet, external corners needing trim, and a cut against every one of them. A 10 m² patch of open floor has four straight edges.
Same square metres, roughly double the day. If your job is a bathroom rather than an open floor, drag the output down to 6 or 8 and the rate will tell you what it is really worth, and the minimum charge will hold the floor underneath it, because a small bathroom is a full day of somebody’s time whatever the area says.
The substrate decides whether it stays on the wall
Tiles are rigid and the thing behind them usually is not. A timber floor that flexes cracks grout and then tiles; plasterboard in a shower without a tanking system fails from behind; a wall that is out by 10mm over two metres cannot be tiled flat with adhesive alone.
- Preparation. Backer board, tanking, levelling or overboarding is real time and none of it is tiling.
- Tile size. Large format looks fast and is not - the tiles are heavy, they show every hollow in the wall, and they usually need a levelling system.
- Cutting. Mitres, holes for pipes, and cuts round sockets and shower valves are individually slow.
- Grouting and silicone. A separate visit in practice, and the part people remember.
Walls and floors are separate operations on the card
Walls run around 12 m² a day and floors around 10 - floors are slower because of levels, thresholds and the fact you are working on your knees over a surface that has to end up flat.
Most jobs are one or the other, so the card starts with walls included and floors at zero. Turn on whichever you are pricing. Adhesive, grout, trim and the tiles themselves are materials, and on a tiled bathroom the tiles can easily exceed the labour.
Questions people ask
How many square metres can a tiler do in a day?
Around 12 m² of wall tiling or 10 m² of floor tiling a day on straightforward work. Small, cut-up rooms fall well below that - a bathroom with a bath, window reveal, shower and sanitaryware to cut around can be half those figures, because the day goes on edges rather than area.
Why is tiling a small bathroom so expensive per square metre?
Because a bathroom is nearly all edges and cuts. Setting out, tiling round a bath, a window reveal, a shower tray and sanitaryware, plus trims on every external corner, takes roughly the same day as a much larger open floor. The area is small; the work is not.
Does the tiling rate include preparation of the wall or floor?
No - it is tiling labour only. Backer board, tanking a shower, levelling an uneven wall or overboarding a flexing floor are separate work, and on refurbishment they are often a significant part of the job. Adhesive, grout, trims and tiles are materials, outside every rate on this site.
Are large format tiles quicker to lay?
Usually not, despite covering more area per tile. They are heavy to handle, they show every hollow in a substrate that a small tile would bridge, and they generally need a levelling system to get lippage-free joints. Substrate preparation typically increases rather than falls.
Why does a tiling quote include setting out time?
Because where the cut tile lands determines how the finished room looks, and that is decided before any tile is fixed. Working out centre lines, choosing which wall takes the cut and checking it does not land in a visible position is an hour or two of a day in which nothing appears to happen, and it is the difference between a good job and an obvious one.
Where these figures come from
The wages are the national minimums agreed between employers and unions, republished each July. The costs on top of them are the statutory ones every employer actually pays. The outputs - how much a gang gets through in a day - are blended from published estimating guidance, and they are the part worth arguing with, which is why every one is a control you can move.
Other trades
- Bricklaying£35.68/m²
- Blockwork£23.84/m²
- Plastering£8.50/m²
- Rendering£38.34/m²
- Floor screed£2.83/m²
- Concreting£7.92/m²
- Roofing£32.80/m²
- Block paving£25.56/m²
- Tarmac driveways£15.34/m²
- Resin driveways£16.61/m²
- Painting£14.17/m²
- Stud walls£17.71/m²
- Patios£31.95/m²
- Repointing£26.57/m²
- Plasterboarding£12.39/m²
- Decking£31.88/m²
- Fencing£25.56/m²
- Turfing£3.42/m²
- Coving£7.08/m²
- Loft insulation£4.27/m²
- External wall insulation£38.34/m²
- Soft strip£8.54/m²
- Hand excavation£85.41/m²
- Shuttering£8.50/m²
- Mesh and rebar£2.56/m²
Pricing a job like these?
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