The Real Range: $10,000 to $25,000+
A full rewire of an average 3-bedroom house in Australia typically costs $10,000 to $20,000, and larger or harder-to-access homes can push past $25,000. That's a wide range on purpose, because the two biggest cost drivers, the size of the house and how easy it is to get into the walls and ceiling, vary enormously from one job to the next.
A single-storey weatherboard or brick veneer home with an accessible roof space is the cheapest scenario, since cable can often be run without major wall damage. A double-brick or two-storey home with limited ceiling access usually costs more, because cable has to be chased into walls and the plaster has to be patched and repainted afterwards.
What Pushes the Price Up
- Construction type — double brick and solid masonry cost more than weatherboard or brick veneer, since there's no easy cavity to run cable through.
- Number of circuits and outlets — more power points, light circuits and dedicated circuits (oven, aircon, EV charger) add time and cable.
- Asbestos — older homes sometimes have asbestos sheeting behind switchboards or in eaves, which needs safe removal before electrical work can proceed.
- Old wiring type — cloth or rubber-insulated (VIR) wiring from before the 1970s is more time-consuming and sometimes brittle to remove.
- Two storeys — running cable vertically between floors generally takes longer than a single level.
Partial Rewire vs Full Rewire
Not every old house needs the whole thing redone at once. Sometimes the switchboard and the circuits that are actually causing problems, say, the kitchen and one bathroom, can be rewired first, with the rest staged over time. This is a genuine, honest option if budget is the limiting factor, and we'll tell you plainly if a partial rewire is a reasonable stopgap or if it's just delaying the inevitable.
If your home still has cloth-insulated or VIR wiring (common in homes built before the 1960s-70s), it's a genuine fire risk, the insulation becomes brittle and cracks with age, and it's increasingly something insurers ask about directly when you take out or renew a policy.
Signs Your House Actually Needs Rewiring
Beyond the age of the home, the clearest signs are: no earth wire present on circuits, switchboard still using ceramic fuses rather than circuit breakers, discoloured or warm power points and switches, lights that flicker for no obvious reason, and an insurer or building inspector flagging the wiring during a sale or renewal.
How We Quote It
We assess this on site, checking roof access, wall construction, and the condition of your existing switchboard and circuits, before giving you a fixed price. No hourly guesswork and no surprises once the walls are open.