The honest answer for a standard family bathroom is five to eight working days, and the reason nobody wants to give you a straight number is that the range is real. Here is what actually fills those days.
What happens, day by day
Day one, strip out
The old suite comes out, tiles come off, and anything rotten underneath gets found. This is the day that decides whether the job stays on schedule, because it is when hidden problems appear: a leaking waste that has been quietly soaking a joist, or plaster that comes off with the tiles.
Days two and three, first fix
Pipework and waste get moved to suit the new layout, and any electrical work is done before anything is boarded over. If you are moving the bath or the WC more than a few feet, this is where the extra time goes.
Days three to five, boarding and tiling
Walls get boarded, the floor gets levelled, then tiling starts. Tiling is the slowest part of a bathroom and the part that most rewards not rushing. Large-format tiles take longer to set out than small ones, and anything with a pattern or a border adds a day on its own.
Days six to eight, second fix and finishing
Suite in, taps and shower connected, silicone, and the final clean. Grout needs time before it gets wet, so the last day is often quieter than it looks.
What makes it longer
- Moving the soil pipe. Shifting a WC across the room is a different job to swapping one in place, and it can add two or three days.
- Anything found on day one. Rotten floorboards, failed waterproofing behind a shower, or old pipework that is not worth reconnecting.
- Fittings arriving late. The most common cause of a stalled bathroom, and the most avoidable.
- Plastering. If walls need skimming rather than boarding, that is drying time nobody can shorten.
What keeps it short
Have everything on site before day one. Not most of it, all of it. A bathroom held up waiting for a delivery is the most frustrating kind of delay, because nobody can do anything about it.
Decide the layout before the strip-out. Changing your mind about where the shower goes on day three means undoing work that is already done. On day zero it is just a conversation.
Keep one bathroom usable if you can. If it is your only one, say so at the quote stage, the order of work can be arranged so you are without a WC for hours rather than days.
What we will tell you
You will get a firm number of days with your quote, and if something on day one changes it you will hear that day, not at the end. That is the whole point of having the same person quote the job and do it.