By Vasile Teterea, Owner and CEO at Firm Remodeling LLC — WA License #FIRMRRL783PU
I get the same phone call a few times a month. Someone in Renton has been quoted $48,000 for a master bath by one company and $29,000 by another, for what sounds like the same job, and they want to know who is lying to them. Usually nobody is. The two crews are pricing two different remodels and calling them the same thing.
What most cost articles leave out is that where your house sits changes the number before anyone picks a single tile. I run jobs across Renton, Kent, and up into Bellevue, and the same master bath does not cost the same in those three places. Not even close. So rather than hand you a national average that helps nobody, I want to walk through what we actually charge, why the three cities land where they do, and where the money goes once the demo starts.
First, what counts as a “master bath remodel”
This is where the wildly different quotes come from. When I say master bath, I mean a primary bathroom in the 80 to 140 square foot range, and a remodel that includes a tiled walk-in shower or a tub-and-shower combo, a double vanity, new flooring, new fixtures, lighting, and usually some layout change. Plumbing gets moved. Walls sometimes come out.
That is a different animal from a guest bath refresh where you swap the vanity and re-tile the floor over a weekend. If a quote you got is for $18,000, check whether they are keeping all the plumbing exactly where it is and reusing the shower pan. Often they are. There is nothing wrong with that remodel, but it is not the one I am describing here.
For context on how we think about the higher end of this range, I wrote up the design decisions that separate a nice bathroom from a genuinely luxury one in our luxury bathroom remodel guide. The cost gap between the two often comes down to four or five choices, not the whole project.
The short answer: Renton, Kent, and Bellevue compared
Here are the real ranges we are quoting in 2026 for the master bath I described above. These are our numbers, from our jobs, not a survey.
| City | Mid-range master bath | Upper-end master bath |
|---|---|---|
| Kent | $28,000 – $42,000 | $45,000 – $65,000 |
| Renton | $31,000 – $46,000 | $48,000 – $72,000 |
| Bellevue | $42,000 – $60,000 | $65,000 – $110,000+ |
Same scope of work. Three different cities. The Bellevue ceiling is more than triple the Kent floor, and I want to be honest about why, because it is not mostly about us charging more to drive across the lake.
Why Kent comes in lowest
Kent is where our shop is closest to, and our labor rates here are lower than what you will see quoted in Bellevue or Seattle proper. Permitting in Kent tends to move faster than in the bigger cities, which keeps the project timeline tighter and your carrying costs down. Material delivery is straightforward. Parking and access at most Kent homes is easy, which sounds trivial until you have tried to stage a dumpster and a material drop on a tight Bellevue lot.
The homes themselves matter too. A lot of the Kent housing stock we work in was built from the 1970s through the 1990s, and the bones are usually predictable. We know what we are going to find behind the walls. Predictable means fewer surprise change orders, and change orders are where bathroom budgets quietly balloon. If you want the full breakdown of how we price a Kent project line by line, the same methodology we use on kitchens applies, and I laid that out in detail in our Kent kitchen remodel cost article.
Why Renton sits in the middle
Renton lands a few thousand dollars above Kent for most projects, and there are a couple of real reasons.
The first is the housing stock. Renton has a much wider spread of home ages than Kent. We work in mid-century homes near the Highlands, newer construction out toward the Plateau, and everything between. The older Renton homes are the ones that surprise us: galvanized supply lines that need to be replaced once they are exposed, subfloors that have taken on water around an old shower pan, the occasional layer of asbestos-containing material in flooring or around old pipes that has to be surveyed and handled properly before any demo. That last one is not optional. The city requires an asbestos survey before renovation or demolition work, which you can read straight from the source on the City of Renton’s residential remodel permit page. When we hit one of these in an older Renton home, the budget moves.
The second reason is simpler. Renton permitting and inspection scheduling runs a little slower and a little more involved than Kent’s, which adds time, and time is money on a remodel. None of this makes Renton a bad place to remodel. It just means I would rather you budget toward the top of the Renton range and be pleasantly surprised than the bottom and get caught out.
If you are remodeling in Renton specifically, that is most of what we do, and you can see how we approach the whole process on our Renton bathroom and home remodeling page.
Why Bellevue is so much higher
Bellevue is the one that shocks people, so let me be specific about where the extra money goes, because it is not vanishing into thin air.
Labor across the board is more expensive on the Eastside, and the subcontractors we use, plumbers, electricians, tile setters, charge Bellevue rates for Bellevue work. Permitting and design review is more demanding and takes longer. The homes are often larger and higher-spec, so the master baths themselves are bigger, which means more tile, more square footage of heated floor, more linear feet of cabinetry. And the expectations are higher. A Bellevue master bath client is usually choosing slab marble, custom glass, a freestanding tub, and fixtures that cost more than the entire fixture package on a mid-range Kent job.
So the Bellevue number is partly the city and partly the client. The same family that spends $38,000 on a master bath in Kent would spend $70,000 on the equivalent room in Bellevue, and a good chunk of that buys a genuinely nicer bathroom, not just a higher zip code.
Where your money actually goes
People assume the tile is the big number. It usually is not. Here is how a mid-range master bath budget tends to break down on our jobs, give or take based on the choices you make.
Labor is the largest single piece, typically 40 to 50 percent of the total. This is demo, framing, waterproofing, tile setting, and the trades. Good waterproofing and a properly built shower pan are not where you want to save money, and skilled tile labor is most of why a shower lasts twenty years instead of leaking in three.
Plumbing and fixtures usually run 15 to 25 percent. Moving plumbing is what drives this up. Keep the toilet, shower, and vanity roughly where they are and you save real money. Move all three to new walls and you are paying for it.
Cabinetry and the vanity are often 10 to 20 percent. There is a wide spread here depending on whether you go stock, semi-custom, or custom. The brands matter more than people think, and since vanities and kitchen cabinets come out of the same factories, the ranking I put together in our cabinet and vanity brand comparison applies directly to bathrooms.
Tile and countertops land around 10 to 20 percent, and this is the line you have the most control over. The difference between a porcelain that looks like marble and actual slab marble is thousands of dollars. Neither is wrong. Just know which one you are buying. If you have not settled on materials yet, the way we help clients choose is covered in our guide to picking bathroom tile.
Permits, design, and the things nobody photographs make up the rest. This includes the permit itself, any required engineering for structural changes, the asbestos survey when an older home calls for it, and the general project overhead.
How to keep the number sane
A few things that move the budget more than others, in order of how much they help.
Do not move the plumbing if you do not have to. This is the single biggest lever. A great-looking remodel that keeps the existing plumbing locations costs noticeably less than one that relocates everything, and most master baths do not actually need the fixtures moved to feel transformed.
Decide early and stop changing your mind. Change orders mid-project are the most expensive way to remodel. The planning stage is where you save money, and we slow clients down here on purpose, which is the whole reason I wrote our guide to preparing for a bathroom remodel.
Understand the permit process before you start, especially in Renton and Bellevue where it carries more weight. We handle permitting for our clients, but knowing what is involved helps you plan the timeline, and I covered the basics of permits, plumbing, and planning in this earlier post.
Spend on the things you cannot easily redo and save on the things you can. Waterproofing, the shower pan, and the plumbing rough-in are forever. Paint, mirrors, and even fixtures can be upgraded later. Put the money where the walls are about to close over it.
The honest bottom line
If you are in Kent, budget $28,000 to $42,000 for a real master bath remodel and a bit more if your home is older than you think. In Renton, push that to $31,000 to $46,000 and keep a cushion for what we find in the older homes. In Bellevue, you are starting around $42,000 and the ceiling depends entirely on your finishes.
The single most useful thing you can do is get a contractor into your actual bathroom before you trust any number. A quote written from a photo is a guess. We do free in-home consultations across Renton, Kent, and the surrounding areas, and whether you remodel with us or not, you will walk away knowing what your specific room will cost. We also work throughout the area beyond Renton, including all of our Kent remodeling services if that is closer to home for you.
Vasile Teterea Owner and CEO, Firm Remodeling LLC WA License #FIRMRRL783PU (206) 773-8264
