Cost to Rewire a House: Prices by Square Footage
Rewiring a house costs $2 – $4 per square foot, putting most whole-home projects in the $4,000 – $12,000 range. A 1,500 sq ft home runs $4,500 – $8,000 and a 3,000 sq ft home runs $9,000 – $18,000. Older homes with plaster walls and finished spaces land at the high end, and a panel upgrade ($2,000 – $4,500) is usually part of the job. Use the calculator below to narrow your range.
Talk through this project
Describe the job, get matched with a local licensed pro on the line.
(855) 000-0000New installs, replacements & repairs · No obligation
| Home size | Typical rewire cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 sq ft | $3,000 – $6,000 | Small home or bungalow, open access helps |
| 1,500 sq ft | $4,500 – $8,000 | Common single-story range |
| 2,000 sq ft | $6,000 – $11,000 | Add stories or plaster and it climbs |
| 2,500 sq ft | $7,500 – $14,000 | Two stories typically add labor |
| 3,000 sq ft | $9,000 – $18,000 | Larger homes, more circuits and runs |
| Line item | Typical range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Wiring and devices (whole home) | $3,000 – $12,000 | New cable, outlets, switches, boxes |
| Panel / service upgrade | $2,000 – $4,500 | 100A to 200A; usually paired with a rewire |
| Drywall / plaster repair | $1,000 – $5,000 | Patching access holes; plaster costs more |
| Permits and inspection | $200 – $900 | Varies by jurisdiction; required for a rewire |
| Temporary lodging (optional) | $0 – $2,000 | If you move out during occupied-home work |
Want a real number instead of a range?
Calls are answered around the clock and routed to a licensed electrical pro serving your area.
Call & describe the job
Tell us what you need: a new install, an upgrade, or something that stopped working.
Get matched on the line
You are connected with a local licensed electrical pro who serves your area.
Compare your numbers
Use the ranges on this page to sanity-check the quote before you commit.
Answer four quick questions to narrow the rewire range for your home. No contact details needed.
How large is your home?
Why rewiring is priced per square foot
A whole-home rewire is labor first and materials second. The wire and devices are a modest share of the bill; the cost is in the hours spent fishing new cable through finished walls, drilling studs, cutting access holes, pulling old wiring, and connecting every outlet, switch, and fixture. That labor scales with the size of the house, which is why the trade prices rewires at roughly $2 – $4 per square foot and a 3,000 sq ft home costs about twice what a 1,500 sq ft home does.
Square footage is the starting point, not the whole story. Two homes of the same size can differ by thousands depending on wall material, number of stories, access to attics and crawl spaces, and how many circuits the home needs to bring up to modern code. The per-square-foot figure narrows once an electrician sees the house.
What makes an old house cost more
Older homes (the ones most likely to need rewiring) carry built-in cost multipliers. Plaster-and-lath walls are harder to open and far harder to patch than drywall, and the repair work after the electrical is done can add $1,000 – $5,000 on its own. Knob-and-tube wiring and early aluminum wiring often have no ground and no clear path to reuse, so everything comes out and everything goes back in.
Old houses also tend to be under-circuited for modern life. A 1940s home may have a handful of circuits where a modern home has dozens, so a rewire is rarely just a swap; it is an upgrade to enough circuits, dedicated lines for the kitchen and laundry, and GFCI and AFCI protection where current code requires it. That added scope is real value, and it is also real money.
The panel upgrade that usually comes with it
A rewire and a panel upgrade are separate jobs that almost always travel together. If you are opening walls and pulling new circuits, an old 60A or 100A panel often cannot support the load, and a 200 amp service upgrade ($2,000 – $4,500) is the logical companion. Doing both at once shares the permit, the inspection, and the disruption, which is cheaper than coming back later.
If your panel is already a modern 200A unit in good condition, a rewire can skip this panel replacement and save the $2,000 – $4,500. But on the older homes that typically need rewiring, the panel is usually part of the same problem, and most quotes bundle the two.
Occupied vs gutted: timing the job
Rewiring an empty house, or one already gutted for renovation, is the efficient case. The electrician has open walls, runs cable quickly, and there is no furniture to protect or drywall to patch beyond the new openings. If you can schedule a rewire during a remodel when walls are already open, the cost drops sharply.
Rewiring an occupied, finished home is the expensive case. The work happens in stages to keep power on, access holes are cut and patched throughout, and the project can stretch a week or more. Some homeowners move out for part of the work. The wiring is the same; the difference in the bill is access and repair, which is exactly what the calculator above is asking about.
Partial rewires and how to phase the cost
You do not always have to do the whole house at once. If the budget is tight or only part of the system is failing, a partial rewire targets priority circuits: the kitchen, the bathrooms, and any known problem areas like a circuit that trips constantly or outlets that run warm. This costs less up front and addresses the highest-risk areas first.
Phasing has a tradeoff. Some of the trip-fee and access costs repeat each time the crew returns, so the total of three partial visits is higher than one whole-home job. Phasing makes sense when cash flow is the constraint or when an old wiring type makes parts of the house genuinely dangerous and you need to remediate those first. For insurance-driven hazards flagged on an electrical inspection, insurers usually want the whole home done, not a partial fix.
Ready to get it handled?
One call, no obligation. Describe the job and compare the quote against the ranges above.