How to Choose the Right Bathroom Fitter

If you’re planning to remodel your bathroom and have decided not to do it yourself, you’ll be looking for a fitter to come and do the job for you. Choosing the right construction professional to fit your tub and shower—and tile the space—is essential, so it’s important to do your homework. With that in mind, here’s the Riluxa guide to finding a good bathroom fitter.

Contents

Browse their website

Meet them in person

Get more than one quote

Browse their website

Competition amongst tradesmen is fierce, here in the digital age. So, any bathroom fitter worth your investment will have a great online presence. Their website should feature lots of photos of projects they’ve worked on. If you can see “before” and “after” pics, even better, because that will show you the difference they could make on your remodelling project.

It will also show you what kinds of residences they work on—from low- to high-budget—which will help you to gauge their quality standards. Edges of bathtubs and basins should be properly caulked. Wall and floor tiles should be evenly positioned and properly grouted. The quality of craftsmanship should match the ambition of the interior design.

A great bathroom installer’s website will also tell you a bit about their approach—such as average timelines and pricing guidelines. The more they tell you up-front, the more likely they know you are to get in touch with them, so that kind of transparency works two ways.

Meet them in person

The best tradespeople will come out and give you a no-strings quote without question. Many will actually use the words “free quote” to make it seem more attractive, but in this day and age, you shouldn’t expect to pay for a professional to assess the work needed.

Meeting a bathroom fitter in person will give you the chance to judge the cut of their gib. Trust your instincts. Do they seem like the kind of professional who’ll turn up when they say they will, do a great job and then charge you fairly for it? The last thing you want is a “cowboy builder” who’ll show up when they feel like it, demand you buy your bathroom products from them and then charge you £1,000 for a £500 vanity unit.

A 2018 Which? survey, as reported by The Daily Mail, tells us just how much trust customers put in tradespeople—the results are frighteningly low. However, the good news is that customer review sites like Trustpilot and trade competition sites like Rated People mean that bathroom fitters now work harder than ever to impress. You should expect them to want to go above and beyond to give you the bathroom of your dreams.

Get more than one quote

Whilst price shouldn’t be the main factor in getting your bathroom fitted (you should be looking for quality of work, above all, and that instinctive sense of trust we talked about), it’s still important not to overpay for your bathroom remodel. So, make sure to get more than just one quote, no matter how much you may trust the first fitter. The Federation of Master Builders recommends getting three quotes, though if you use a site like Rated People, you might end up with lots to choose from.

It’s inadvisable to actively demand more than four quotes, mainly because your head will be swimming at the end of it. You’ll end up comparing and contrasting minor details like the positioning of washbasin taps on website photos to try help finalise your decision. Better to pick three fitters who you have a good feeling about and then see how much they’re going to charge.

That doesn’t mean you should just go with the cheapest, though. In the end, it’s about balancing budget, quality assurance and speed. When you feel confident that a fitter offers all these factors, then you’ve found the right tradesman for your bathroom remodel.

Looking for something else to read? Check out our guide to Remodelling Bathrooms in Old Houses.