How much does it cost to reseal a bath?

What you are paying for, and it is not the silicone

The bead is the quick bit. One trade cost guide puts a whole run round a bath at 2 to 5 minutes once it is prepared. The preparation is the job: the same guide gives 30 to 60 minutes to get the old silicone off a standard bath edge, longer if it is old or layered. A Manchester handyman says it in plainer words on his own site, that removing the old sealant is what takes the most time. A London firm calls stripping the joint back to a clean, dry surface "most of the work".

Then there is the minimum. One south-west London handyman publishes a one-hour minimum of £70 plus VAT, then £30 a half hour. One in north-west London charges £47 for the first half hour and £36 for each one after, again with a one-hour minimum, so £83 before anything else. A pricing guide written for tradespeople puts a half-day call-out at £180 to £280, and calls it a minimum charge regardless of how small the job is. So a bath that takes an hour gets priced as a visit.

That makes the cheapest way to pay for a reseal giving the visit more to do. If the basin and the shower tray are going the same way, have them done at the same time. Where someone charges by the hour or the half-day, the extra joints can fill time you were already paying for. One London firm prices each area separately even in one visit, £110 plus VAT for the bath and £70 plus VAT for a basin, so there the saving is the second trip rather than the price. For a whole bathroom, the June 2026 guide gives £150 to £300 outside London and £200 to £350 in London and the South East.

Three questions to ask before you book

Is all the old silicone coming out? It should be. A new bead laid over the old one, in one London firm's words, "lifts within months", and the reason sits underneath it: mould grows into the split. A price that skips the strip-out is pricing the quick bit. Why new silicone will not stick to old is covered in the guide to removing silicone sealant.

Is VAT in the number? The published prices split three ways: some are plus VAT, one says it includes all taxes, and several do not say. £110 plus VAT is £132. A pricing guide written for the trade notes that VAT-registered traders charge the standard 20% on this work, so ask, and compare like with like.

Is there a call-out on top, and what does the guarantee cover? The £80 estimate above leaves the call-out out. Of the firms I read, the fixed-price London one states no call-out and a 12-month guarantee on labour and parts, and the north-west London one gives a 1-year warranty on the resealing. Stubborn old sealant can add to the bill too: the June 2026 guide lists £20 to £50 extra outside London and £20 to £60 in London and the South East. It is the same habit that pays off on a much bigger job, where a damp proofing quote is worth reading for what it leaves out.

What it costs to do it yourself

At Screwfix in October 2026, a 310ml cartridge of the cheapest sanitary silicone I priced was £5.89, a sealant gun £5.99, a 100ml sealant remover £4.99, and a four-piece removing and smoothing tool kit £6.19. That is £23.06 for the lot, or £27.16 with a £9.99 bacteria-resistant sanitary silicone in place of the cheap one. If you already own a gun, take £5.99 off.

One cartridge is plenty. A standard UK bath is 1700mm by 700mm, so a bath in an alcove has about 3.1 metres of joint: one long side and two ends. Sika's data sheet for a general-purpose silicone says one 260ml cartridge seals about 9 metres of 6mm bead. Even that smaller cartridge does a bath nearly three times over, so you will finish with most of the tube left. A screw-on cap for the spout keeps the rest from setting, and there is more on that in how to stop silicone drying in the tube.

The cost the receipt does not show is your bath. It is out of use until the silicone has cured, whoever does the job, and the Manchester handyman tells his customers next day at 7am. How long different silicones take is its own question, answered in how long silicone takes to dry. Which silicone to buy for a bath is in the guide to silicone sealant for bathrooms, and the whole job, including why the bath gets filled with water before the bead goes on, is in how to reseal a bath.

When the price of the reseal is not the question

If the old bead has gone black, you are paying for a reseal either way. The London firm quoted above puts it bluntly: mould grows into the split, which is why cleaning it never lasts. The guide to black mould on silicone separates the spots that wipe off from the kind that has grown in.

And if water has been getting past a failed seal for a while, the reseal is the cheap part. Water that gets behind a bath runs down, and it shows on whatever is underneath. Let the joint dry out before the new bead goes on, and find out how far the water got. The guide to resealing a bath covers a failed bath seal as a source of damp below, and this page cannot see your bath or the ceiling under it.