How much does it cost to remove a load bearing wall in the UK in 2024?

This must be one of the biggest questions in architecture. 

I’m kidding, but I do get asked this one regularly during online consultations with homeowners from across the UK, because it's one of the most common things that people do which leads them to encounter the building regulations.

Even if the wall between two rooms is not load bearing, and you know it's not load bearing, the council or local authority will not take your word for it. They are going to need you to lodge a building regulations application and get a chartered structural engineer to inspect that wall and provide a letter stating that it's not load bearing. I can't make that statement, you can't make that statement, it has to be an engineer. 

There are other things that can happen when you take down a wall between two rooms. You could combine two rooms together which previously were perfectly fine because one had a window and the other did not but, when you make the room larger, that existing window might not provide enough daylight or natural ventilation into the newly enlarged space. 

There’s a whole host of things that can happen when you start doing this, beyond merely the structural. But what does it cost?

Taking down a load bearing will inside this property in Edinburgh

Now, as it happens, I have a job where we're doing exactly that. We are taking down a load bearing wall between two rooms in this property in Edinburgh and, crucially, we've had it priced by two separate contractors. This, believe it or not, is the first competitive tender I’ve been able to organise and run since 2019

Contractors are no longer as busy as they used to be and some of them are willing to consider competitive tendering. We got two contractors, about equal in size, one guy has about half a dozen staff the other guy has one full-time member of staff and two part-time members of staff. I’ve worked with both of them before they are very good builders.

The wall is between these two windows

This building is a three-story, late 19th century property in suburban Edinburgh and the wall is between those two windows. It is load bearing, there's a wall directly above it so a new steel beam has to go in and it's it's a whopper. The new beam that's going to support the wall is a 254 x146 mm universal beam. Not only that but we're also going to take take down the area of wall between those two windows and make a large new patio door opening into the rear garden, so I'm going to present these costs in two separate categories;

One is the full job of everything we’re going to do, to give you a better idea of a more expansive project and what it might cost. I will then just itemise out the costs for taking down the wall and doing the remedial work. 

This is the bit that catches people out. Even with a non load bearing wall, most of the money goes on making the place good again. Because doing this work destroys the floor, the adjacent walls and the ceiling. There might have been plumbing or electrics in that wall which has to be dealt with and that comes at a price.

The proposed layout

It's a fairly simple project, that's the proposed layout. Those dashed red lines in the middle show where that wall is and that yellow section is a door that we're going to close up.

Construction drawing, showing the new opening in the rear wall of the property

This is my construction drawing and you can see there are four beams. That's a new patio door and because of the change of level, we're going to create a step in the floor just inside that door and a new patio outside. So when it’s all said and done the client will be able to walk down to the door, open the door, walk outside and then take two more steps down to the garden.

I've taken the cheapest cost from each of the two contractors that we tendered to. There wasn't an enormous amount between the two firms. One contractor was able to start sooner and was slightly less expensive so we decided to go with him

This cost is artificial, it isn't the price that we're actually going to pay, it's an amalgam of the two prices, picking only the cheapest. In the real world you can’t really do this. Some contractors will get a cheaper price for electrics or plumbing and the other guy might get a cheaper price for decoration, it just depends on whom their subcontractors are and if they get discounts at the builders merchants 

In reality this is as cheap as you could possibly do the work in 2024. I have not included the cost for supplying the glazing or the kitchen units because they can vary quite a lot. The basic work for this is £61,800 + VAT you could include another £25,000 for the glazing and the kitchen units combined. 

If you just pick out the wall costs, the demolition portion of this including the new steel and the operation to erect that new steel costs just shy of £10,000

Then there’s the work to fit the new ceilings because you will wreck the ceiling and you also have to repair the floor afterwards. You have to do some making good in the various walls and other areas that you've intersected with and you have to fit new flooring. You have to put in some new cornices, plaster the ceilings and the walls and by the time you've factored in decoration and cleaning you get to £21,500 + VAT just to take down a wall between two rooms.

A photo taken during construction