Home Rewiring Cost in Melbourne (2026 Guide)

A rewire replaces the cabling between the switchboard and every point in the house: power points, light points, hardwired appliances, smoke alarms and any dedicated circuits. It is a replacement of the whole distribution system, priced by the number of points and how difficult the cable is to physically get to each of them.

The triggers are fairly consistent. Rubber or fabric insulated cable, common in Melbourne homes wired before about 1960, becomes brittle and crumbles when disturbed, which means every time someone works on the house they create a new fault. If an electrician has told you the wiring crumbles when handled, that is the finding that ends the conversation about patching.

The other triggers are less dramatic but just as common. A house extended three times with circuits nobody can trace. Undersized cabling that cannot carry a modern kitchen. Persistent tripping that survives fault finding. Rodent or water damage across a roof space. Or a renovation extensive enough that the walls are open anyway, which is by a wide margin the cheapest moment to rewire.

Not everything alarming needs a rewire. Old but sound TPS cable from the 1970s or 1980s is frequently fine and simply needs a modern board with RCD protection. An honest home rewiring assessment tells you which situation you are in, and it involves testing rather than a glance at the meter box.

A full rewire replaces everything. It is the right answer when the cable type itself is the problem, because rubber insulated wiring does not become safe by leaving half of it in place. It is also the right answer during a substantial renovation, when the incremental cost of doing the lot is far lower than doing it later.

A partial rewire replaces specific circuits or a specific area. It suits a house where the original wiring is sound but one section has been damaged, where a 1990s extension is fine and the 1940s original is not, or where a kitchen or bathroom is being renovated and those circuits need bringing up to standard. Indicatively $2,500 to $6,000 depending on how many circuits and how accessible they are.

The trap with partial rewiring is that it can cost more per point than doing the whole house, because the set up, the board work, the access and the making good are largely the same whether you replace six circuits or sixteen. If half the house needs replacing, ask what the full rewire number is, because the gap is often smaller than people expect. The other consideration is disruption. A full rewire is one period of mess. Two partial rewires five years apart is two lots of plaster repair and two lots of painting.

These are indicative ranges for occupied Melbourne homes, replaced by a written quote after an inspection and testing. Rewiring is the job where an estimate given without a site visit is worth the least, because two identical looking weatherboards can differ by $6,000 on access alone.

This is the part people are not prepared for. Cable has to physically travel from the switchboard to every point in the house, and in an occupied home with closed walls it cannot always do that through a roof space or under a floor.

The good case is a single storey house with a walkable roof space and an accessible subfloor. Cable drops down inside wall cavities from above or comes up from below, and the only damage is at the point itself. The difficult case is a slab floor, a double storey where the ground floor ceiling is closed, or a house with plaster or render directly on brick, where reaching a switch on an internal wall means chasing the wall out.

A good electrician minimises it by planning cable routes through existing cavities, reusing existing switch and outlet positions, and cutting neat access holes rather than random ones. What nobody can do is deliver zero damage in a closed up brick house.

On who fixes it, be specific when you compare quotes. Some electricians patch holes back to a paintable finish. Some leave neat square holes for a plasterer. Some exclude making good entirely. All three are legitimate and they are very different amounts of work. A plasterer engaged separately for a whole house is an indicative $1,000 to $3,000, and painting is separate again. Two quotes $2,000 apart can be identical once making good is on the same basis.

A full rewire on an occupied house is usually done in stages so that the household is never without power overnight. A typical sequence works room by room or circuit by circuit, with the new cabling run and terminated progressively and the changeover at the board managed so that what is live stays live.

For a standard three bedroom house, expect roughly one to two weeks on site, longer for a large or double storey home. Power is off for parts of each day rather than continuously. If there is something in the house that cannot lose supply, such as a medical device or a home office with fixed hours, say so before the job is priced rather than on the first morning.

The switchboard is part of the job rather than an optional extra. A rewire terminates at a board, and putting new cabling into an old fuse board defeats most of the purpose. On most full rewires the board is included in the price, and it is worth confirming that in writing because a quote that excludes it looks cheaper than one that does not. Where it is separate, it is $800 to $3,500 or more depending on circuit count, phase and whether the board needs relocating. Our switchboard cost guide covers the three tiers in detail.

This is also the moment to plan forward. A rewire is the one time the whole house is open, so adding extra power points where you have been running extension leads, sorting out the lighting layout, or providing for a future EV charger or heat pump costs a fraction of what it costs as a separate visit later.

Rewiring quotes vary more than any other residential electrical job. These are the reasons, and an electrician who has actually walked the house will have priced all of them.

Because rewiring quotes are large and the scope is invisible, they are the easiest quotes in the trade to compare wrongly. The cheapest number is very often the one with the least in it.

Ask every electrician to write down the same six items. The number of points, listed by room. Whether the switchboard is in the price and what tier of board it is. What making good is included: patching only, patching to a paintable finish, or nothing. Whether smoke alarms and dedicated circuits are included. The expected duration and how power is managed each day. And what happens to the price if something unexpected is found in the walls.

Then confirm the compliance side. Electrical work in Victoria must be carried out by a licensed electrician, and a Registered Electrical Contractor must issue a Certificate of Electrical Safety for prescribed work. On a rewire that certificate is a document you will want at sale time and for insurance, and it should never be an optional line. The electrician cost guide explains how the hourly and fixed price structures behind these numbers work.

Pivot Trade Services holds REC 37223, rewires homes across Melbourne west including Footscray and the older parts of Altona, and carries a 12 month workmanship guarantee. If a rewire is not what your house needs, we will tell you that too. To get the wiring tested and a scope written down, get in touch.