Tub to Shower Conversion Cost Calculator
Converting a bathtub into a shower runs about $4,196 in Atlanta — $2,808 to $5,584 — for a kit in the existing alcove with sliding doors, a new valve and the drain moved. Across real configurations it runs $2,627 to $9,094. ⚠️ The biggest single swing is not the shower: it is whether the drain has to move, and that is avoidable for free by asking for a base that drains at the end.
Estimate the cost for your home
Estimated cost of the conversion
$4,400
typical · range $3,005 to $5,796 · 28 trade hours · about 65.4 sq ft of wall and 13.3 sq ft of base
Labour priced at national wages. Enter a ZIP code to price it for your area. 63% of this figure comes from modelled shower system, enclosure and fittings prices — each line shows its own uncertainty.
Priced from bls.gov Aug 2026how every line is sourced
The one input that changes the answer for you.
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The figure above is already calculated. Each step just makes it more yours, and you can stop at any of them.
What fits in $5,000, and what $10,000 buys
| Configuration | $5k | $10k | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| The cheapest honest versionA kit with an end drain, a curtain, the existing valve kept and two grab bars. | yes | yes | $2,772 |
| Kit, doors, new valveThe version most people actually buy, with the drain moved because nobody asked for an end-drain base. | yes | yes | $4,400 |
| Built for mobilityLow threshold, a curtain rather than a door so the opening stays clear, a seat, four grab bars and a handheld. | yes | yes | $4,779 |
| Solid surface and frameless glassThe one that looks like the photographs, without the tiling. | — | yes | $6,112 |
| Tiled, curbless, wheelchair-accessibleEverything: tile over a waterproofed pan, the floor dropped, a bench, four bars. | — | yes | $9,464 |
“Can you redo a bathroom for $5,000?” and “What does a $10,000 bathroom remodel look like?” are both questions Google shows on this search, and they are usually answered with a shrug. Here they are answered with the model: 3 of these 5 configurations come in under $5,000, including the one built for mobility. ⚠️ Two honest caveats on reading it. This prices the tub alcove becoming a shower and nothing else — the floor, the vanity, the toilet and the lighting are a bathroom remodel and a different page. And every row assumes nothing nasty is found behind the tub, which is the assumption that breaks bathroom budgets more than any specification choice does.
The drain, which is the cheapest decision here
| End-drain base — the drain stays where it is | 22 h | $3,842 |
|---|---|---|
| Centre drain, over a wood floor | 28 h | $4,400 |
| Centre drain, over a concrete slab | 33 h | $4,709 |
Almost nobody mentions this and it is the difference between a two-day job and a five-day one: a bathtub drains at one end and most shower bases drain in the middle. Moving it means opening the floor — working between the joists over a wood floor, or cutting and making good concrete over a slab, which is $867 more than leaving it alone. ⚠️ And the way out costs nothing to ask for: shower bases designed to drain at the end exist, they cost about the same, and specifying one deletes this entire line. It is the single cheapest decision on this page and it is made on the phone, before anybody comes out.
| Line item | Qty | Cost | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Take out the tub and surround, and dispose of it1 per job | 1each | $95–$320 | estimated±54% |
| Demolition — labour5 h, or 9 h for cast iron, × access factor | 5hour | $220–$236 | sourced |
| Relocate the drain from the end of the tub to the centre of the base1 when the drain has to move | 1each | $85–$290 | estimated±55% |
| Relocate the drain — labour6 h over a wood floor, 11 h over a slab, × access factor | 6hour | $357–$384 | sourced |
| Shower system — Prefabricated acrylic or fibreglass kitwall area + base area, for this system | 78.7sq ft | $669–$1,495 | estimated±38% |
| Prefabricated acrylic or fibreglass kit — labour7 h scaled by wall area × access factor | 8.32hour | $470–$505 | sourced |
| New pressure-balancing or thermostatic valve1 when the valve is replaced | 1each | $140–$480 | estimated±55% |
| Fit the valve and the shower outlet — labour3.5 h with a new valve, 1.5 h without, × access factor | 3.5hour | $208–$224 | sourced |
| Sliding glass doors and track1 when sliding doors close the opening | 1each | $280–$890 | estimated±52% |
| Fit the enclosure — labourhours for the chosen enclosure × access factor | 2.2hour | $124–$134 | sourced |
| Grab bars, with blocking behind the wallone per bar | 2each | $76–$250 | estimated±53% |
| Handheld shower on a slide bar1 when a handheld is fitted | 1each | $65–$240 | estimated±57% |
| Patch, skim and paint where the surround met the wall1 per job | 1each | $45–$165 | estimated±57% |
| Patch and paint — labour3 h × access factor | 3hour | $170–$182 | sourced |
| Total | $3,005–$5,796 | ±32% |
Where these numbers come from
- The drain, which is the cheapest decision on this page
- Almost nobody mentions it and it separates a two-day job from a five-day one: a bathtub drains at one end, and most shower bases drain in the middle. Moving it means opening the floor — $527 more working between joists over a wood floor, and $809 more over a concrete slab, where the concrete has to be cut, the pipe run and the slab made good. ⚠️ Two things follow. First, the way out costs nothing: shower bases designed to drain at the end exist and cost about the same, and asking for one on the phone deletes the line entirely. Second, cutting a slab is where the silica exposure on this job lives — OSHA, Crystalline Silica (retrieved 2026-08-24) — which a hardware-store dust mask does not handle, so what dust control a crew brings is a fair question in a house somebody is living in.
- What this is really for, and the cheap half of it
- Most people doing this are not redecorating. They are dealing with the fact that getting over the side of a bath — about fifteen inches — has become the most dangerous thing somebody does in their day, and falls are among the most common causes of serious injury in American homes: CDC, Older Adult Falls Data (retrieved 2026-08-24). A low threshold at $4,351 gets nearly all of the benefit of curbless at $4,989, because curbless is structural — the shower floor has to sit below the bathroom floor for the water to run out, so joists get dropped or the slab gets recessed. Curbless is worth every dollar for somebody who uses a wheelchair, and money spent on nothing for somebody who can step over two inches. ⚠️ And the genuinely cheap half: grab bars and a handheld shower cost very little and do most of the work — but a grab bar is only as good as what it is screwed to, and the wall is open right now, which is the one moment in twenty years when solid blocking goes in for almost nothing. Suction-cup bars are not grab bars. A curtain, oddly, beats a sliding door here: a slider halves the opening, which works against the whole point.
- Medicare, and the two things worth thinking about that are not costs
- ⚠️ “Does Medicare pay for this?” is one of the questions Google shows on this search, and we will not answer it with a number, because we do not advise on benefits and the answer varies by household. Medicare, Durable medical equipment (DME) coverage (read 2026-08-24) defines durable medical equipment as equipment that is durable, used for a medical reason, typically only useful to somebody who is sick or injured, used at home and expected to last at least three years — and the equipment it lists is canes, commode chairs, hospital beds, walkers and wheelchairs. A shower is a fixture of the building and it is useful to anybody. Medicare Advantage plans, state Medicaid waivers and veterans’ programmes differ, so ask them. The second non-cost: if this is the only bathtub in the house, removing it is hard to undo. A home with no bath at all is harder to sell to families with small children, and no quote will ever mention that. It is not a reason to keep a bath somebody cannot safely get into — it is a reason to be sure the household needs the shower more, before the tub goes in a skip.
- Where the numbers come from
- Labour is official: wages from BLS OEWS for plumbers, carpenters, tile setters and construction labourers, May 2025, retrieved 2026-08-20, adjusted to your metro area and benefit-loaded from BLS ECEC. 67% of the total is estimated, with every band and its reasoning on the dataset page. Shower flow rates are federally regulated and a labelled head uses less water without the pressure loss people expect — EPA WaterSense, Showerheads (retrieved 2026-08-24). ⚠️ One deliberate design choice: ticking “this is the only bathtub in the house” does not change the figure, because it is not a cost — it is a warning, and pretending otherwise would be inventing a number. The other two ways out of the same problem are priced on our walk-in tub and walk-in shower pages, and the whole approach is on the method page.
- Material prices
- Modelled estimates, not sourced prices. No public, machine-readable source of US residential material prices exists, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Each line carries its own uncertainty band. How we estimate them.
Contractor overhead and profit applied at 33–43% over direct cost. Data last reviewed 2026-08-24.
What this figure does not include
- Whatever is behind the tub
- ⚠️ Rotten subfloor, a leaking valve that has been dripping into the wall for years, or plumbing that is not to current standards. None of it is visible until the tub is out, all of it is common in the houses where this conversion happens, and a quote that does not say what happens if there is some is a quote to be careful with.
- The rest of the bathroom
- This prices the tub alcove becoming a shower. The floor, the vanity, the toilet, the lighting and the extractor are a bathroom remodel, which is a different page here — and if all of it is being done at once, doing it together is much cheaper than doing it in two visits.
- What Medicare or insurance will pay
- ⚠️ People ask, and the honest answer is a criterion rather than a number. Medicare defines durable medical equipment as equipment that is durable, used for a medical reason, typically only useful to somebody who is sick or injured, used at home and expected to last at least three years — and the equipment it lists is canes, commode chairs, hospital beds, walkers and wheelchairs. A shower is a fixture of the building and it is useful to anybody. This page prices work and does not advise on benefits: Medicare Advantage plans and state Medicaid waivers vary, so check with them rather than with us.
- Losing the only bathtub in the house
- ⚠️ Not a cost and worth more thought than most of the costs. A house with no bathtub at all is harder to sell to families with small children, and that is a real number that does not appear in any quote. If this is the only tub, the question is whether the household needs a bath more than it needs a step-free shower — and for a lot of people the answer really is the shower.
- A walk-in tub instead
- The other way to solve the same problem, and it is a different product with different trade-offs — you sit in it while it fills and drains, and it keeps a bath in the house. We price it on its own page, and the comparison between the two is on this one.
Questions people actually ask
What is the average cost to convert a bathtub to a shower?
$4,196 on this model in Atlanta — $2,808 to $5,584 — for a prefabricated kit in the existing 60-inch alcove with sliding doors, a new valve and the drain moved. The honest range across real configurations is $2,627 for the cheapest version that is still a proper job, to $9,094 for tiled, curbless and wheelchair-accessible. ⚠️ The single biggest swing is not the shower: it is whether the drain has to move, which is $809 on a concrete slab and is avoidable for free by specifying an end-drain base.
How much does it cost to remove a tub and install a walk-in shower?
$4,196 on this model in Atlanta for the commonest version — a prefabricated kit in the existing 60-inch alcove, sliding doors, a new valve, the drain moved and two grab bars. Taking the tub and its surround out is part of every figure on this page rather than an extra. A tiled shower in the same alcove is $7,155. ⚠️ Two things change it more than the shower does. A cast iron tub takes it to $4,359, because three hundred pounds either comes out in pieces or goes down the stairs with four people on it. And what is behind the tub is not visible until it is out: rotten subfloor and a valve that has been weeping into the wall for years are both common in the houses where this conversion happens, and a quote that does not say what happens if there is some is a quote to be careful with.
Does Medicare pay for a tub to shower conversion?
This page prices work and does not advise on benefits, so here is the criterion rather than an answer. ⚠️ Medicare's own page defines durable medical equipment as equipment that is durable, used for a medical reason, typically only useful to somebody who is sick or injured, used in your home and expected to last at least three years — and what it lists is canes, commode chairs, hospital beds, walkers and wheelchairs. A shower is a fixture of the building and it is useful to anybody, which is why bathroom modifications generally do not meet that definition. Medicare Advantage plans and state Medicaid waivers vary by plan and by state, and some veterans' programmes are different again, so the answer for one household is not the answer for another. Ask them, not us — the link is on this page.
Can you redo a bathroom for $5000?
For this job, yes: 3 of the 5 configurations this model prices come in under $5,000, including "built for mobility" at $4,601 — a low threshold, a curtain so the opening stays clear, a seat, four grab bars and a handheld. ⚠️ Two caveats on that yes. This prices the tub alcove becoming a shower, not a bathroom remodel: the floor, the vanity, the toilet and the lighting are a different page and a different budget. And every figure assumes nothing nasty is found behind the tub, which is the assumption that breaks bathroom budgets far more often than any choice of tile does.
Taken from Google’s “people also ask” results for this search on 2026-08-24, not invented.
Other cost calculators
The first of these are the jobs closest to this one — the ones that turn up in the same quote, or instead of it.
- Walk-in tub cost
Prices one installed rather than advertised, and calculates the figure nobody publishes: the minutes you sit inside it waiting for it to fill and drain.
- Bathroom remodel cost
Prices a whole bathroom line by line and answers the question people actually ask: what a $5,000, a $10,000 and a $20,000 bathroom each get you.
- Vinyl plank flooring cost
Prices by wear layer in mils, which is the one spec on the box that decides how long the floor lasts, and includes the levelling nobody sees until the old floor is up.
- The full tub to shower conversion cost dataset
Every unit price, every quantity rule and the reasoning behind each estimate, as a plain table.
- How we calculate
The formula, the sources, and an honest account of which parts of the model are weak.