← Walk-in shower bid calculator
Owners send a screenshot of a $75–$80 / SF alcove special and ask you to match it on the 5x5 curbless walk-in they actually want. The tile counts look close — 95 vs 115 square feet. The first linear drain, the first curbless floor, the valve that has to move, and the frameless glass do not live in that number.
Open the free walk-in shower bid calculatorOn the sample rates — $38 wage, 32% burden, 16% overhead, 28% target margin — a 5x3 alcove tub-to-shower that keeps the existing valve and a framed door bids about $7,419 ($78 / SF of tile, 29.0 hours). A 5x5 curbless walk-in with a linear drain, a valve relocate, two niches, a masonry bench, and frameless glass bids about $12,821 ($111 / SF, 55.4 hours). Matching the alcove’s $78 / SF on 115 square feet is about $8,980 — under the walk-in’s walk-away.
| 5x3 alcove | 5x5 curbless | 4x6 steam | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tile square feet | 95 | 115 | 134 |
| Linear drain / curbless | No | Yes | No |
| Valve relocate | No | Yes | Yes |
| At the alcove $ / SF | Holds | Loses | Loses |
A 4x6 steam shower with a masonry bench and a steam-rated enclosure is not an alcove plus 20%. On the sample rates it bids about $15,441. The generator and the sealed glass do not scale with wall count. A tile-only alcove with the demo already done and no glass is the cheap end of the same shop — about $5,637 — and that is the number people accidentally paste onto a walk-in.
Open the walk-in shower bid calculator, enter your wage, burden, and overhead, and read the four-bathroom table. It prices the brochure alcove, the curbless walk-in, the steam shower, and the tile-only alcove from the same crew rates, then scores matching the alcove’s price per tile square foot against each cost base. Nothing is uploaded.
This is the same arithmetic as how much to charge to install a walk-in shower. Customer bought the tile? See should I install customer-supplied tile. They want Saturday? See should I tile a walk-in shower after hours. It is not a plumbing specification, a waterproofing warranty, or a reason to refuse a customer — it is the walk-away number on each bathroom. A walk-in tub is a tub with a door. A toilet is a commode swap. This prices a wet-area system.
Only after you price both bathrooms from the same wage, burden, and overhead. A 5x3 alcove tub-to-shower with the existing valve and a framed door is not the same job as a 5x5 curbless walk-in with a linear drain, a valve relocate, a masonry bench, and frameless glass. The tile counts are close. Matching the alcove’s price per square foot of tile on the walk-in is how that job becomes a loss.
Linear drains, curbless slope, a valve relocate, niches, a masonry bench, and frameless glass do not scale with tile square footage. On the sample rates a 5x3 alcove prices around $7,419 ($78 per tile sq ft). Matching that $78 / SF on 115 sq ft of walk-in tile is about $8,980 — under the walk-in’s walk-away. Steam is a third job, not an alcove plus 20%.
No. A sealed enclosure and a generator do not live in a published per-square-foot number. On the sample rates a 4x6 steam shower prices above the curbless walk-in even when wall tile is only modestly higher. Treat steam as its own bathroom, not a blended add-on.