If you are weighing up a whole-house renovation in central or greater London, the first question is almost always financial. Not because it is the most important one — it isn't — but because the answer to it determines what kind of conversation you can realistically have about architecture, finishes, and time. After more than three decades of delivering residential projects across Kensington, Chelsea, Knightsbridge and beyond, we can sketch what 2026 numbers actually look like in this market — and, more usefully, where the money tends to go.

The 2026 budget bands we see in central London

Pricing in London moves with materials, labour availability, and the specification a particular client is reaching for. For a considered, high-specification whole-house refurbishment in 2026, the bands we see most often are roughly:

  • £2,500 – £3,500 per sqm — careful refurbishment with quality finishes, no major structural alterations, services replaced where needed.
  • £3,500 – £5,500 per sqm — full refurbishment with structural reconfiguration, bespoke joinery, high-end stone and timber, and complete services replacement.
  • £5,500 – £8,000+ per sqm — luxury specification with imported materials, integrated AV, advanced building services, basement works or extensive structural change.

These are working bands, not quotes. A four-storey period townhouse on a tight London street with limited site access can move comfortably into the upper band on logistics alone. A simpler floor-plate apartment may sit cleanly in the middle. The right number always depends on the building, not the postcode.

Where the money quietly goes

Most clients arrive imagining the cost is concentrated in the visible parts of the project — kitchens, bathrooms, finishes. In practice, the spend distribution on a high-specification refurbishment usually looks closer to this:

Structure and shell — 18% to 25%

Removing chimney breasts, opening up dividing walls, repairing or replacing roofs, addressing damp, levelling floors, and the steelwork that ties new openings into older fabric. This work is invisible after handover but it is what every other discipline relies on. Cutting corners here is the single most reliable way to ruin a beautiful interior over a five-year horizon.

Mechanical, electrical and plumbing — 18% to 22%

Underfloor heating, replacement boilers or heat pumps, full rewires, soil and waste replacement, ventilation, lighting circuits, networking, and smart-home integration. Services have grown noticeably more complex over the last decade and are now a substantial discipline in their own right. Specifying them well is also what makes a home quiet, comfortable and durable.

Joinery — 12% to 18%

Bespoke kitchens, fitted wardrobes, built-in libraries, panelled walls, staircases, internal doors and architraves. Joinery is where the architectural intent meets craft. It is also where small specification differences translate into very large cost differences. A solid timber, hand-finished kitchen sits in a different bracket to a veneered one — and the difference is visible the moment you open a drawer.

Finishes — 12% to 16%

Stone, timber flooring, plaster, paint, tiling, sanitaryware. The visible layer. Generally the part clients are most actively involved in selecting, and the area where it is easiest to swap a single line item up or down without affecting the rest of the build.

Professional fees, programme & contingency — 12% to 18%

Architects, structural engineers, services consultants, planning consultants, party-wall surveyors, project management, contingency. On a serious project this is real, not optional. Trying to compress it almost always returns later as a programme problem.

The decisions that protect a budget are almost never the visible ones. They are the structural, service and joinery decisions made early — before anyone has chosen a tile.

The trade-offs worth making early

The cleanest, most enjoyable projects we run are usually the ones where the client has been honest with themselves about three trade-offs before drawings are frozen.

Specification versus area

Most clients have a fixed total budget and a fairly fixed property footprint. That means an honest choice between higher specification across fewer square metres, or moderate specification across more. A beautifully built smaller home almost always ages better than a sprawling one that is built thinly.

Bespoke versus catalogued

Bespoke joinery, ironmongery and stonework are the items that make a residence feel uniquely yours. They are also where costs scale fastest. Identifying which two or three rooms truly justify bespoke work, and where catalogued specification is enough, is one of the most cost-effective decisions a design team can help a client make.

Programme versus disruption

It is often cheaper, on a paper basis, to deliver a project over a longer programme. It is also harder on the client. If you are paying rent during the works, or losing rental income on the property itself, a faster programme with a small premium can be cheaper than a slower one with no premium. The right answer is project-specific.

What we tell clients before we quote

Before any meaningful cost conversation, three things are useful to know: what the building can support structurally, what the services strategy needs to look like, and how ambitious the joinery and finish specification really is. Without those three, any cost figure is a guess. With them, a credible budget framework can be put together in two or three weeks — and the project gets a head start that pays back many times over the life of the build.

If you would like to talk through a specific property and what a credible budget might look like, the studio's initial consultation is confidential and free.