What it costs to renovate a whole flat in Barcelona
Published price
35,000–65,000€ VAT included
€35,000–65,000, VAT included, for a flat of 65 to 90 m². Eight to twelve weeks. That is the range we publish; the firm price is fixed in writing after the survey.
A full renovation is the job people most often ask about in euros per square metre, and the job where that number is least useful. It is worth explaining why first.
Why we do not publish a price per square metre
Do the arithmetic on our own range. €35,000 to €65,000 across flats of 65 to 90 m² works out at €389 to €1,000 per square metre. That is a spread of two and a half times.
A number that could be 389 or could be 1,000 tells you nothing. It does not tell you which end your flat sits at, and its main practical use is making two quotes look comparable when they are not.
The reason the spread is so wide is that on a full renovation the square metre is not the unit of cost. The bathrooms and the kitchen take well over half the budget and do not grow with floor area: a 90 m² flat with one bathroom costs less than a 70 m² flat with two.
So we would rather publish a total range for a specific size of flat and explain what moves it, than publish a €/m² figure that sounds precise and is not.
What moves a full renovation from one end to the other
- How many bathrooms there are. It is the heaviest item after the kitchen, and the second bathroom does not come at half price.
- Whether the layout changes or stays. Taking out partitions means redoing floor, services and ceilings across the whole affected area.
- The state of the wiring and plumbing, which in a pre-1981 flat is almost always replaced entirely.
- Whether the windows have to be replaced, which is the big item people leave out when they do the sums at home.
- Whether aluminosis turns up once floors are opened, which in some municipalities here is common enough to budget for the engineer’s report up front.
How big the flats here actually are
The published range is for 65 to 90 m² because that is what the stock is. Across the 85 municipalities in the area, four out of five main homes are under 90 m², and the 61 to 90 m² band is the most common in nearly all of them.
If your flat is clearly outside that size, the range stops being useful to you, and we say so on the first call rather than sending somebody to your home.
VAT: why we charge 21% and not 10%
Every price on this page includes VAT at 21%. It is what you pay, not a figure the tax gets added to afterwards.
A reduced 10% rate does exist for renovation work on homes more than two years old (art. 91.Uno.2.10º of the Spanish VAT Act), but it only applies where the materials the company supplies stay under 40% of the taxable base. On a bathroom or a kitchen, where tiling, sanitaryware and units are half the budget, that condition is not reliably met.
A price whose tax rate depends on a condition the customer cannot check is not a published price. So we publish the rate we will actually charge, and we do not promise the other one.
The income-tax deduction for energy efficiency
Spain’s personal income tax (IRPF) deduction for work that improves a home’s energy performance runs until 31 December 2026. There are three bands, depending on what an energy certificate can demonstrate before and after: 20%, 40% or 60% of what you spend, each with its own cap.
It is not a grant and it is not paid up front. It is claimed on the following year’s tax return, and it requires an energy certificate issued by a qualified technician both before work starts and after it finishes.
The Next Generation renovation grants closed on 30 June 2026. Royal Decree 326/2026 has been published but is not yet claimable, so as things stand the IRPF deduction is the only route open.
Full apartment renovation in Barcelona
A complete flat of 65 to 90 m². Building work, all new services, mid-range materials, labour and site management. The firm price is set by the builder in writing after the visit.
Questions we are always asked
- Can I live in the flat during the work?
- Not during a full renovation. The floor comes up, the services are chased out of the walls, and there is no reliable water or power for weeks. It is worth counting two or three months of rent somewhere else as part of the real cost of the project.
- Do I need a major-works licence?
- It depends on whether structure or the building envelope is touched. Changing the layout without touching load-bearing walls usually goes through prior notification; opening up a load-bearing wall or altering the façade needs drawings and a licence. It is checked at the survey, before anything is signed.
- Does the price include the drawings and site supervision?
- Not where stamped drawings are required, because those are an independent professional’s fees rather than ours. They appear as a separate line with their own figure instead of being folded into the total.
- How far does the final price drift from the quote?
- The stated target is that the post-survey quote lands inside the published range in at least eight cases out of ten. When it does not, the range is what is wrong, and we say so before starting rather than afterwards.