Cost to Rewire a House: Per Square Foot and Per Opening

Rewiring a house costs $3–$8 per square foot in 2026, putting most whole-house rewires at $4,500–$12,000 — more for large homes, knob-and-tube replacement, or houses with no attic, basement, or crawlspace access. It is the biggest job in our electrical cluster short of a full service replacement, and it almost always travels with the panel upgrade covered in our pillar guide: new wiring landed on a 60-amp fuse box is money spent in the wrong order. Rate context is in the electrician cost hub.

Rewiring cost by house size (2026)

Access is the whole story in that table. When an electrician can walk an attic or a crawlspace, cable runs in minutes. When every run must be fished through closed, finished walls — or cut open — the same circuit takes an hour and leaves a hole to patch. Two-story homes with finished first-floor ceilings are the classic hard-access case.

How electricians price it: per foot vs. per opening

Square-foot pricing is an estimating shortcut; the number behind most real quotes is per opening — every outlet, switch, light, and appliance connection counts as one opening. 2026 per-opening rates run $150–$250 for standard receptacles and switches, $250–$450 for recessed lights, and $350–$900 for dedicated appliance circuits (range, dryer, water heater, HVAC). A typical 1,500 sq ft home has 60–90 openings. When you compare quotes, ask for the opening count each electrician assumed — a $2,000 gap between quotes is usually a 10-opening disagreement, not a pricing difference.

What a rewire actually includes

1. Assessment + load calculation: existing wiring mapped; the panel situation decided first (budget the panel upgrade in the same project if it's due — one mobilization, one inspection cycle).
2. Permit: pulled by the electrician; rewires are inspected in stages (rough-in before walls close, final after trim).
3. New circuits run: modern code requires things your old house never had — dedicated kitchen small-appliance circuits, GFCI protection in kitchens/baths/garages/exteriors, AFCI protection in living areas, hardwired interconnected smoke/CO detectors.
4. Devices + trim: new receptacles, switches, plates; old wiring abandoned in place (de-energized) or removed where accessible.
5. Rough + final inspections: the inspector sees the work before and after the walls close.
6. Patching: see the next section — usually not the electrician's scope.

The knob-and-tube problem

If your home was built before roughly 1935, some or all of its wiring may be knob-and-tube. The system itself, untouched, is not the instant hazard it's sometimes sold as — but three forces converge against it: it has no ground wire (modern electronics and GFCI protection assume one), it was designed for a house with a few lights per room rather than today's loads, and it cannot legally be buried in insulation, which kills most attic-insulation plans. Insurers make the decision final: many carriers will not write or renew a policy on a home with active knob-and-tube, or price the policy as if they'd rather not. In practice, knob-and-tube replacement is usually partial-first: the insurer cares about the active circuits, so decommissioning the K&T runs (verified by the electrician's letter) often satisfies underwriting even before every later-era circuit is redone. Budget knob-and-tube replacement at the top of the access-based ranges above — the runs are, by definition, in the oldest, least accessible parts of the house.

Signs your wiring is at end of life

Not every old house needs a full rewire, and any electrician quoting one should be able to point at evidence. The genuine triggers: two-prong ungrounded outlets throughout (no ground path for modern equipment), cloth- or rubber-insulated conductors whose insulation crumbles when flexed (common pre-1950), frequent breaker trips or fuse replacements on ordinary loads, discolored or warm outlets and switches, a burning smell at devices, lights that dim when appliances start (voltage drop on overloaded or deteriorated circuits), aluminum branch wiring from the 1965–1975 era (a known connection-overheating issue that needs CO/ALR devices or pigtailing at minimum), and any active knob-and-tube your insurer has flagged. One or two of these usually means targeted circuit replacement, not a whole-house job; four or more, or any of them spread across every floor, is when the per-opening math starts beating the repair-by-repair math. A $150–$400 diagnostic visit that maps which circuits are actually failing is money well spent before committing to five figures.

The drywall bill nobody budgets

Even careful fishing leaves holes: at device locations, at corners where drills turn, and along any run that could not be fished at all. Electricians typically either leave holes open or rough-patch them — finish mudding, texture matching, and repainting are almost never in the electrical quote. Real 2026 numbers for the follow-on work: $500–$2,000 for patch-and-texture across a whole-house rewire, plus paint. Get one sentence in your written quote — “drywall patching included to [rough/finish] stage” — and there are no surprises. This is also where the phased approach helps: patch each phase while the mess is confined to one floor.

DIY vs. hiring a pro

Rewiring is the definitive licensed-electrician job in this cluster. The scope is permitted in every jurisdiction, inspected in stages everywhere, and restricted to licensed electricians in most — a small number of places let owner-occupants pull a homeowner permit, and even there the inspector applies the same code book, which for a whole house runs to hundreds of enforceable details (box fill, arc-fault coverage, grounding electrode systems, tamper-resistant receptacles). Errors don't announce themselves; they wait inside closed walls. Where homeowners genuinely save money: gutting access ahead of the electrician (opening a basement ceiling, clearing the attic), doing the drywall patch and paint after, and rewiring during a renovation that already has walls open — the single biggest cost lever in this entire guide. Our DIY vs. pro guide classifies structural electrical work as never-DIY for the same reasons.

Do you need a permit?

Yes — always, for rewiring, in every jurisdiction, and unlike some projects there is no scope small enough inside a rewire to skip it. Expect $200–$800 in permit and inspection fees depending on the city and scope, staged rough-in and final inspections, and a paper trail your insurer and the next buyer will both ask about. If you are replacing knob-and-tube for insurance reasons, the passed final inspection plus the electrician's completion letter is the document your carrier wants — confirm they'll accept it before choosing the phase plan.

Costly mistakes to avoid

• Rewiring onto an ancient panel. Sequence the project panel-first or panel-with; new circuits on a 60-amp fuse panel waste the mobilization and fail modern circuit-count needs.
• Comparing quotes without the opening count. Per-opening assumptions are where cheap quotes hide missing circuits. Make every bidder count the same house.
• Assuming drywall is included. It usually is not. One written sentence prevents a $2,000 misunderstanding.
• Burying knob-and-tube in new insulation. It voids the insulation plan's code compliance and the insurer's patience. Rewire first, insulate second.
• Skipping dedicated circuits to trim the bid. Code-required kitchen, laundry, and bath circuits are not upsells; cutting them fails inspection and reopens the walls.
• Living through it without a plan. Phasing floor-by-floor, keeping one bathroom and the kitchen live, and knowing which circuits die on which day turns a miserable month into a manageable one.