By Alexandru Goncear, Owner and CEO, ElectON Enterprise. Washington electrical contractor license ELECTEL765MN.
Somebody calls and asks what it costs to rewire their house in Tacoma. I understand why they want one number. I cannot give them one, and any contractor who does over the phone is quoting a house they have never seen.
The honest version is that two houses of nearly identical square footage, four miles apart, can differ by twelve thousand dollars. Not because one crew is greedy and the other is cheap. Because one house has a plaster ceiling and no attic, and the other has open framing and a basement you can stand up in.
So instead of a number, here are four jobs. These are composites drawn from work we have done around Tacoma, with the dollar figures rounded into bands rather than printed as invoices. I am doing that on purpose. If I publish an exact price, somebody calls next spring and asks for that price on a house I have not walked, and neither of us ends up happy. Treat these as planning ranges. The real number comes after somebody opens your panel and gets in your crawl space.
The four jobs
A 1912 Craftsman in the North End, roughly 1,850 square feet
Knob-and-tube through most of the house, some of it spliced into 1960s cloth Romex in the attic, which is a combination that makes insurers nervous and makes me nervous too. Lath and plaster walls. Full-height attic, decent basement.
The attic saved this job. We fished most of the second-floor circuits from above and dropped down interior partitions, which kept the plaster damage to a handful of patches rather than a gut. Even so, plaster does not cooperate. It cracks in sheets away from the hole you cut, and the repair is a different trade at a different rate.
Scope included a new 200 amp panel, a full grounding system, and the circuit count the current code requires, which is a lot more than a 1912 house was built with. Kitchen alone needed dedicated circuits that did not previously exist.
Band: high teens to low twenties. Drywall and plaster repair was quoted separately by a plasterer we recommended.
A 1926 bungalow on the Hilltop, roughly 1,150 square feet
Partial rewire, not a full one, and the homeowner made that call deliberately after we walked it together.
Knob-and-tube ran through the attic and the accessible sections of the first floor. A stretch of it fed two bedrooms through a wall cavity we could not reach without opening finished ceilings on the floor below. We replaced everything we could reach, capped and abandoned what we could not, documented exactly what remained, and told her what it would cost to finish later.
Her insurer accepted the documented partial. Some will not. Ask yours before you plan around it.
Panel was a 100 amp Zinsco, which we replaced regardless. That was not optional in my view. If you want the longer version of why, we cover Zinsco and Federal Pacific enclosures on our residential electrician page for Tacoma.
Band: mid single digits, around a third of the Craftsman. Smaller house, less scope, but the panel work meant it was not a cheap job.
A 1968 rambler in South Tacoma, roughly 1,600 square feet
Aluminum branch wiring. This is the 1965 to 1973 window, and if your house is from those years in South Tacoma or Fern Hill, go look at the cable jacket in your panel before you read further.
Drywall instead of plaster, which changes everything about the labor. Drywall cuts clean and patches cheap. Add a walkable attic and a crawl space with real clearance, and the fishing goes fast.
We replaced all aluminum branch circuits with copper. The existing 150 amp panel was in usable condition, so it stayed, which took several thousand dollars off the total. We did add circuits for the kitchen and a future EV charger, since she was already paying for us to be in the walls. That is almost always the right call. Running a dedicated circuit later, as a standalone visit, costs far more than adding it while the walls are open.
Band: low teens. Roughly two-thirds of the Craftsman despite being only slightly smaller, entirely because of access and wall material.
A 1955 split-level near Fern Hill, roughly 2,200 square feet, occupied throughout
The most expensive of the four, and square footage was not the main reason.
The family lived in the house during the work. That means we rewired in phases, restored power to occupied rooms every night, and worked around a home office with a standing requirement that it stay live. Phased work costs more. Not because we charge a penalty, but because a crew that sets up and breaks down eight times is a crew that spends real hours doing something other than pulling wire.
This job also included a service upgrade from 100 to 200 amps, which meant coordinating the meter and the drop with Tacoma Power on their schedule rather than ours. Two separate inspections. A gap between them where nothing could progress.
Band: low to mid twenties, panel and service upgrade included.
What actually moved the price
Four things did most of the work in those numbers, and square footage was not the biggest.
Wall material. Plaster and lath roughly doubles the cost of every opening compared to drywall. It cracks unpredictably and it needs a plasterer, not a drywall taper. Most Tacoma houses built before about 1945 have it. That covers a lot of the North End, Stadium District, Proctor, Old Town, and Hilltop.
Access. A standing attic and a crawl space you can move in are worth thousands. Rewiring is mostly fishing cable, and fishing is fast when you can get above and below the space. A 1950s rambler on a slab with a low attic is harder than a two-story Victorian with a full basement, which surprises people.
Whether the panel and service are in scope. A rewire with a panel replacement and a service upgrade to 200 amps is a meaningfully different project than a rewire that reuses serviceable equipment. If your quotes vary wildly, check this line first. It is the most common reason two bids look incomparable. Our electrical panel installation page covers what a panel replacement includes on its own.
Occupied or empty. Vacant houses are cheaper to rewire. If you are buying an older Tacoma home and plan to rewire, doing it before you move in will save you money and a great deal of irritation.
Statewide figures put rewiring in Washington somewhere between four and twelve dollars per square foot, with labor costs running above the national average. Those figures are fine for a first pass at a budget. They are not useful for choosing a contractor, because the range is wide enough to contain both an honest bid and a bad one.
The Tacoma permit thing nobody warns you about
Your electrical permit does not come from the building department.
Inside Tacoma Power’s service area, electrical permits and inspections run through Tacoma Power, not City of Tacoma Planning and Development Services. They are separate offices with separate submittals, both inside the same Accela portal. Contractors who mostly work in unincorporated Pierce County or south King County get this wrong regularly, and the way you find out is a delay.
One more thing, and it is recent: Tacoma Power adopted the 2026 National Electrical Code as of June 1, 2026. If you got a rewire quote in early 2026 and are only now moving forward, the circuit and protection requirements behind that quote may have changed. Ask whoever wrote it whether it was priced under the current code.
We pull the permit as part of the job and we schedule the inspection. If a bid does not mention permits, that is worth a direct question. Unpermitted rewires surface later, usually during a sale, and the cost of fixing them then is not comparable to the cost of doing it right.
Signs your Tacoma house may need this
Not every old house needs a full rewire. Plenty of 1940s houses in the West End have been partially updated over decades and need targeted work rather than a gut.
Look for cloth-wrapped wire rather than plastic sheathing. Two-prong ungrounded outlets throughout. Ceramic knobs and tubes visible in the attic or basement joists. Breakers that trip when the microwave and the toaster run together. A panel labeled Zinsco or Federal Pacific. Warm outlet covers. Lights that dim when the dryer starts.
If it is one or two of those and the house is postwar, you may be looking at wiring updates or outlet grounding rather than a rewire. That distinction is worth several thousand dollars and it takes an inspection to make.
If you are already remodeling, rewire during the remodel. Walls are open, access is free, and the marginal cost drops sharply. We handle this constantly on remodeling and renovation projects.
Common questions about rewiring costs in Tacoma
How long does a whole-home rewire take in Tacoma? Most single-family jobs run one to two weeks of field work. Occupied houses take longer because the work gets phased. Add time for the inspection, and add more if a Tacoma Power service upgrade is involved, since that depends on their scheduling rather than ours.
Do I have to move out? No. All four jobs above were done with the homeowners in place except where they chose otherwise. It costs more and it is less comfortable. If you have the option to do it before you move in, take it.
Will my insurance company require a full rewire? Many Washington insurers will not write or renew a policy on a house with active knob-and-tube or aluminum branch wiring, and others charge more until it is replaced. Requirements vary by carrier. Some accept a documented partial rewire with the remaining runs capped and identified. Call your agent before you decide on scope, not after.
Is drywall repair included? Ours is quoted separately, and you should assume the same of any bid unless it says otherwise in writing. Patching plaster is a different trade. When a bid looks unusually low, this is often what is missing from it.
Can you do it in stages to spread out the cost? Yes. Phasing by floor or by circuit group is common. It costs somewhat more in total because of repeated setup, and it means multiple inspections. For some households the cash flow is worth the premium.
Do you charge for estimates? No. Somebody comes out, opens the panel, gets into the attic and crawl space, and you get a written itemized number. We do not quote rewires over the phone.
What if I only need part of the house done? That is a normal request and often the right one. We will tell you what we can reach, what we cannot, and what the remaining work would cost later. You get that in writing so your insurer and any future buyer can see exactly what was done.
Getting a real number for your house
The four bands above should tell you which neighborhood of pricing you are in. They cannot tell you your number, and I would be suspicious of anyone who claims otherwise.
If you want the actual figure, we will come look. Panel, attic, crawl space, wall construction, circuit count, service capacity. Then a written itemized quote you can compare line by line against anyone else’s.
ElectON Enterprise Serving Tacoma and Pierce County, including the North End, Stadium District, Proctor, Old Town, Hilltop, South Tacoma, Eastside, Lincoln District, Fern Hill, the West End, Northeast Tacoma, Browns Point, and Dash Point.
Phone: (253) 508-7529 License: ELECTEL765MN
Offices: 36007 9th Ct SW, Federal Way, WA 98023 · 1609 Central Ave S Suite E, Kent, WA 98032 · 16709 81 Ave E, Puyallup, WA 98375
Schedule an estimate or read more about our whole-house rewiring service.