How many remodel quotes to get depends on the size of the job, and for most remodeling projects the answer is three. Two is enough for a small, tightly defined job, and one is fine when you’re bringing back a contractor who already did good work on your house.
Past three you’re mostly buying delay, because the fourth quote rarely tells you anything the first three didn’t.
That’s the practical answer. The three bid rule everyone repeats, though, didn’t come from residential remodeling at all. It came from a completely different industry, and the one thing that made it work there is missing from almost every homeowner’s project.
Where the Three Bid Rule Actually Comes From
The rule started in commercial construction, and in that world it makes perfect sense.
On a commercial job, the design gets finished first. Then a specifier goes through and sources every material in the building, down to the tile and the light fixtures. Only after all of that is nailed down do three contractors get handed the identical package and asked to price it.
What they’re bidding on is labor and overhead against a fixed scope. Same drawings, same materials, same everything. The three numbers that come back are genuinely comparable, because the only variable left is the contractor.
That’s the missing piece. On your kitchen, there’s no specifier. Most of the time there isn’t even a finished design.
Why Three Residential Quotes Usually Aren’t Comparable
When three remodelers walk through your house, each one leaves with a slightly different project in their head.
One assumes you’ll want the plumbing moved. One assumes you won’t. One prices mid grade cabinets, another prices whatever’s on sale at the supply house they buy from. One includes the permit, one leaves it out, one buries it in a line called “administration.”
So you get three numbers built on three different foundations, and the spread between them tells you almost nothing.
One Omaha remodeler put the problem plainly with an example that shows up constantly: one bathroom bid comes in at $70,000 and another at $40,000. Is the first company expensive, or did the second one forget half the work? From the outside, those two possibilities look identical.
Then there are allowances, which are placeholder numbers for materials you haven’t picked yet. A quote that carries a $3,000 tile allowance and a quote that carries $8,000 for the same room aren’t disagreeing about labor. They’re guessing differently about your taste, and anything above the allowance comes out of your pocket later.
Some contractors leave allowances out entirely, which makes their number look leaner than it is.
Make the Quotes Comparable Before You Ask for Them
Here’s the move most homeowners skip. You can’t level three quotes after they arrive, but you can level them before they’re written.
Do the specifier’s job yourself, at whatever level of detail you can manage:
- Write one scope of work and hand the identical document to every contractor. Not a conversation, a document. Our guide to writing a scope of work before you call a contractor walks through what goes in it.
- Pick what you can pick yourself, because every material you choose is one fewer allowance for anyone to guess at. Even “this exact tile, this exact vanity” on two items tightens the whole comparison.
- Name your exclusions out loud: who’s pulling the permit, who hauls the debris, who handles the final clean, and whether appliances are in or out.
- Ask every quote for the same line items, broken out separately: demolition, rough plumbing, rough electrical, drywall, tile, cabinets, countertops, paint, permits. A contractor who won’t break out categories is telling you something.
- Give them all the same access: same walkthrough, same measurements, same photos, same answers to the same questions.
Do that and the three numbers start meaning something, because you’ve removed most of the reasons they’d differ for reasons that have nothing to do with the contractor.
When Two Quotes Are Enough, and When One Is Fine
Three is a default, not a law. The right number depends on how much money is on the line, how well defined the work is, and whether you already know the contractor.
| Your situation | How many quotes |
|---|---|
| Whole house remodel, addition, or anything structural | Three, minimum |
| Kitchen, bathroom, or basement over roughly $15,000 | Three |
| A defined job under about $10,000 with a clear scope | Two |
| A contractor who already did good work on your house | One is fine |
| An emergency: active leak, no heat, unsafe condition | One, and fix it now |
| A specialty job with only two qualified crews in the county | Two, and take what you can get |
The repeat contractor case deserves the most attention, because it’s the one people feel guilty about. If a remodeler finished your bathroom on schedule, at the price they quoted, and came back when a grout line cracked, collecting two more quotes for the basement is not diligence. It’s a tax you’re paying on a relationship that already proved itself. Ask them for a number, check it against what you know the work costs, and get on with it.
The emergency case is the same logic under time pressure. A quote you waited six days for on a leaking roof is not a bargain.
When You Should Get More Than Three
Push past three when the project is genuinely unusual and you need to find out who actually knows how to do it:
- Structural work: removing a bearing wall, underpinning, a second story addition
- Older homes with knob and tube wiring, plaster and lath, or a foundation with real movement
- Any job where the first three quotes land in wildly different ranges, which usually means they’re pricing different projects
- Any job where the first three quotes are all vague, so none of them is a real basis for a decision
Even then, cap it around five. Past that you’re collecting data you can’t process, and every extra walkthrough is another week the good crews are filling their calendar with someone else’s job.
What to Do When One Quote Comes In Far Below the Others
A number 20 to 30 percent under everything else is almost never a discount. It’s usually one of three things: work that got left out of the scope, materials a grade or two below what the others priced, or a low entry number that gets rebuilt through change orders once the walls are open.
Don’t throw it away and don’t grab it. Go back to that contractor with a specific question: “The other quotes include X, Y and Z. Are those in your number?”
The answer sorts it out fast. A contractor who says “no, and here’s why you don’t need Z” is showing you real expertise. A contractor who says “we’ll figure that out as we go” is showing you your first change order. If you want a full walkthrough of that comparison, we covered it in our guide on how to get accurate remodel estimates and compare them.
The same question works in the other direction. When a quote lands high, ask what it includes that the others don’t. Sometimes the answer is a real difference in quality, and sometimes it’s padding. You only find out by asking.
The Thing Quotes Can’t Tell You
Three numbers on three pieces of paper compare price. They don’t compare the parts of a remodel that actually go wrong.
No quote tells you whether the crew shows up on the days they said they would, or whether the project manager still answers the phone in week five. None of them says whether the punch list gets finished or quietly abandoned, or whether anybody comes back in March when the caulk fails.
That information exists, but it comes from somewhere else entirely: past customers and public records. Before you decide on price, go check the other half in our guide on how to check a contractor’s reviews and references.
Price is the easiest thing to compare, which is exactly why people over weight it.
What Collecting Quotes Actually Costs You
Getting quotes isn’t free, even though nobody charges you for most of them.
Each one takes a walkthrough, an hour or two of your time, and usually a week of waiting. Three quotes is a two to three week process from first call to last proposal. Five turns it into a month.
That month has a price. Good remodelers in Luzerne County book weeks out, and the one you liked in week one may be committed to somebody else by the time you finish shopping. Comparison shopping past the point of usefulness is how homeowners end up choosing from whoever’s still available in April.
There’s also a courtesy cost. A detailed remodeling estimate takes a contractor real hours to produce, and reputable ones do it for free. Requesting seven of them when you were only ever going to seriously consider two is how a homeowner earns a reputation among a small county’s crews.
How Many Remodel Quotes to Get, in One Line
Get enough quotes to know the market, and no more. For most people, that’s three.
Then apply this order when you compare them:
- Level the scope first, because a quote you can’t compare isn’t a data point, no matter how detailed it looks.
- Investigate the outliers instead of discarding them, because the cheapest and the most expensive quotes both have a reason, and the reason is the useful part.
- Weight the contractor over the number, since a 10 percent price difference disappears next to a crew that finishes on time and answers the phone.
- Stop when the numbers stop surprising you, because once the third quote lands where you expected it to, you already know the market rate and a fourth won’t change your decision.
If you’re still at the earlier stage of narrowing down who to even ask, our guide on how to hire a remodeling contractor you can trust covers the vetting that should happen before anyone prices anything.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it rude to get multiple contractor quotes?
No, and every established contractor assumes you’re getting them. Comparing bids is normal practice on a purchase this size. What is discourteous is requesting an estimate from a contractor you have no intention of hiring, or asking for a fourth and fifth quote purely to shave a few hundred dollars off someone you’d already decided on.
Should I tell contractors I’m getting other quotes?
Yes, and say it plainly at the walkthrough. It costs you nothing, because they already assume it, and it usually improves what you get back: quotes come in more detailed and more clearly itemized when a contractor knows their scope will sit next to somebody else’s. What you shouldn’t do is invent competing quotes that don’t exist to try to force a number down.
Do contractors charge for remodeling estimates?
Most don’t charge for a standard estimate on a defined project. Some charge a design fee for detailed drawings, measured plans, or a full design build package, and that fee is often credited back if you hire them. Ask up front whether the estimate is free and whether anything about it is billable, so nobody is surprised.
Can I show one contractor another contractor’s quote?
You can, but be careful how. Sharing a competitor’s line items to force a price match tends to produce a matched price with quietly removed scope. A better version is to share the scope difference rather than the price: “another quote includes rebuilding the subfloor, is that in yours?” That gets you a real answer instead of a discount that costs you later.
How long is a contractor’s quote good for?
Most remodeling quotes carry a validity window, commonly 30 days, because material prices and crew availability shift. Look for the expiration date in the proposal. If it isn’t stated, ask, and get the answer in writing along with whether the price is fixed or subject to material cost changes.
What if all three quotes come in over my budget?
Three quotes over budget is not three overpriced contractors. It’s the market telling you what the project costs. From there you have three real options: cut scope, phase the work into stages, or wait and save. Ask your favorite contractor which parts of the scope carry the most cost for the least benefit, because they’ll know, and they would rather right size the project than lose it.
How many contractor quotes is too many?
Past five you’re into diminishing returns. You’ve already established the market rate by the third, the extra walkthroughs eat weeks, and the delay costs you access to the crews that book out fastest. If five quotes haven’t clarified the decision, the problem is usually the scope being too loose, not the sample being too small.
Ready for Your First Quote?
If you’re in Wilkes-Barre or anywhere in Luzerne County and you’re about to start collecting numbers, write down your scope first and hand every remodeler the same document. You’ll get quotes you can actually line up side by side.
Then call 570 Remodeling at (570) 938-4541 or request a free quote. We’ll come out, look at the job, and put a detailed scope of work and a fixed price in writing so you know exactly what our number covers.
Get Your Free Quote
Tell us about your project and we will get back to you with a real number for your space. No pressure, no obligation.
