How much does it cost to remove a load-bearing wall?

Removing a load-bearing wall and fitting a steel beam costs about £2,700 to £3,750 including VAT in 2026 for a 3 to 4.5 m opening in a brick wall (£2,270 to £3,118 before VAT). A typical 3.5 m knock-through between a kitchen and dining room comes to about £2,984 including VAT (£2,487 before VAT), or about £711 a metre. That covers the propping, knocking the wall out, a primed steel on two padstones, lifting it in, the skip and making good round the opening.

It doesn't cover the structural engineer, the building control fee, decorating, or moving anything that runs through the wall. Those are usually the things that catch people out.

What's in the price

We priced a 3.5 m opening in a solid brick wall, 2.4 m high. This is where the money goes, before VAT.

• Propping: about 8.6 hours putting in and taking out the temporary support, £232, plus 4 Acrow props and 4 strongboys on hire for a week, £65.
• Knocking the wall out: about 31 hours of labouring, cutting it out and loading it to the skip, £638, and the skip, £273.
• The steel: a UB 254×146×31 beam 3.8 m long (the opening plus 150 mm of bearing each end), about 118 kg, £245. About 8 hours to put it in, £215, and priming it with red oxide, £38.
• Lifting it: a Genie lift for the day, £111. At 118 kg it's not a two-man carry onto padstones at head height.
• Padstones: two concrete padstones bedded under the ends, £43, and about 2.7 hours, £72.
• Making good: the reveals, the floor and the wall round the opening, £156 of materials and about 14.5 hours, £399.

That's about 66 hours of work in all. Labour is about two thirds of the price. The steel itself is less than a tenth of it.

Price by opening

• 3.0 m opening: £2,270 before VAT, £2,724 including VAT (about £757 a metre)
• 3.5 m opening: £2,487 before VAT, £2,984 including VAT (about £711 a metre)
• 4.5 m opening: £3,118 before VAT, £3,742 including VAT (about £693 a metre)

All in a solid brick wall 2.4 m high. A wider opening costs less a metre because the props, the lift and the padstones are the same for any size.

Pricing it as a builder

Price it in four parts. The propping and the knocking out go by the wall's area. The steel goes by weight and length. The padstones and lift are fixed. And the making good grows with the size of the opening. The steel size you price from is a starting guess until the engineer's calculations arrive, so say that on the quote and requote if the section changes.

Check five things on the site visit. What the wall is (solid brick, cavity or block), because a cavity wall means two steels. What's above it, a floor, a wall upstairs or a chimney breast. Where the ends of the steel will bear and whether that wall is a party wall. What runs through it (pipes, cables, radiators). And how the steel gets in, because a long beam through a terraced house's front door is a job of its own.

Priced on its own, a job like this carries a small premium for travel, setting up, a minimum charge and part-used materials. Done as an extra while you're already on site, the same work usually costs a bit less.

How we priced it

We built the job in Bricken, the quoting app for UK builders, item by item. Standard merchant prices for the steel and materials, typical hourly rates for each trade (£15 an hour for a labourer, £20 for a general builder, before markup), and a typical builder's markup of 30% on materials and 35% on labour. Your builder will price it at their own rates, so get a few quotes.

Priced in Bricken at standard UK rates (a 3.0 m opening for the low figure, 4.5 m for the high, both in a solid brick wall). Each figure is then multiplied by Bricken's regional factor, from 0.90 in the North East to 1.30 in inner London. The factors come from public 2025-26 build-cost guides and our own quotes. Where a region covers two areas, the low uses the lower factor and the high the higher. The factors are set for whole building jobs, so treat small differences as a guide.