How to Avoid Change Orders During a Remodel

Updated September 2026 · 7 min read

A change order is a purchase you make with no competition, no time to think, and a crew standing in your bathroom waiting for an answer. It is the worst buying position in the entire project, and most homeowners enter it several times.

Some change orders are unavoidable — the wall opens and there's rot. Most aren't. They're decisions that could have been made in week zero for free, made instead in week three at a premium.

Why they cost so much

The price of a change order isn't really about the work. It's about leverage.

When you competitively bid a project, three contractors sharpen their pencils against each other. When you request a change mid-project, exactly one contractor can do it, they're already on site, you have no time to get comparison quotes, and everyone knows it. On top of that, the change genuinely does cost more to execute: it disrupts sequencing, may require re-ordering material, and can idle a trade for a day.

The result is that identical work, priced as a change order rather than in the original scope, is routinely a great deal more expensive. Not because your contractor is exploiting you — because that's what changing a plan mid-execution costs.

The five causes

Four of the five are decisions. Only the last is genuinely a surprise.

Fix one: a scope of work that leaves nothing to interpretation

Most change orders trace back to a sentence that meant different things to each party. "Install new tile" doesn't say whether that includes the shower ceiling, whether the pattern is straight-set or herringbone, who supplies the trim pieces, or what happens to the floor behind the toilet.

A good scope names, for every element: what's being done, who supplies the material, the specific product where it's chosen, and what is explicitly excluded. The exclusions matter as much as the inclusions — they're where the disagreements live.

We've written a companion guide on this: what to include in a bathroom remodel scope of work.

Fix two: finish selections before demolition

This is the single highest-leverage habit in remodelling, and the one most people skip because choosing everything at once is exhausting.

Every product — tile, grout colour, vanity, faucet, shower valve and trim, toilet, mirror, lighting, hardware, paint — should be chosen, priced, and ideally ordered and physically on site before the first wall comes down.

Three reasons:

• Products constrain construction. A shower valve's rough-in body has to be installed before tile; different valves need different framing. A vanity's dimensions determine plumbing height. Choosing late means guessing early.
• Lead times bite. Custom glass, specialty tile, and some fixtures run weeks. A crew idle waiting for your tile is a crew you may be paying for, and a schedule slipping.
• Decision fatigue is real. Choosing eleven things calmly over three weeks beforehand produces better decisions than choosing them under pressure while the room is torn apart.

Fix three: kill the allowances

An allowance is a placeholder — "$1,200 allowance for tile" — used when a product hasn't been chosen. They're sometimes necessary, and they're a common source of unpleasant surprises, because a low allowance makes a bid look competitive and the difference gets billed to you later.

When comparing bids, allowances are also where apparently similar quotes diverge. One contractor's $1,000 tile allowance and another's $2,500 aren't the same project; they're the same paperwork.

So: convert allowances into real selections wherever you can. Where one has to remain, go and price the actual product you'd want and make sure the allowance reflects it — including installation materials and waste, not just the sticker price per square foot.

Fix four: agree the process for the unavoidable ones

Some change orders are legitimate. The floor opens and the subfloor is rotten; that has to be fixed and nobody could have quoted it. What you control is how those get handled.

Agree in writing, before work starts:

• Nothing proceeds without written approval. No verbal change orders — this protects both sides.
• How pricing works. Time and materials at a stated rate, or a fixed price per change, and what markup applies.
• What documentation you get. A photo of the condition, a description, a price, and a schedule impact — before you approve.
• How the schedule changes. A change that adds three days should say so at approval time, not at the end.

A contractor who's comfortable putting this in the contract is telling you something good about how they work.

Fix five: keep the contingency separate

Hold 15% of your budget as contingency and treat it as though it doesn't exist. It exists for exactly the unavoidable category above.

The failure mode is spending contingency on upgrades. Halfway through, the tile looks plainer than expected and there's "budget available" — so it goes on an upgrade. Then the subfloor turns out to be rotten and there's nothing left, and the rot isn't optional.

Spend contingency on discoveries. Spend upgrade money on upgrades. Don't let the second borrow from the first.

What to do when one lands

1. Ask to see it. Have the condition shown and photographed before agreeing anything.
2. Ask what happens if you don't. Some are mandatory — rot, code violations. Some are opportunities: "while we're in there". Those are optional, and can wait.
3. Get it in writing with a price and a schedule impact before approving.
4. Check it against contingency, not against your general optimism.
5. Say no to the optional ones unless the value is obvious. "While we're in there" is real logic — it's genuinely cheaper now than later — but it's still money you didn't plan to spend.

Checklist

Frequently asked questions