How to price a renovation job in Malaysia (step by step)

MORTAR · 7 min read

Contractor measuring a room in a house under renovation

Price a renovation too high and you lose the job; too low and you do the work for free. Most contractors learn pricing the hard way — by getting burned on a job that ran over. A simple, repeatable method takes the guesswork out and protects your margin. Here's how to build a price from the ground up.

Step 1 — Measure and scope the work

Walk the site and write down exactly what's involved. Measure areas (floor and wall in sqft), count points (electrical, plumbing) and note anything awkward — old tiles to hack off, walls to move, access issues. The clearer your scope, the fewer surprises later. Vague scope is where money leaks.

Hands measuring a wall with a tape measure and noting the dimension — Measure everything — accurate quantities are the foundation of an accurate price.

Step 2 — Cost the materials

For each part of the job, work out the materials needed and price them from your supplier. Tiles, cement, sand, paint, wiring, fittings — add a sensible allowance for wastage (offcuts and breakage are real). Build this as a list so you can adjust quantities quickly if the client changes their mind.

Stacked renovation materials — tiles, cement and paint at a supplier — Cost materials from your supplier, with an allowance for wastage.

Step 3 — Estimate the labour

Estimate how many man-days each task takes, then multiply by your daily rates. If tiling the kitchen takes two workers three days at RM150/day, that's 6 man-days × RM150 = RM900 in labour for that task. Be honest about pace — rushing the estimate is how jobs lose money.

Step 4 — Add overhead and profit

Your price has to cover more than direct cost. Add overhead — transport, fuel, tool wear, your time managing the job — then a profit margin on top so the business actually grows. A job priced at exactly cost keeps you busy but broke. We dig into healthy margins in our guide to construction profit margin.

Contractor building a cost estimate on a laptop with tile and paint samples — Add overhead and margin on top of direct cost — then you have a real price.

Step 5 — Add SST if it applies, then present a clear quote

If you're registered and the service is taxable, add service tax as its own line (see our SST guide). Then present everything as an itemised quotation — not a single lump sum. Itemising shows the client what they're paying for and makes your price easy to defend. Our guide to writing a construction quotation shows the format.

A quick example

Materials: RM3,000
Labour (man-days): RM2,000
Overhead (≈15%): RM750
Profit margin (≈20%): RM1,150
Price before tax: RM6,900

Now you have a price built on real numbers — not a gut feeling — and you can stand behind it.

How MORTAR helps

MORTAR lets you build the quote line by line with quantity, unit and price, doing the maths to the sen and adding SST when you need it. Once the job is on, you log expenses and worker attendance against the project, so you can compare what you quoted against what it actually cost — and price the next job even better.

Want to price jobs with confidence and see your real margin? Join the MORTAR early list.