A 3 room BTO renovation package begins at S$7,290 for a move-in scope and reaches S$28,990 for a whole-house rebuild with hacking.
The trap in a 3-room flat is assuming a smaller home means a proportionally smaller bill. Some of it shrinks. A surprising amount of it does not.
Key Takeaways
- Move-in is S$7,290. Bare unit with vinyl is S$12,990.
- A whole-house BTO resale rebuild with hacking is S$28,990, and it already includes both toilets.
- On a BTO scope, both bathrooms are a separate S$10,290 line.
- Tiling shrinks with the flat. Wet works, the kitchen run and the two toilets barely move.
- Every price here links to its product page. Open them and check the scope.
What Does Not Shrink When the Flat Does
This is the number that reframes a 3-room budget. A whole-house resale rebuild here is S$28,990, and the two-toilet line on a BTO scope is S$10,290. The bathrooms are roughly a third of a full renovation in this flat type.
The reason is simple once stated. Tiling is priced by area, so it falls when the flat is smaller. Wet works are priced by fixture and by room, and a 3-room flat has the same two bathrooms as a 5-room. Waterproofing a small bathroom is not meaningfully cheaper than waterproofing a large one.
| Flat | Floor tiling in the bare unit tier | Bathrooms |
|---|---|---|
| 3-room | smallest of the three | two |
| 4-room | 700 sqft | two |
| 5-room | 800 sqft | two |
Read the last column again. It never changes. That single fact is why a 3-room renovation is proportionally the most wet-works-heavy job we quote, and why the savings you expect from a smaller flat land in the floors rather than the bathrooms.
Is Your Flat BTO or Resale?
A BTO flat has sound surfaces and modern services behind the walls, so every dollar goes into adding. A resale flat pays to remove first and add second, and removal means debris, haulage and days on site before anything new appears.
There is a middle case that catches people out. A flat bought on the open market that is only five or six years old often needs no hacking at all, yet it is still a resale purchase. Price it on the condition of the surfaces, not on the label of the transaction.
Are the Floors Already Down?
In a new flat this depends on a box ticked at the flat selection appointment. Bedroom and living-area flooring is an optional component, so two neighbours on the same landing can collect keys to genuinely different flats.
You can settle it without a site visit. Open your flat selection paperwork and find the flooring line. In a 3-room that one document decides a difference of about five and a half thousand dollars, and it is already in a folder you own.
What Does a 3 Room HDB Renovation Package Include?
Across both BTO tiers the constant is the kitchen and the paint. Every 3 room HDB renovation package here builds the kitchen run, paints the flat, and carries project management, on-site supervision, material consultation, 3D rendering and technical drawings inside the quoted price rather than as extras billed later.
What changes between the tiers is the floor, and in a compact flat that is a smaller change than it would be upstairs in a 5-room.
3 Room BTO Renovation Package Tiers
There are two BTO tiers here and the gap between them is flooring. Both assume a new flat, so nothing is being torn out and every dollar goes into adding rather than removing.
Move-In at S$7,290
The 3rm Move-In BTO Package, Most Popular tier, is S$7,290. It makes the flat liveable and deliberately leaves your floors alone.
This is the right tier for an owner who took the flooring option at booking. It is the wrong tier for anyone standing on bare screed, and a contractor who sells it to you anyway has not read your paperwork.
What it buys is a working kitchen and a painted flat, which is genuinely enough to move in with. Plenty of younger households start here on purpose, live in the flat for a year to learn how they actually use it, then add carpentry once they know where it should go. That sequence usually produces better storage than deciding everything before you have slept there.
Bare Unit at S$12,990
The 3rm Bare Unit BTO Package with vinyl is S$12,990 and adds the flooring the move-in tier leaves out.
Five thousand seven hundred dollars separates the two tiers. In a 4-room the same step is about nine and a half thousand, and in a 5-room it is eleven and a half. That is the smaller flat working in your favour, and it is the clearest saving available in the whole 3-room range.
3 Room Resale Renovation Package Tiers
Stand in an empty resale flat and tap the floor tiles with a knuckle. A hollow, drummy sound means the bed underneath has let go, and new vinyl laid over it will not fix that. A solid sound means the substrate is fine and hacking would be spending for its own sake.
Two other signs point the same way. Grout gone dark and soft in the wet areas usually means water has been sitting under the surface. Tiles that sound fine but sit unevenly underfoot mean the screed has moved. A dated colour scheme on a sound floor is not a reason to hack anything.
Whole House Hacking at S$28,990
The 3rm Whole House BTO Resale Package with hacking is S$28,990, and it is the only tier here that covers the whole flat in one contract.
Scope: hacking works across the living and dining areas, bedrooms, kitchen and both toilets. Then floor and wall tiling of roughly 500 square feet across the living areas, 200 in the kitchen and 250 per toilet. A 10ft kitchen cabinet run with a quartz countertop, plumbing to both toilets and the kitchen, a hood point, whole-house painting and a chemical wash.
Included at no cost: a Rinnai hood and hob, two WCs, two bidets, two basin and tap sets, two rainshower columns with mixers, a storage heater tank, and the kitchen sink with its tap.
Count those free items before you compare this against anything. Two full sets of bathroom fixtures inside a whole-house price is where a lot of the value in this tier actually sits.
Where the 2 Toilet Renovation Package Sits
Every 3-room flat has two bathrooms, and where they are priced depends on which tier you are in. The whole-house hacking package above already covers them. The BTO move-in and bare unit tiers do not.
For a BTO flat, both bathrooms come to S$10,290 with the overlay package: tile overlay to floors and walls in both, up to 250 square feet each, water point extensions, and installation of everything that goes in.
Supplied free with it: two WCs, two bidet sets, two basins with mixer taps, two rainshower columns with mixers, and a 15-litre storage heater.
Why the Toilets Are the Worst Place to Save
Put the two numbers side by side. The bare unit tier at S$12,990 covers a whole flat's floors. The two-toilet line at S$10,290 covers two small rooms. On area alone that looks indefensible, and every 3-room owner notices it.
What the toilet number is actually buying is waterproofing, plumbing and two full sets of fixtures, none of which get cheaper because the room is small. Skimp there and the failure does not stay in your flat. It arrives in the ceiling of the unit below, and by then you are paying for their repair as well as your own.
If the budget has to give somewhere, give on tile grade in the bedrooms. Never on the wet works.
There is a second reason this matters in a 3-room specifically. These flats are common in older estates, which means the pipework behind the wall is often as old as the block. Opening a bathroom is the one moment you can see it and replace it cheaply. Overlay the problem instead and the next chance comes when something fails.
Why Overlay Is Not the Cheap Option on a New Flat
On a new flat overlay is not a saving. For a while it is the only lawful method.
HDB applies a "3-year restriction period" to every newly built flat, and what it restricts is taking out the finishes on bathroom and toilet floors and walls. Until that lapses, hacking those tiles is not a budget decision you get to make.
So a BTO owner taking the S$10,290 overlay scope is not economising. They are buying the compliant one, and it happens to cost less.
What These Packages Do Not Include
This section is worth more than a second reading of the price list. It's also the part most quotations leave out.
- Kitchen cabinetry is quoted at 10ft. A longer run costs more.
- Toilet tiling is capped at 250 square feet per bathroom, and tile sizes outside the standard range carry an additional cost.
- Shower kerbs and drop kerbs are not in the two-toilet overlay package.
- Wardrobes, TV consoles and bedroom desk carpentry are not in any of these tiers.
- Durations and warranty terms are not printed on the product pages. Get both into the contract in writing before you pay a deposit.
The Electrical Points HDB Wants a Permit For
Most of what these packages install needs no permit. HDB publishes tables of electrical work that does not require one, adding that those works "are, however, subject to guidelines and conditions".
Where a permit does apply: HDB requires one for new 15amp power points serving air-conditioners or other higher-capacity appliances, in any flat that does not already carry higher electrical loading. Older 3-room flats are exactly the case to check, because their original loading was specified for a very different set of appliances.
Only a contractor in HDB's Directory of Renovation Contractors can submit on your behalf, and the owner stays liable for unauthorised work even if the contractor disappears.
How to Read Our Prices Against Anyone Else's
Compare scope, never headline numbers. Three questions expose most of the gap, and each has a numeric answer:
- How many feet of kitchen cabinet, top and bottom?
- How many square feet of tiling, and at what tile price per square foot?
- Are the two toilets inside this number or outside it?
That third question matters more in a 3-room than in any other flat type, because the toilets are the largest proportional line. A quote that leaves them out looks dramatically cheaper and is not.
When to Start
Engage a contractor two to three months before key collection. Design, material orders and permit submissions run in parallel during that window, so physical work can begin the week the flat is yours.
Renovation cannot lawfully begin before handover, so the only thing you can pull earlier is the deciding. Our renovation sequence guide sets out the order works run in, and the drilling and renovation hours page covers when noisy work is permitted.
Paying for It
Renovation loans in Singapore are bank products, not an HDB scheme, and caps and rates move between lenders. We keep a separate comparison of current bank renovation loan rates rather than printing one figure here that would age badly.
Whatever you borrow, tie payment stages to work you can stand in the flat and verify. Ask what physical state the flat will be in at each payment point. If the answer is a date rather than a description, that's a schedule, not a milestone, and schedules slip.
Working With Us on a 3-Room Flat
RCS is an HDB Registered Renovation Contractor and a BCA-approved contractor, holding bizSAFE Level 3 certification and PMI membership, working on HDB flats since 2017 under Licence HB-11-5877Z. That licence number takes under a minute to check in HDB's directory, and you should check it for us and for everyone else quoting you.
If you know which tier applies, go straight to the 3-room BTO packages. If you are weighing a larger flat too, the 4-room and 5-room pages carry the same figures for those flat types.
Still Comparing
Sensible. Nobody should sign the second-largest cheque of their life in week one of looking. We'd rather you took another fortnight than regretted the deposit.
If what you need first is someone to check a scope or tell you whether a quotation in front of you is fair, that is a different conversation from appointing a contractor. You can have it at ai-deal.ai, where homeowners get their renovation questions reviewed without hiring anyone.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to renovate a 3-room flat in 2026?
A move-in scope is S$7,290 and a bare unit with vinyl is S$12,990. A whole-house BTO resale rebuild with hacking is S$28,990 and already includes both toilets. On BTO scopes the two bathrooms are a separate S$10,290 line. Every figure links to its product page above.
Why do the toilets cost nearly as much as in a bigger flat?
Because wet works are priced by fixture and by room, not by floor area. A 3-room flat has the same two bathrooms as a 5-room, and waterproofing a small bathroom is not meaningfully cheaper than waterproofing a large one. Only the tiling shrinks with the flat.
What is the difference between the move-in and bare unit tiers?
Flooring. Move-in at S$7,290 leaves your floors as HDB handed them over, which is correct if you took the flooring option at booking. Bare unit at S$12,990 lays it. The gap is about five thousand seven hundred dollars, smaller than the equivalent step in a 4-room or 5-room.
Does the S$28,990 whole-house package include both toilets?
Yes. Its scope covers hacking and retiling both bathrooms at roughly 250 square feet each, plus plumbing, and it supplies two WCs, two bidets, two basin and tap sets and two rainshower columns at no extra cost. The BTO move-in and bare unit tiers do not include the toilets.
Can I hack my bathroom tiles in a new 3-room BTO?
Not in the first three years. A three-year restriction runs on every new flat, and bathroom floor and wall finishes are what it protects. Overlay is the compliant route until it lapses, which is why the overlay package exists at all.
Where should I cut if my 3-room budget is tight?
Tile grade in the bedrooms, and carpentry you can add later. Never the wet works. A waterproofing failure does not stay in your flat, it arrives in the ceiling below, and you end up paying for two repairs instead of one.
Sources
- RCS product pages for every price quoted, linked inline at each figure. Verified 9 September 2026.
- HDB renovation guidelines, building works — the three-year restriction on removing bathroom wall and floor finishes.
- HDB renovation guidelines, electrical works — permit rules for 15amp power points and the no-permit tables.
Disclaimer: Prices in this 3 room BTO renovation package guide are starting figures for the tiers named, verified against our product pages on 9 September 2026, and they may change. Your final quotation depends on your flat's condition, carpentry length, tile selection and final scope. Durations and warranty terms are confirmed in your contract, not on this page. HDB rules are summarised here with their sources linked; confirm current requirements with HDB before committing.
3-Room Projects and Estates We Cover
The tiers above are the same figures wherever your flat sits. These pages apply them to a named project or a specific estate, which is the faster read if yours is on the list.
- Towner Residences 3-room renovation
- Kovan Wellspring 3-room renovation
- 3-room BTO renovation in Hougang
- 3-room HDB renovation in Tampines
- 3-room HDB renovation in Buangkok
If your estate is not listed, the prices on this page still apply. Location changes the logistics of a job, not the tier you belong in.
