Costs and Contracts

Interior material and labor costs by region: trade wages by state, remodel job costs, and what a new house spends on finishes

Interior costs in the United States move with two things: what the trades earn where the house stands, and what the local remodeling market charges for a defined job. This article puts Bureau of Labor Statistics wage estimates for May 2025 beside the 2025 Cost vs. Value job costs for the Middle Atlantic and South Atlantic regions, and adds the NAHB breakdown of interior finish costs in a new house.

September 13, 2026 | Interior Design U.S. | 10 min read

What do the interior trades earn per hour in the United States in 2025?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program estimates a national mean hourly wage of $26.64 for painters (SOC 47-2141), $31.55 for carpenters (47-2031), $34.37 for electricians (47-2111), $34.70 for plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters (47-2152), $28.49 for tile and stone setters (47-2044), and $35.84 for interior designers (27-1025), with national medians of $23.75, $29.12, $30.38, $30.67, $26.77, and $32.31 respectively. The same release counts 225,190 painters and 71,500 interior designers employed nationally, and gives interior designers an annual mean of $74,540 and an annual median of $67,190 (BLS Public Data API, series OEUN000000000000047214103, May 2025).

A wage estimate is what an employer pays a worker, not what a homeowner pays a contractor, and the difference is large. A contractor's hourly rate covers the wage, payroll taxes, insurance, tools, vehicles, overhead, and profit, so an electrician earning the $34.37 mean is commonly billed at two to three times that figure; the exact multiplier is a contract term, and the article on how to read an interior design contract explains where to find it in a design agreement. The BLS figures are still the cleanest way to compare regions, because every state is measured the same way in the same month.

How do trade wages differ by state?

State mean hourly wages for May 2025 range across the twelve states tabulated here from $22.13 for painters in Texas to $45.42 for electricians in Washington, and the pattern is consistent across trades: Illinois, Washington, Massachusetts, New York, and California pay the most, Texas, Florida, and Georgia the least, with Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Arizona near the national figure. A painter in Illinois at $33.48 earns 51 percent more per hour than a painter in Texas at $22.13; an electrician in Washington at $45.42 earns 64 percent more than one in Florida at $27.72.

The twelve states were chosen to cover each Census region and the largest construction markets. The figures are the BLS mean hourly wage for each state, retrieved through the BLS Public Data API for the May 2025 estimate (BLS Public Data API, series OEUS060000000000047214103, painters in California, May 2025). Because the tables are wide, the six occupations are split into two tables of three.

What does a defined kitchen or bath remodel cost by region in 2025?

The 2025 Cost vs. Value Report, the 38th annual edition published by Zonda, prices a midrange minor kitchen remodel at a national average job cost of $28,458 with $32,141 returned at resale, a midrange major kitchen remodel at $82,793, an upscale major kitchen remodel at $164,104, a midrange bath remodel at $26,138, an upscale bath remodel at $81,612, and a universal design bath remodel at $42,183, and its regional tables put every one of those jobs higher in the Middle Atlantic region than in the South Atlantic region (Zonda, 2025 Cost vs. Value Report). The Middle Atlantic figures below come from the report's Philadelphia edition and the South Atlantic figures from its Atlanta edition, each of which prints the region and the national average beside the metro.

Each job is a fixed specification, which is what makes the numbers comparable. The minor kitchen remodel updates a 200 square foot kitchen by replacing the fronts of 30 linear feet of cabinets, the range, the refrigerator, the sink and faucet, 30 linear feet of laminate countertop, and the resilient flooring. The midrange major remodel installs 30 linear feet of semi-custom cabinets, a 3 by 5 foot island, laminate counters, and a full appliance set in the same 200 square feet. The midrange bath remodel updates a 5 by 7 foot bathroom with a 30 by 60 inch tub, tile surround, new toilet, solid-surface vanity top, and medicine cabinet, and the universal design bath converts the same 5 by 7 foot room with a 36 inch door, a curbless shower, a comfort-height toilet, and grab bar reinforcement (Cost vs. Value 2025, Philadelphia and Middle Atlantic edition).

The metro figures sit close to their regions: Philadelphia prices the minor kitchen at $28,130 and the midrange bath at $27,767, while Atlanta prices them at $28,359 and $25,304 (Cost vs. Value 2025, Atlanta and South Atlantic edition). The Middle Atlantic premium on a midrange major kitchen, $89,679 against $81,076 in the South Atlantic, is 10.6 percent, close to the wage gap between Pennsylvania and Georgia carpenters in the table above ($30.39 against $24.18, or 25.7 percent) once materials, which travel at national prices, are blended in.

How much of a remodel's cost comes back at resale?

The 2025 Cost vs. Value Report finds that a midrange minor kitchen remodel returns 112.9 percent of its cost at resale nationally, a midrange bath remodel 80.0 percent, a basement remodel 71.0 percent, a universal design bath 61.2 percent, a midrange major kitchen 50.9 percent, and an upscale major kitchen 35.7 percent, and it ranks the minor kitchen as the only interior project in the national top five. Zonda's summary notes that eight of the top ten projects in 2025 are exterior replacements, that the Pacific and West South Central regions report the strongest overall returns, and that the resale values come from surveys of real estate professionals combined with cost data from Verisk's XactRemodel estimating service covering 115 local markets.

Regional recoupment moves with regional prices. The Middle Atlantic minor kitchen returns 107.2 percent and the South Atlantic version 109.2 percent; the midrange bath returns 79.9 percent in the Middle Atlantic and 75.3 percent in the South Atlantic. A project's recoupment matters most to an owner who expects to sell within a few years; for an owner who plans to stay, the report's own framing is that interior work is justified by use rather than by resale.

What do homeowners actually spend on kitchens, and what does a new house spend on finishes?

The 2025 U.S. Houzz Kitchen Trends Study reports a national median spend of $60,000 on major kitchen remodels completed by mid-2024, up from $55,000 a year earlier, with the top 10 percent of spenders at $180,000 or more, and a median of $20,000 on minor remodels with the top 10 percent at $67,000 or more. Kitchens of 250 square feet or more carried a median of $72,000 for a major remodel and $35,000 for a minor one; smaller kitchens carried $45,000 and $18,000. The study also found that 64 percent of renovating homeowners kept the kitchen's original footprint, 35 percent enlarged it, and 18 percent built an addition to do so (Houzz, 2025 U.S. Houzz Kitchen Trends Study).

The National Association of Home Builders 2024 Cost of Construction Survey, answered by 41 builders in the fall of 2024, puts the average total construction cost of a new single-family home at $428,215, or 64.4 percent of an average sales price of $665,298, for a house of 2,647 finished square feet on a 20,907 square foot lot. Interior finishes were the largest of the eight construction stages at $103,391, or 24.1 percent of construction cost, ahead of major system rough-ins at 19.2 percent and framing at 16.6 percent (NAHB, Cost of Constructing a Home in 2024). Dividing the construction total by the finished area gives $161.77 per square foot for the whole house and $39.06 per square foot for interior finishes alone.

For context on the whole market, the U.S. Census Bureau reports a median sales price of $417,400 and an average of $523,800 for new single-family homes sold in 2025, a median contract price of $404,000 for the 131,000 contractor-built homes started that year, and a median completed size of 2,142 square feet (U.S. Census Bureau, 2025 Characteristics of New Housing). The cabinet frontage those $19,056 buy is specified in inches by the NKBA, as the article on NKBA kitchen and bath planning guidelines explains.

How should a homeowner use regional cost data when checking an estimate?

A homeowner checking an estimate should separate it into labor hours, materials, and the contractor's markup, then test the labor line against the BLS mean wage for the state multiplied by a loaded rate of two to three times, and test the whole job against the Cost vs. Value figure for the matching specification and region. An estimate that prices a midrange 5 by 7 foot bath remodel in Pennsylvania at $45,000 is 49 percent above the Middle Atlantic figure of $30,158 and needs a line-by-line explanation, such as relocated plumbing or a larger footprint, before it is signed.

Three cautions keep the comparison fair. First, the Cost vs. Value jobs are national specifications with laminate counters and standard fixtures, so any upgrade to stone, custom cabinetry, or moved walls belongs to the difference. Second, wage data describes employees in May 2025, and rates move each year; the May 2026 release will replace these figures when BLS publishes it. Third, metro prices sit above or below their region: Philadelphia's midrange major kitchen at $81,121 is below the Middle Atlantic's $89,679, so the closest metro table is a better yardstick than the region where one exists. Room sizes drive quantities in every line of an estimate, and the code minimums that set them are collected in the article on residential room dimension standards.