A tub-to-shower conversion in Los Angeles typically costs $18,000 to $40,000 when it is done as part of a mid-range bathroom remodel with a tiled, waterproofed shower, frameless glass and a new exhaust fan. A basic conversion that drops a prefab pan and surround into the tub’s footprint with the drain left in place can land inside the $8,000 to $18,000 refresh tier, and a curbless, fully tiled shower with a relocated drain and a heated floor is a high-end job at $40,000 to $80,000 or more. Green Design and Build is a licensed general contractor (CSLB #1110975) based in Van Nuys, serving homeowners across Los Angeles County, Orange County, Ventura County, western Riverside County and western San Bernardino County (Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga and neighbouring cities). These are typical Los Angeles budgeting estimates, not a price list or a quote. Your project can come in lower or higher depending on the house, the scope and the finishes; the only real number is a written proposal after a site visit.
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Tub-to-shower conversion cost by scope
A conversion is never just the shower: the tub comes out, the wall behind it is opened, the valve and drain are reworked, and the new shower is waterproofed and tiled before glass goes on. That is why we budget it as a bathroom remodel tier, set by what happens to the plumbing and how the shower is built.
| Conversion scope | What it includes | Typical Los Angeles budgeting estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Basic conversion inside a refresh | Tub out, acrylic pan and surround in the tub footprint, drain and valve replaced in place, new door, paint; rest of the bathroom lightly refreshed | $8,000–$18,000 (top of the refresh tier) |
| Tiled conversion inside a mid-range remodel | Tub out, waterproofed tile pan or prefab pan, tiled walls with a niche, low curb, frameless glass, new exhaust fan, relocated vanity, moved plumbing where needed, new floor tile, lighting | $18,000–$40,000 |
| Curbless or luxury conversion | Recessed curbless entry with a linear drain, relocated drain, large-format or stone tile, heated floor, custom vanity, premium fixtures, full layout change | $40,000–$80,000+ |
These are typical Los Angeles budgeting estimates, not a price list or a quote. Your project can come in lower or higher depending on the house, the scope and the finishes; the only real number is a written proposal after a site visit.
The mid-range tier is where most conversions land; our bathroom remodeling page lists tub-to-shower conversion, relocated vanity, moved plumbing, frameless glass and a new exhaust fan as the work that defines it, and the bathroom remodel cost guide covers the same tiers for the whole room.
The line items that move a conversion up or down
Inside those tiers, these lines decide where your job lands.
| Line item | Typical Los Angeles budgeting estimate | What it depends on |
|---|---|---|
| Plumbing with the drain and valve left in place | $500–$2,500 | New valve and trim, tub drain converted to a shower drain in the same spot |
| Relocating the drain, raised foundation | $2,500–$6,000 | Crawl-space access, new trap and vent tie-in, drain size |
| Relocating the drain, slab foundation | $5,000–$12,000+ | Saw-cutting and trenching the slab, patching, whether the line has to move far |
| Electrical package (exhaust fan, GFCI receptacle, lighting) | $1,000–$3,000 | New or replaced fan, duct route to the outside, lighting count |
| Floor tile, installed | $12–$25 per sq ft | Tile choice and layout; a 40 sq ft bathroom floor is roughly $480–$1,000 |
These are typical Los Angeles budgeting estimates, not a price list or a quote. Your project can come in lower or higher depending on the house, the scope and the finishes; the only real number is a written proposal after a site visit.
The drain is the decision that changes the number most. A tub drain sits at one end of the tub; a shower drain usually wants the center of the pan or, for a linear drain, one wall. On a raised-foundation house, which describes most 1950s to 1970s San Fernando Valley ranch houses, the plumber works from the crawl space and the move is routine; on a slab, which is most of Orange County and the Inland Empire, it means cutting concrete. Keeping the drain where it is and choosing a pan that fits it is the first thing we look at when a budget is tight. Shower wall tile is priced by the square foot the same way, and frameless glass is the most variable finish item; ask for it as its own line on any proposal you compare.
Curbed or curbless?
| Curbed shower | Curbless shower | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | Step over a 3–6 inch curb | Level with the bathroom floor |
| Floor structure | Pan sits on the existing subfloor | Floor recessed so the pan can slope to the drain: cut or furred joists on a wood floor, cut concrete on a slab |
| Waterproofing | Membrane stops at the curb | Membrane runs at least a foot past the high point of the floor into the room |
| Permit | Express permit in the City of Los Angeles when nothing structural changes | Recessed floor framing is structural, so expect plan check |
| Tier | Refresh or mid-range | High-end |
A curb is the simpler build and the lower budget. Curbless is the right answer when the person using the shower cannot step over a curb, or when the design calls for one continuous floor, but it is not a finish upgrade you bolt on at the end. Our walk-in shower guide covers sizes, drain layouts and what the code actually says; the Tile Council of North America publishes curbless methods for concrete floors and none for wood-framed floors, so a curbless conversion on a raised Valley house is engineered case by case.
Prefab pan or tile pan?
An acrylic or composite pan is molded with the slope built in, drops onto the subfloor, and is set the same day; it is the right choice for a basic conversion or a rental, and its limits are size and drain location, which must match the maker’s dimensions. A tile pan is built on site from a sloped mortar bed or foam pan, a membrane and tile, at any size and any drain position, and it is what the mid-range and high-end tiers assume. Wall surrounds follow the same split: acrylic over water-resistant backer, or tile over cement board or foam board with a membrane behind it.
Waterproofing is where conversions fail
A properly built shower has a continuous waterproofing system under the finished surface: a sloped pan tied to the drain, membrane or waterproof backer on the walls, sealed corners and penetrations, and a flood test before tile goes on. We fill the pan to the top of the curb, leave it, and check it before anyone tiles; some cities make that test an inspection stop. The systems we build with are sheet membranes bonded to a foam or mortar pan, liquid-applied membranes over cement board, and foam-board systems with sealed seams. All three work when the drain and corners follow the manufacturer’s instructions; a sheet system with the wrong drain, or a liquid membrane applied too thin, is where most of the leaks we get called to fix started.
While the walls are open, put in grab-bar blocking: a 2×6 or 2×8 flat between the studs at 33 to 36 inches above the finished floor on the valve wall and the back wall. It costs almost nothing during framing, lets a bar be bolted through tile later, and is not required in a private home, but everyone who has tried to add a bar afterward wishes it had been done.
Glass
Frameless glass is 3/8-inch or 1/2-inch tempered glass, with the thickness set by the panel height and width rather than preference. It is measured only after the tile is grouted, because the template has to follow the real walls, and fabrication takes one to two weeks after that; that gap at the end of the job is what surprises people. Any window in the shower wall with its bottom edge under 60 inches above the shower floor must be tempered as well.
Do you need a permit for a tub-to-shower conversion in Los Angeles?
Yes. In the City of Los Angeles, which covers Van Nuys, Sherman Oaks, Encino, Studio City, Woodland Hills, Northridge and North Hollywood along with the rest of the city, a bathroom remodel with no structural changes is an express permit under the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety’s Information Bulletin P/GI 2026-003, issued online with no plan check. The same bulletin lists replacing plumbing fixtures, adding plumbing fixtures, and adding an exhaust fan of 2,000 cfm or less as express permits, so a conversion that swaps the tub for a shower, moves the drain within the room and adds a fan is permit work, but the fast kind. Plan check comes in when floor framing is cut for a curbless entry, a wall moves, or a window in the shower wall changes size.
The permit brings a rough inspection with the plumbing, electrical and fan ductwork exposed, and a final. Any bathroom permit in the city also triggers the retrofit items that ride along with it: water-conserving fixtures under California Civil Code section 1101.4 and LAMC section 122.03, smoke detectors when the valuation is over $1,000, and impact-hazard glazing and a seismic gas shut-off valve when it is over $10,000. Our guide to bathroom permits in Los Angeles goes through each of them. Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, Santa Clarita, every Orange County city and the Inland Empire cities issue their own permits under the same state codes; Pasadena’s handout, for one, requires a permit for any remodel that removes and replaces or relocates a tub or shower.
How long does a tub-to-shower conversion take?
| Phase | Typical duration |
|---|---|
| Design and selections (tile, pan, valve, glass) | 2–4 weeks |
| Permit | 1–4 weeks (express permits are usually faster) |
| Construction, basic conversion inside a refresh | 2–3 weeks |
| Construction, tiled conversion inside a mid-range remodel | 4–6 weeks |
| Construction, curbless or full reconfiguration | 6–10 weeks |
| Frameless glass after tile is finished | 1–2 weeks to fabricate |
The bathroom is out of service from demolition to glass. Our post on the correct bathroom remodel order shows where the inspections and the pan test fall in the sequence.
What we find when the tub comes out
The tub overflow gasket is the part nobody sees and the part that fails most often. On a hall bathroom in a late-1980s house, a homeowner planned a refresh at about $22,000. When we pulled the tub, the wall behind it was soft: the overflow drain gasket had been leaking for years, rotting the bottom plate and the subfloor. The job became a complete tub removal, subfloor replacement, framing repairs and mold-related cleanup, and it finished at approximately $28,500, close to 30 percent over; the full story is in our bathroom remodel cost guide. It is why we recommend a contingency on any bathroom that has had a tub in it for 20 years.
Two recent bathrooms show how the shower side of a conversion is built. In an Inglewood primary bathroom (2025) we gutted the room to the studs, rerouted supply and drain lines in new copper for a new tub position and shower valve, built the shower walls in cement board with a waterproofing membrane before tile, and finished with large-format tile and a frameless glass shower. In Irvine (2025) the corner tub platform that took a third of the room came out, the drain was relocated, and the original framed shower was rebuilt as a walk-in with three tiled niches and a low curb. Both kept one tub in the house, which brings up resale.
Will converting the tub hurt resale?
Removing the only bathtub in a house narrows the buyer pool, because families with small children and many older buyers want at least one tub. Removing a tub from a second bathroom, or from a primary bath when a hall bath keeps its tub, does not, and a walk-in shower is what most Los Angeles buyers expect in a primary bathroom. We do not quote a return-on-investment percentage because there is no reliable Los Angeles dataset for that single item. The practical rule: keep one tub in the house if you can.
How to compare tub-to-shower conversion quotes
Quotes are only comparable when they describe the same shower: the pan and waterproofing system by name, the board behind the tile, whether the drain moves and how, the valve model, the fan and where it ducts, the glass thickness and whether it is framed or frameless, grab-bar blocking, the permit and who pulls it, and what happens if the subfloor is rotten when the tub comes out. Confirm the licence on the Contractors State License Board site; in California the down payment on a home-improvement contract cannot exceed $1,000 or 10 percent of the contract price, whichever is less.
Where we do this work
We convert tubs to showers from our Van Nuys office across the San Fernando Valley, the rest of Los Angeles County, Orange County, Ventura County, western Riverside County and western San Bernardino County. The house changes the job: raised-foundation Valley ranch houses give the plumber a crawl space, so a drain move is routine; the slab houses of Irvine, Anaheim, Corona and Ontario turn the same move into concrete cutting; and pre-1960 houses often have galvanized supply lines that get replaced while the wall is open. Permits run through LADBS in the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Building and Safety in unincorporated areas, and each city’s own building division everywhere else. See all of our service areas.
Tub-to-shower conversion cost FAQs
How much does it cost to convert a tub to a shower in Los Angeles?
A tub-to-shower conversion in Los Angeles typically costs $18,000 to $40,000 as part of a mid-range bathroom remodel with a tiled, waterproofed shower, frameless glass and a new exhaust fan. A basic prefab conversion in the tub’s footprint can land in the $8,000 to $18,000 refresh tier, and a curbless, stone-tiled shower with a moved drain runs $40,000 to $80,000 or more. These are typical budgeting estimates, not a price list; a real project can come in lower or higher.
What is the cheapest way to convert a bathtub to a shower?
The cheapest tub-to-shower conversion keeps the drain and valve where they are, uses a prefab acrylic pan sized to the tub footprint (usually 60 by 30 or 60 by 32 inches) with a matching surround, and adds a framed door. Leaving the drain in place avoids the $2,500 to $6,000 cost of moving it on a raised foundation or $5,000 to $12,000 or more on a slab.
Does a tub-to-shower conversion need a permit in Los Angeles?
Yes. In the City of Los Angeles a bathroom remodel with no structural changes, including replacing plumbing fixtures and adding an exhaust fan, is an express permit issued online without plan check under LADBS Information Bulletin P/GI 2026-003. Recessing the floor for a curbless shower, moving a wall or changing a window size sends the job to plan check. Other cities in the five counties issue their own permits under the same state codes.
How long does a tub-to-shower conversion take?
A tub-to-shower conversion in Los Angeles takes about two to three weeks of construction for a basic prefab conversion and four to six weeks for a tiled conversion inside a mid-range remodel, after two to four weeks of design and one to four weeks for the permit. Frameless glass is templated after the tile is finished and takes one to two weeks to fabricate.
Is a curbless shower worth the extra cost?
A curbless shower is worth it when someone in the house cannot step over a curb, or when the design depends on one continuous floor. It costs more because the floor has to be recessed to slope to the drain, which on a wood-framed floor means cutting or furring joists and a structural plan check, and the waterproofing has to extend at least a foot into the room. For most conversions a low curb delivers the walk-in look for far less.
Does removing a bathtub lower a home’s value?
Removing the only bathtub in a house can narrow the buyer pool, because families with young children and many older buyers want at least one tub. Converting a tub in a second bathroom, or in a primary bath while a hall bath keeps its tub, does not have that effect. We do not quote a resale percentage for a conversion because no reliable Los Angeles figure exists for that single item.
Get a written estimate for your tub-to-shower conversion
We will look at the drain location, the foundation type, the wall behind the tub and the permit path for your address before we write a number, and give you an itemized proposal that lists the pan, waterproofing system, tile, valve, fan, glass, blocking and permit line by line. The site visit and the estimate are free.