Is this a reasonable price for new sash windows?

[Apocketfulofposies]

Victorian London terrace. Need two single sash windows in the bedroom and a downstairs bay window. Replacing all the frames and double glazed glass and painting it all. £6000 total (plus 20% vat, so £7200). I genuinely have not idea what is right price for windows

Really depends what size they’re, and what sort of spec you want. This is my experience from going around about 20 firms....

Bristol prices

£200/300
Basic refurb - draught proofing and some cheap new brass hardware - no repairs - just basic get in and out job - new staff/parting beads etc.

£300/£500
refurb of boxes and sashes sand back to bare wood and undercoat the lot. excluding painting from most firms this would include minor repairs and a bit of splicing/resin repairs not new cills etc,

£600/900
As above but routed to take slimline double glazing - they’d usually paint in this price due to new putty or they’d cut out the bars and put a false one to cover spacers.

£800-£1000
New sashes double glazed but use existing box. This option is usually easier but new wood isn’t as good as old if your windows are in good condition. Probably give a better seal....

Brand new sash including box etc
£1200-£2500 depending on size and spec softwood/hard wood etc

Super duper bereco style national firm with large decibel ratings etc. £2500-£3500 for brand new. These are massively thick and unless you have large reveals or huge windows you might as well get upvc as they look like upvc on smaller windows.

With sashes I’d go on recommendations over price. Maybe ring your local conservation officer or look up the local planning portal and see who others have used.

You can get absolute crap wooden sash windows on eBay for £250-£350 but they’ll rot or need yearly maintenance and the spiral balances will fail in 2 years.

So your price could be a real good price for good quality windows. Or a really expensive price for made to measure ebay crap.

Back in 2013 I updated all the sash windows in our Victorian London terraced house. The simplest ones were around £1600 and the triple aspect ones were just over £4,000. So happy with the results and massive reduction in drafts and noise.

Wow. Makes our new windows seem cheap! We had quotes of £900-£1200 er window plus fitting, disposal, make good from one supplier. £3500 per window all in from another.

Huge variation. I found cost went most expensive at hand made, through aluminium then timber. Nobody made pvc to fit.

Should say, they were fitted last September. Fitting and making good per window was about £250.

Just for contrast, we had estimates for sash vs regular opening windows last year, and sash were almost double the price!

I am very interested in this as I had a quote in December. We are also Victorian house in London. So our quote was for wood (not pvc), double glazed toughened glass, chrome fittings etc. Including fitting and making good.
The two single sashes in bedrooms were £1,900 and £1,800 - one window bigger than the other. The bay window which is essentially three windows was £5,400. Vat on top!
I would therefore be very interested if you wouldn't mind sharing who your quote was from as I thought mine was very expensive and have not yet got around to getting other quotes. Please PM if you prefer.
Thanks!

Sorry wasn't clear but that was responding to OP given that they are also London.

I will pm @lovethecrown

Timber better than uPVC because plastic windows are harmful to the environment, go to landfill and use a lot of energy to make.
Better to keep old windows and have them looked after, and you can put secondary glazing in front of them, keeping the old frames and windows. Plastic windows let in less light as the elements are thicker and more chunky.

We spent c£19k in North London to replace all our sash’s (hard wood with high spec acoustic glass). The bay was around £6k + VAT by itself. We compared a few joinery firms who all charged similar prices so that sounds reasonable to me. Hope this helps.

Just looking at the quote the details are softwood windows with hardwood sills, 20mm double glazed units argon gas filled and toughened, vertical stick on glazing bars to each window, fitted with weights, cord, lockable fitch fasteners, vent locks, dee handles, sash lifts and matching pulleys, internal architraves and window nosings. All with a white paint finish.

It does @Misbeehived thank you

This is all very helpful thank you everyone

I cannot stand stick on glazing bars, as the bars should have the smaller glass panes set into the bars individually. Not one pane of glass with stick on bars. That looks v fake and tacky. It makes a big difference to the appearance.

Doesn't sound out of kilter, notwithstanding info on size.

Are you going for Accoya wood?

We did the whole house last year, and a large sash 1500 x 1100 was c. £1k + accoya uplift + factory spray paint + fitting + removing old + vat so estimate about £2.3k for a window.

Properly integrated window bars, fantastic workmanship, high quality window furniture and fitting too.

Where I am £1000 per window. You definitely need lots of quotes because all of mine varied hugely and some of them made me laugh out loud.

Hi We have just had two single sash windows and a bay replaced in accoya wood in an old victorian terrace , in the midlands and the total price was circa 7k so if you are in London I think your quote is reasonable, What I will say is we used an old fashioned joiners no flash showroom, small family business the quote we had from a "posh company" with a flash showroom, receptionist, nice coffee you get the picture was £17k and there is no difference in the quality.

South London, very big bay window and replacement of box too. £6200.

They are one of my favourite things though. Happy to give you the name of the company if you're South.

Oh yes, I should add we had acoustic toughened glass too.

We were told that repairs are always better than replacement, as our house is listed. We paid about £750 per window, no double glazing allowed, and the windows are terribly draughty.

Try Custom Trade Windows, our windows are due any day now but service so far has been great.

Do you mind recommending who you used? We are in north London and are getting prices of £4K per accoya sash window which is blowing my mind. £43k to replace the front windows and a back bathroom window although that one is stained glass. We need the front door doing too, but that will have to wait.

This was a long time ago - I had to re-register to reply!

We used Andrew Jaynes.
https://www.andrewjaynes.co.uk/

It was in 2019 so I've no idea what they'd charge now.

I hope it all works out for you.