Apartment rewiring

Before any renovation, think about how the future residents will use the place

It's up to you to rank your priorities between need, comfort and safety, and up to us to make sure we can deliver them safely.

In electrical work, the line between those three ideas is thin — electricity is everywhere, you forget about it precisely because it's essential. Take an example: your need is to have lighting in the corridor. Comfort is to switch the wall lights from your front door and turn them off when you reach the living room. Safety is to handle your electrical equipment without risk of shock or fire.

Before any project, picture yourself there with your habits: "Where will the sockets for the computer or TV go? And where will we charge the tablets?"

The essentials: appliances, lighting and sockets

Major appliances that will live in the apartment: washing machine, dishwasher, hob, oven, microwave, hood, water heater. Each one needs a dedicated circuit on your installation.

Lighting: at least one light point per room — possibly more for the main rooms or the bathroom. Which type? Recessed in the ceilings, wall-mounted? Controlled by a single switch at the door, or a two-way setup — typically between the bed and the bedroom door.

Sockets: a serious electrician should encourage you to plan at least 4 sockets in a bedroom, 5 in a living room and 6 in a kitchen, on top of the appliance-dedicated sockets, to comply with the NFC 15-100 standard. The standard is mandatory in new builds; in renovation, our duty is to get as close to it as we can. We recommend double sockets on each side of the beds, and meeting at minimum the numbers above.

Comfort and energy: heating, shutters, smart-home

Think about heating: do you want electric radiators? A heated towel rail? Type and power depend on each room's volume — there are good configurators online.

Do you have roller shutters? Do you want them motorised, with cabling pulled to your windows?

Lighting — yes, again, because it really matters. Dig deeper into what you want: direct or diffused light? Dimmable? Wall-mounted? Switched sockets to highlight the lamps you already love?

Sockets: have you thought about the corridor socket for the vacuum, the iron, the raclette grill, the hairdryer?

Do you want to connect your apartment to the internet? To track your radiators' consumption, switch off the water heater remotely, view a camera feed, get notifications when motion is detected? These systems are planned at the design stage, before the walls are closed up.

What an electrical renovation costs in Paris: from €150/m²

If you've made it this far, you have a fairly clear picture of the project — and now we can pause to think about budget.

The cost of an electrical renovation starts at €150/m² in Paris. That's the budget for a renovation with the essentials described above and standard white fittings from the usual brands — Schneider, Legrand, Hager.

Electric radiators range from €200 to €5,000 per unit — they are never bundled into the per-m² quote. Motorised shutters either. Extra sockets, designed ceiling lighting, smart systems are priced separately.

Safety and electrical inspection: the heart of the matter

To go further refining the quote, you need to look at the safety of the installation. If you already have an electrical inspection of the property, that's a good thing — it surfaces issues with earthing, residual-current device defects, or, more rarely, the main breaker. The inspector cannot see everything though: it's often when opening the switches or the panel that you discover the reality.

The electrical panel is the heart of the installation. Sitting downstream of the Linky meter and the main circuit breaker, it protects residents from fire and electric shock. It's our first focus when we arrive at a client's home. During a renovation, we are often required to replace it entirely for legal liability reasons.

You can sometimes contain an electrical renovation to a single area of the home — in co-ownership as elsewhere. But the safety angle often prevents it. If we touch 3 bedrooms during a renovation but the living-room circuit catches fire, who's responsible?

💡 In new builds, the NFC 15-100 standard applies in full. In renovation, our job is to get as close as we can while accounting for real constraints: existing walls, ceilings, circuits and runs already in place.

Got an electrical renovation project? Let's talk.

At Rimaud Électricité, we work across Paris and Île-de-France on every kind of electrical work: code compliance, panel replacement, new circuits, recessed lighting, smart-home installations. We support you from auditing your installation to handing the project back — with concrete advice, not generic talk.