Fitting bathroom accessories: a small job that's easy to get wrong

Towel rails, shelves, mirrors and grab rails — why drilling tiles is the tricky part, and how to get a whole set fitted in one economical visit.

A tidy bathroom with wall-mounted rails and a mirror

Hanging a towel rail sounds like a ten-minute job, and in a plasterboard wall it nearly is. But bathrooms are lined with tiles that hide pipes and cables, and one cracked porcelain tile turns a ten-minute job into a hunt for a discontinued tile match.

That's why this is a legitimate thing to pay someone for — and why the smart move is batching every accessory into one visit.

What the job involves

An installer measures and levels each piece, checks what's behind the wall before drilling — water pipes and electrical cables run through bathroom walls in non-obvious places — then drills with the right bit for the surface and fixes with anchors matched to the wall material. Porcelain tiles are genuinely hard and chip easily; drilling them cleanly is a skill with specific technique and tooling.

Grab rails are the serious end of the category. A decorative towel rail holds towels; a grab rail has to hold a falling adult. That means rated fixings anchored into something solid, not just plasterboard plugs — it's the part of this job where hiring someone who does it properly matters most.

This is classic handyman territory — surface-mounted accessories involve no plumbing or electrical work, so no licence applies. If the job grows into moving a tap or wiring a heated towel rail, that part belongs to a licensed plumber or electrician respectively.

What it costs, and how to pay less per item

Installers typically charge per item on top of a call-out, so the economics reward batching: one or two items sits in the low hundreds, while a full matching set — rails, hooks, shelf, mirror — fitted in a single visit works out much cheaper per piece. Supply-and-fit packages including grab rails sit higher again. Indicative only; the estimate on this page adjusts for your item count and wall type.

The wall surface moves the price more than the accessory does. Plasterboard is quick; tiles and masonry are slower and carry breakage risk, which careful installers price in as time.

Picking the right person

For unlicensed work like this, evidence stands in for registers. You want someone who asks what your walls are made of before quoting, mentions checking for pipes and cables without being prompted, and — for grab rails — talks about weight-rated fixings. Those three signals cover most of what can go wrong.

Reviews that mention tidiness matter here too: drilling tile creates fine dust, and a professional masks up, catches the mess and leaves the bathroom as they found it, minus the improvements.

Mistakes to avoid

For a small job, this category has a surprising number of cheap-to-avoid, annoying-to-fix failure modes.

Paying a separate call-out per item instead of batching the whole set into one visit
Letting anyone drill your tiles who hasn't clearly done it many times before
Fixing a grab rail into plasterboard plugs — it must anchor into structure with rated fixings
Guessing at what's behind the wall instead of checking — bathrooms hide pipes everywhere
Buying accessories after quoting, then discovering the fixings don't suit your walls
Positioning rails by eye — tape them up at the household's heights and live with it for a day first

What does it cost?

$100 – $1,200most jobs land around $300

Indicative range only, not a quote — see the full guide for worked scenarios and what moves the price.

Bathroom Accessories cost guide →Find bathroom accessories near you