the money conversation usually comes third. first how it should look, then how long it takes, and only at the end what it costs. we prefer the reverse, because the budget is what actually decides what can be designed.
this article does not contain our prices. it contains public market figures, each with its source next to it, checked on 16 August 2026. use them to judge any quote you are given, ours included.
the design and the building work are two different budgets
the first confusion is that "doing up the flat" looks like one cost. it is two.
the interior design project, meaning the thinking, the drawings and the renders, is paid separately. Necesit.ro puts the Romanian range at 150 – 310 lei per sqm, averaging around 230 lei per sqm. for a 75 sqm flat the same source gives 10,000 – 15,000 lei for a full project, and 500 – 750 lei per hour for an on-site consultation with no drawings.
the building work, meaning the people who strip out, run services, install and finish, plus the materials, is the other part. Daibau.ro puts a full turnkey renovation at 2,400 – 3,400 lei per sqm, labour and materials included: strip-out, electrics, plumbing, tiling, painting, doors and windows.
at 60 sqm the arithmetic says the design is roughly a tenth of the build. it is the cheap part of the job, and the part that decides whether the rest of the money is spent well.
why two quotes differ by a factor of two
because "full renovation" does not mean the same thing to two people. the real quote requests published on Necesit.ro show the spread plainly: a two-room flat, 50 sqm, fully renovated, estimated at 45,000 lei. a bathroom and a hallway, 15 sqm, estimated at 15,000 lei.
per square metre, those 15 sqm cost about three times what the whole flat does. that is not a miscalculation. that is where the services are.
money does not follow floor area. it follows the rooms with water in them.
a bathroom and a kitchen can absorb half the budget of a flat, because each one carries plumbing, waterproofing, ventilation, cut-to-size tiling and equipment. a 25 sqm living room with a wood floor and paint is, per square metre, the cheapest room in the house.
the part that gets more expensive on its own
the construction cost index Eurostat publishes for Romania stood at 156.3 points in March 2026, the latest published value on the date we checked (Eurostat). the trend has been climbing for years and has not turned.
in practice: a quote from eight months ago is not a quote, it is a memory. if you collected prices last year and are only starting now, ask for them again.
VAT, the most common misunderstanding
the standard VAT rate in Romania has been 21% since 1 August 2025, raised from 19% by Law 141/2025, with the implementing rules published in Government Decision 602/2025.
on a 100,000 lei job, the gap between a quote with VAT and a quote without it is 21,000 lei. that is a whole bathroom. before you compare two quotes, check that both of them say the same thing about VAT, because often they do not.
what we do with these numbers
we put them on the table before drawing anything. if the budget says the bathroom stays as it is, then the project is designed around a bathroom that stays as it is, and the money goes where the difference will be visible. a design that ignores the budget is not a design, it is a proposal nobody builds.
the figures in this article are published market averages checked on 16 August 2026, not Mantra Studio prices. a real cost needs a real floor area, a list of works and a visit. that is as much as we can honestly say before seeing your flat.