If your bathtub is worn, stained, or chipped, you have probably seen ads for Bath Fitter. Many Portland homeowners call us thinking Bath Fitter is a refinishing company. It is not. Bath Fitter installs a custom acrylic liner over your existing tub. Refinishing restores the tub itself. Those are two different products at two very different price points, and it pays to know the difference before you book anything. This post breaks down both options with sourced numbers, including the cases where we are not the right choice.
What does Bath Fitter actually install?
Bath Fitter measures your existing tub and walls, fabricates a one-piece acrylic liner at their factory, and bonds it over the old fixture, usually in a single visit. The original tub stays in place underneath. Nothing about the old surface is repaired or restored. It is covered. That single fact drives most of the differences in cost, warranty, and risk between the two options.
What does a Bath Fitter liner cost?
Bath Fitter does not publish prices. According to HomeGuide (July 2025), an installed Bath Fitter liner runs $3,000 to $7,500, with a national average around $5,000. Tub-to-shower conversions and full wall surround packages can push the total to $10,000. Homedit reports the same general range. Because pricing is quote-based, you will not get a firm number until a salesperson measures your bathroom.
What are the known drawbacks of a liner?
Two come up again and again in reviews and in conversations with homeowners who call us after a liner job goes wrong.
- Trapped moisture. The old tub remains under the liner. If the seal fails at a seam or around the drain, water can get trapped between the liner and the original surface. That hidden moisture is a known mold risk, and you cannot see it until the liner is pulled.
- A warranty that ends with the sale. Bath Fitter advertises a lifetime warranty, but it applies only to the original purchaser. Sell your home and the warranty ends. It adds nothing at resale.
How is refinishing different?
Refinishing restores the tub you already own. We repair chips and cracks, prepare the surface with an industrial etch, and spray a bonded primer and topcoat system directly onto the original fixture. There is no liner and no gap where water can hide. The whole job happens in your bathroom in one visit. We mask the room, ventilate it, repair the damage, and spray the finish. You keep your plumbing and tile exactly where they are. If your home has an original cast iron or steel tub, you keep it. Those tubs are heavier, quieter, and better made than almost anything you can buy today.
Our bathtub refinishing pricing is published, not quote-only: $650 to $1,045 for a standard tub. Most jobs take about one day, and the tub is ready to use in about 12 hours. Every job is backed by a written 10-year warranty that stays with the surface.
How do the real numbers compare?
A liner averages about $5,000 nationally. A standard tub refinish with us costs $650 to $1,045. Even when you add a tile surround, refinishing usually lands at a fraction of liner pricing. For most worn but sound tubs, that gap is the whole story: you would pay several thousand dollars more to cover a surface that could have been restored. Because refinishing leaves your plumbing and tile untouched, there are no extra trades to schedule or pay for. You can run your own numbers on our price calculator in about a minute, with no home visit and no sales call.
When is a liner or replacement the right call?
Sometimes it honestly is. If the tub has severe structural damage, if the floor underneath has water rot, or if you are planning a full remodel with plumbing changes, a liner or a full replacement makes more sense than a coating. We will tell you that at the estimate if we see it. We do not refinish tubs that should not be refinished, because a coating over a failed structure fails too.
Where can you dig deeper?
Every claim in this post, with the linked sources, lives on our full Bath Fitter comparison. If you want a straight answer about your specific tub, call us at 503-227-0826. We have been refinishing bathtubs in Portland since 1979, and the estimate is free.