Home Insurance Sum Insured Calculator

How this sum-insured guide is calculated

Buildings insurance should cover the cost to demolish and rebuild your home from scratch, including materials and labour, not what it would sell for on the open market; in many areas these two figures are very different because land makes up a large share of a home's sale price. This calculator estimates a rebuild sum by multiplying your internal floor area by a rebuild rate per square metre (defaulting to a broadly representative £2,000/m², which you can override with a more accurate regional or RICS/BCIS figure) and a house-type adjustment, detached homes have proportionally more external wall per square metre of floor space, so they cost more per m² to rebuild, while flats share structure with neighbouring units and sit at the other end of the scale. Contents insurance is estimated using a simple £15,000-per-bedroom baseline, a rule of thumb used by several UK insurers' own online tools, plus any high-value items add-on you enter for valuables like jewellery or electronics that push you above the baseline or a typical single-article limit. Getting the sum insured right matters: under-insuring buildings can trigger an "average" clause that cuts a claim payout proportionally, and under-insuring contents means a big loss might not be fully covered, so treat these figures as a starting point and get a proper valuation if you're unsure.