Armrock Constructions

Gold Coast Bathroom Renovations

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Renovation Design

Shower Shapes and Sizes

Shower Shapes & Sizes
Shower Shapes & Sizes

Typically, a shower is an odd-shaped feature in the range of elements that make up a bathroom. Unlike the other low-set, horizontal features, a shower is tall and vertical. Integrating the shower so it feels nicely in the room can be a challenge. One way overcoming this challenge is by using showers of different shapes and sizes. This is the topic we explore here today.

A Most Important Choice

The most important choice at the beginning relates to your budget, and how you intend to approach your shower: will you opt for a prefabricated or a custom-built shower? This decision will greatly affect the shapes and sizes available to you. A brief word on each follows:

Prefabricated Showers

Prefabricated showers are purchased ready-to-use. We install them as they come. Prefabricated showers are manufactured in standard shapes and sizes, so their options are somewhat limited in this regard. Prefabricated showers are a less expensive option.

Custom Showers

Custom showers are designed and built by our team. Their shape and size is only limited by the bathroom itself. Stylistically, custom showers are much easier to integrate into a room, since they are part of the room. Custom-built showers may cost more, but have the potential to really take your bathroom to the next level.

The Room Shape Factor

Different shaped rooms create different kinds of challenges for accommodating a shower into the design. In small bathrooms (like an ensuite), a shower tucks perfectly into the room. No wider and not much lower than the ceiling, it’s easy to make a shower feel right at home.

However, in larger guest and main bathrooms, it can be harder to make sense of a shower when it’s the only vertical addition in a room of otherwise low-set elements. In contrast to the the toilet, the vanity & the bath, which are all waist-high or lower, the shower can tend to stand out if no diligence to this problem is given.

The Role of Shower Screens

Regardless of the type of shower you opt for, one way to help fit the shower into the room is to minimise its presence. This can be accomplished by the type of shower screen used. A shower screen is comprised of screens, frames, and hinges. All of these components can accentuate or diminish the visual presence of your shower inside the bathroom.

By minimising the presence of your shower with a lower-profile shower-screen, the shape becomes easier to incorporate into the room. Generally, less expensive shower solutions also tend to have a stronger visual presence. With a custom option, we can help you create whatever type of effect you would like.

Shower Floor Concepts

The whole point of having a bathroom renovation is to refresh the old bathroom with a new, invigorated style. In the design phase, it’s important not to be limited by preconceptions about what a shower should be. The traditional concept of a shower as a square-based, vertical enclosure is only one way of approaching a shower.

A custom shower floor can be a square, rectangle, circle, or a multifaceted shape. A key advantage of custom showers is the capability to build the shower with sympathy to the room. Using shapes that reflect, or complement the overall shape of the room helps the shower to find a home in the space. For example, in a long rectangular bathroom, a longer, rectangular shower-floor will have an integration advantage over a square-shaped floor.

One of the great aspects of our service lies in problem-solving. If you’re worried about getting a good result from you choice of shower, just ask our team. We provide a free consultation, and we’d be glad to help you find a solution that is just right for your perfect bathroom.

Successful Gold Coast Bathroom Renovations

Bathroom renovations can be complex – numerous careful decisions and actions are required, in the right order, to build a bridge between your vision, your structure, your budget and your new bathroom. We’re here to help you make it a success. Get your bathroom renovation started today with the team from Armrock Constructions and make yours a success too.

Are Roller Blinds The Best Option For Narrow Windows?

Narrow roller blinds are a great option to consider when considering a window-dressing solution for a narrow window or thin space, such as you may find in a bathroom or toilet. In this brief article, we discuss the considerations to bear in mind when assessing and installing narrow roller blinds.

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How Narrow Can a Roller Blind Be?

Pretty narrow! Roller blinds can be custom-made to suit windows as small as they come. The only real limitation on how small a roller blind can be is whether the rollers can be installed to fit on each side of the window frame.

The Problem Solved with Narrow Roller Blinds

The purpose of roller blinds is twofold – to solve a problem such as glare or privacy, and to enhance the appearance of a room by the application of the right type of roller blinds. With thin or narrow roller blinds, this formula doesn’t change – what does change is the fact that the blinds have to fit an irregularly-sized (narrow, or thin) window.

Common Narrow Windows

Narrow windows are encountered very commonly in bathrooms and toilets! Whether it’s the type of room, type of premises or period of construction, we see them all the time. Narrow windows may be alone or presented along with a series of one, two or several more windows. This is another situation where custom roller blinds are a great solution, since they can be made to suit your specific window requirements.

Are Roller Blinds the Best Solution For Narrow Windows?

Roller blinds are a great solution for narrow windows. The reason being that unlike other types of window dressings, the simplicity of roller blind functionality isn’t lost on narrow or smaller windows. Other types of solutions, for example, panel glides, can’t successfully solve very narrow windows while retaining their full functionality.

Other considerations to take into account when selecting the window dressing for your narrow window include:

  • Existing Blinds or Shutters Used on the Premises
  • Type of Window Frame
  • Budget
  • Style Preferences
  • Privacy Considerations
  • Natural Light Opportunities

Like any interior design solution, there are many factors to take into account. Our service addresses this problem by giving our customers access to the experience and professional installation capability needed to get a great result.

Should Blinds Be Lighter or Darker Than Walls

Have you ever wondered whether blinds should be lighter or darker than walls? It’s a great question and one that should be considered when approaching an optimal interior blind solution for your home or business renovation.

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Unfortunately, this is not a “Yes” “No” answer – there’s more to it than that! It depends on a few factors. What we will do here, (and hopefully this is useful for you) is look at some common colour-difference examples and also important considerations that have bearing on this question.

Blinds Same Colour as Walls

When your blinds are the same colour as your walls, you’re effectively creating a continuous look with your interior blind installation. The presence of the blinds is absolutely minimised, which means you have a totally safe solution, from the point of view of being concerned about design errors! The blinds, frames and walls work together, with no visual hierarchy. The advantage of this solution is that it’s safe and gives you total control over the design of the room with accessories, artwork & furniture, and that it’s easily transferrable to a new resident or style. The disadvantage is in the eye of the beholder – there are many design opportunities with interior blinds, and using the same colour as the walls doesn’t necessarily make the most of these opportunities.

Blinds Lighter than the Walls

When blinds are lighter than the walls, you have a degree of contrast in the room. Is this contrast better, or worse than the contrast created by blinds that are darker than the walls? One advantage of lightening the blinds is that you can also lighten the room. If the room is smaller, or darker, adding lighter blinds can help to lift and extend the perspective of the room. Also, a pattern on lighter blinds can reference the outdoors as well and integrate the blinds with the walls via the pattern.

Blinds Darker than the Walls

Opting for blinds that are slightly darker than the colour of the walls & frames gives the blinds more visual strength in the room. By defining the window shapes with our slightly darker colour, we convert them into design objects within the room.

These objects have a relationship with each other and also with the other elements inside the room. Depending on the room, these relationships can be optimised to anchor the overall design of the room and give direction and stability to the layout. Note how in the example below, the windows align with the edges of the desk creating an invisible grid within the room. The strength of this grid is aligned to the fact that the blinds have sufficient presence to create them – an advantage of slightly darker blinds than walls.

Blind vs Wall Ratio

Using a screen fabric roller blind (which during the daylight hours allows light transmission through the blinds, making them lighter than the walls) creates indoor / outdoor integration, and a spaciousness that extends beyond the room. Here, the blinds effectively become a whole wall unto themselves, an altogether different consideration than when blinds form only a part of a wall. The extent of then blinds vs the wall should always be taken into account when considering the lightness and darkness of blinds vs walls for this reason. In this example, the blinds become a feature wall that has a relationship with the rest of the room, which is a different proposition altogether.

Factoring Frames

In art, the frame plays an important role in the presentation of the artwork. When pictures are professionally framed, they are made in sympathy to the artwork they’re framing, and even the room for which they are intended. Frames matter, because they establish a relationship between the artwork and the room.

In the case of blinds, frames perform a similar role, but they’re not necessarily being changed when you change your blinds. So they need to be taken into account, particularly when they’re different to the walls. In this roller blind example below, the white frames are a lighter colour than the walls, and the blinds are darker than both. This has the effect of strengthening the presence of the blind, a handy result since the blind is only slightly darker than the wall. These are the little nuances that make interior designs interesting and successful.

Summary

In summary, there are advantages and disadvantages to different approaches. With interior blinds, it’s really important to achieve a result that has longevity (that you won’t get sick of quickly) and that contributes positively to the style of your room. This can be achieved with both dark and lighter window-dressing solutions.

Using Grey Blinds with White Walls

Grey blinds and white walls – yes, no, or maybe? The grey & white combination is a popular one that you we see in many homes and businesses. The issue is not whether grey blinds will work with white walls (they will) – it’s overcoming concerns about this particular interior design vision. Is it sufficient? Is it too weak, or wishy-washy? Does it have longevity?

In this brief article, we reflect on this important discussion. Read on as we enter the amazing world of grey blinds… with white walls!

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The Psychological Problem with Grey

It turns out that choosing grey occupies something of a psychological challenge, or obstacle, for many people. The argument is that by choosing grey, you’re not really committing to anything. You’re in the middle.. a sort of safe, neutral place that isn’t supposed to stand out. This is the same notion as in the idea of the grey man:
The intentional act of dressing and behaving in an inconspicuous manner, in order to avoid any unwanted attention from strangers or authorities. The goal is to dress, walk, and behave as a local, without attracting any attention to yourself. To “blend in” in a foreign (usually hostile) enviroment. To be visible and yet invisible at the same time.
SRC: urbandictionary.com

So the argument goes, if you choose grey, you’re not making a choice. But we beg to differ.
There is more to this than meets the eye. Rather than allow the neutrality and inconspicuousness of grey prevent you from the consideration of this interior blind choice, what we find is that grey blinds can achieve a highly-successful result when paired with white walls. Following are a range of reasons why we think grey blinds have a number of essential advantages which makes this so, starting with how grey and white work together.

How Grey and White Work Together

Grey and white work together because they both have a relationship to the achromatic palette, in which there is no colour value. Unlike bright or bold colours, white, black and grey, and strict combinations of them, have little or no chroma, or colour. Even when degrees of colour are added to your greys, this relationship binds them with white, except with more nuanced effects being achieved.

Even White Blinds Can Have Shades of Grey

As greys get darker, or stronger, they move further away from white, but the achromatic relationship continues to bind them. Although white-walled rooms by themselves inadvertently work with most types of blind-colours (see this article for more information) the real benefit of using grey tones in your white-roomed walls is that they make it very easy to furnish and manage the rooms, since the role of the blinds is more neutral than when brighter or bolder colours are utilised.

In summary, grey and white work together very nicely. But let’s get back to the concern of neutral territory. They may work together, but should we choose this combination or go with a different solution?

So, Should We Choose Grey & White?

The thing is, with interior design, and including the selection of blinds, there are times to be bold and times to not. Sometimes it’s about being noticed, and other times, it’s about making choices that are deliberately less noticeable. Whether it’s to create an opportunity for something else to shine, or to specifically pursue a look that’s less in-your-face, or for any number of other reasons, sometimes grey is the best choice you can make for your blinds.

With this in mind, the argument that choosing grey for your blinds is a choice that does not display confidence is revealed to be an invalid argument. Actually, the confidence to make any choice isn’t about being the brightest, boldest or most noticeable. It’s about making the best choice for your interior design goals.

Functional interior colour choices are ones that look great, and work well within the room and premises. These type of choices not only have more longevity than confident, faddish options, but also enjoy the benefit a more flexible interior, since the room’s possibilities are not dictated by the strength of the blinds.

Grey Is Beautiful, and Versatile

But isn’t Grey and White.. Boring?

Emphatically, NO! A grey and white combo need not be boring. Within this combination, there is a wide spectrum of possibilities. Stronger greys create more contrast, and powerful, impactful results can be achieved.

Working with contrast in this way provides access to a wide range of options, none of which are lacking confidence or boring. Furthermore, when you work with patterns and textures, you can create nuances which subtly enhance the presence of even mild grey combinations.

The Grey Edge

Something really powerful about grey is realised when you think about it in comparison to black or white options. Grey has an edge over black and white, being that of integration. Because greys have a bit of black and a bit of white, to varying degrees, they have got wide scope to create integrated palettes with many different colours. Again, this may not be your design goal, but the maligned safety of working with grey should always be appreciated in this light. It’s a strength than can make life easier for you – take advantage of it!

Grey & White – Are They ‘In’ Right Now?

Timeless palettes never go out of fashion. Fads bring them in and out of attention, but they’re always valid and relevant. Grey and White is an enduringly timeless combination of colours. Black and white is another one. They may temporarily fall back in favour of modern trends, but it’s only a matter of time before they’re back front and centre. 

Tiling in Your Renovation Project

Gold Coast Renovation Tiling
Gold Coast Renovation Tiling

When it’s time to undertake a bathroom makeover, tiling is one of the most important parts to get right. Tiling considerations include tile styles, tile budget, and professional tile installation for an outstanding result. Armrock Constructions specialises in bathroom renovations on the Gold Coast, and we are here to help make the tiling aspect of your project a cinch. Read on to learn more about tiling in your renovation project, or book a free renovation appraisal and quote with our team today.

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How We Can Help

Armrock Constructions provides a comprehensive bathroom renovation service – including tiling. In this article we take a look at the main considerations for our clients – tile selection process and budgeting for tiles. We take care of the rest.

Tile Selection Process

When it’s time to select your tiles for your renovation, we are here to help. We work with a diverse range of design approaches and we are familiar with strategies that yield a great long-term outcome.

We can guide you to our local tile distribution (Gold Coast) who will be able to help you organise the tiles for your project. It’s always best to look at tiles when they’re laid out (rather than looking at small samples) so you can get a proper appreciation for how they look when they’re occupying a larger space, such as a wall.

Mosaic Wall Wrap Tiling

Budgeting For Tiles

Tiles come in a wide range of sizes, qualities, and prices. From the point of view of budgeting for your renovation, it’s important to carefully consider your choice with tiles and how this will impact your total renovation costs. We can help you connect with local providers who provide great prices for tiles – just ask our team for help with this.

Tiling in Your Bathroom Renovation

Armrock Constructions specialises in bathroom renovations in the Gold Coast QLD and tiling is an important part of all of our projects. Get your renovation off to a great start with a team dedicated to achieving great outcomes for our customers.

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Are Concrete-Look Tiles ‘The Look’ For You?

Could concrete-look tiles be the solution for your Gold Coast bathroom renovation? This is a popular style and can bring interest and value to your design in part or whole. In this article we’ll explore some practical applications of concrete-look tile style for bathrooms, with examples from recent Armrock bathroom renovations. Book a free appraisal and quote with our team for your renovation, or read on to learn more about using concrete-look tiles in your renovation.

What are Concrete-Look Tiles? 

Tiles come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, colours and designs. Since tiling is included in practically all bathroom renovation projects, the style of the tiles you select can make a big difference to the finished result. Concrete-look tiles are tiles that simulate the look of concrete. In combination with the discrete selection of other bathroom elements, concrete-look tiles can help create a range of different looks.

What’s Special About Concrete-Look Tiles?

From the design point of view, concrete-look tiles add texture and tone that, generally speaking, creates a more interesting variety of contrasts and aesthetics than plain surfaces. Using concrete-look in design is an industrial style, so-called because they showcase structural & functional elements that were previously hidden out of sight. You can read more about industrial design on decoist.com. Using concrete elements in your design is one way to access this style, and it’s special because of it’s unique design strength, disposition and texture.

Advantages of Concrete-Look Tiles

There are quite a few advantages when you consider working with concrete-look tiles. Here is a summary of the ones we think are most helpful:

Can be implemented in part or whole

Like any tiling work in a bathroom renovation, concrete-look tiles can be added in part or whole – meaning you can make them a feature or use them to define the bathroom on a broader scale.

Combine well with other bathroom elements

Successful bathrooms are achieved by the combination of elements that work together, and that relate to each other in the right way. A sincere advantage of working with the concrete aesthetic comes from its natural grey tones – grey is a fantastic bridging colour between other common bathroom colours such as gloss-white and silver, and thus easily fits into any bathroom renovation situation.

Versatile Colour Temperature

Concrete come in a wide range of finishes, and the same is true of concrete-look tiles. With the ability to adapt the colour temperature of your tiles to suit your needs, the presence and sense of warmth, or cool in your bathroom can be affected by the tiles you choose.

Easy to Keep Clean

Maybe most importantly – unlike white, concrete greys are easy to keep clean and disguise dirt and grime. Naturally, this wouldn’t be a feature of much interest to the average Australian homeowner – after all, who doesn’t love cleaning the bathroom!

Polished Concrete Bathroom Niche
Concrete-Look Tiles with Bathroom Niche

Concrete-Look Bathrooms

A successful concrete-look bathroom includes a juxtaposition of styles. Used exclusively, the concrete look can be overbearing, but when combined judiciously with timbers, glosses, metallics such as silver, and plants or natural accessories, a rich experience is revealed. 

Concrete-Look For You?

If you’re considering the concrete look, and you’re based on the Gold Coast QLD, talk to our team. We provide a free measure and quote, and our team are experts at solving the design challenges of bathroom renovations and achieving outstanding results.