Armrock Constructions

Gold Coast Bathroom Renovations

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Bathroom Design

Reconfiguring Your Bathroom

Undertaking a bathroom renovation, you have the ability to completely reimagine how things are going to work. As a starting point, most people evaluate the potential of their new bathroom based on the previous bathroom configuration. While it may be more economical to retain the previous bathroom arrangement, relocating them can open up a range of new possibilities which will create a more ideal room. On this page, we look at some of the important considerations behind reconfiguring your bathroom in a renovation.

The Cost of Reconfiguration

A sensible bathroom renovation is always grounded in a budget, and it should be pointed out early in the piece that moving items such as showers, baths and vanities to different locations in your bathroom will most likely increase the cost of your renovation. This is mainly due to the fact that plumbing and electricity may need to be changed to accommodate the new arrangement. The extent of any reconfiguration will depend on both the extent of your existing infrastructure and the ambition of your upgrade. Just ask our team – we’re here to help and can answer any questions you may have on this topic.

Reinventing the Wheel: Avoid

In older homes, it can be astonishing to see some of the decisions made around critical rooms such as bathrooms and kitchens. Choices and combinations may seem nonsensical when viewed through a modern lens.

On other occasions, and with additional analysis, you may note that your designing predecessors have deftly resolved a multitude of challenges with a solution that won’t be beaten no matter how hard you try. If someone has put the energy into solving the layout once, it’s worthwhile to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their solution before you completely ditch it. It could be the case that a subtle shift is all that you need to turn the old layout into the perfect layout – or perhaps the layout is already as good as it gets. Don’t reinvent the wheel when you’re renovating your bathroom!

Prioritisation

In the quest for the perfect bathroom layout, it is useful to consider the priorities that really matter in any bathroom. In other words, before you decide to move the shower, make sure you can open the shower door in the new location.

Before you start shifting things around, think about:

Privacy

It’s your bathroom and privacy is always the highest priority. Ensuring you can comfortably use your shower and toilet without your neighbours accidentally ‘catching a glimpse’ should always be pretty high on your list of decisions.

Access

Make sure you can access everything in your dream bathroom layout. Opening drawers, opening the shower door, opening and closing the main door.. all of these are imperative in a good design, and all of them need some consideration. Anything that moves – make sure you will be able to operate it easily and without creating a cramped situation.

Logical Placement

Putting everything where it looks great may not make for an optimal configuration. What would you prefer, a great-looking bathroom that is less easy to use, or an easy to use bathroom that looks great? Anyway, give some thought to the practical usage of the room, and especially how it will work if your partner or child decides that they simply have to brush their teeth or shave at the same time as when you’re using the bathroom. Make sure everything is placed to logically accommodate these common scenarios!

Gold Coast Bathroom Design

If you’d really like to know how to make the most of your bathroom on your budget, please contact our team for a free measure and quote. We would be glad to share our years of experience and capability of our integrated bathroom renovation team with you to make your old bathroom into a fantastic new space.

Shower Heads

A shower is an inclusion in practically every bathroom renovation, and the choice of shower head is a great opportunity to not only make your new bathroom look great, but also be practically useful for the way you and your family use the shower. On this page, we look at important considerations and choices to make regarding your shower head in a bathroom renovation situation.

Water Usage

Embarking on a bathroom reno, it’s a great idea to familiarise yourself with the WELS system and water-saving in your product choices. You can read more about this system here. Making water-saving choices in the acquisition of your bathroom fixtures and fittings is a great way to design a bathroom you can feel great about. If you’re in any doubt as to how to proceed, just talk to our friendly team – we’re here to help.

A Confident Stylistic Approach

Savvy bathroom renovators will have done their research and have a clear design objective in mind for their new bathroom. Bathrooms are not ‘one-size fits all’. Their appeal is very subjective, and if you’re going to the trouble to renovate your bathroom, a priority should always be your own personal satisfaction with the end result!

One great way to achieve a harmonious style in your bathroom is to synchronise the style of your highlight accessories. Shower heads are a great example. Being an irregular shape, they tend to stand out – but by extending their style to door-handles, tapware, mirror trims, towel-rails and other bathroom features, you can create a united approach. This allows you to approach your stylistic choices confidently by asking the question, “What colour are my trims?” and allowing your shower head to fall into that basket with the rest of them.

Finding Your Shower Head

The only downfall of designing your dream bathroom from browsing the internet is the possible difficulty of locating fixtures and fittings in the precise style you’re looking for. In this regard, it can be helpful to have a little bit of flexibility in exactly what you’re going for, as local choices may not perfectly align with the Swiss Retro look you saw on Pinterest. When it comes time to shop for your fixtures and fittings, talk to our team. We can help you connect with local suppliers and fulfil your requirements to achieve your dream 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.

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 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.