A bathroom renovation can be one of the most stressful and challenging renovation projects for your home.
However, knowing the Common Bathroom Renovation Mistakes and with proper preparation and research can yield tremendous rewards for you and your family.
Read on for the 8 Most Common Bathroom Renovation Mistakes:
1. Not Being Adequately Prepared
When you embark on your bathroom renovation journey, it’s crucial to have a clear vision of how the bathroom will look upon completion. You will want to ensure the design is cohesive with the overall style of your home.
Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram are excellent sources of inspiration that can help solidify your style and give you concrete ideas to pass on to your chosen tradesman. Create a mood board for the style ideas, colours, tiles, tapware suppliers, vanity cabinet makers, and materials you’d like to have in your new bathroom.
Do your research by reading blog posts on expected budgets, how long it takes to renovate a bathroom, the stages of a bathroom renovation, etc., so you know what you’ll be in for.
When renovating, it’s essential to have a plan. Your space doesn’t matter; a plan will help you precisely determine what you need to achieve your ideal space. Without a plan, mistakes can happen!
2. Mixing Your Style
You must clearly understand the style you are trying to achieve and what materials, colours, and textures will best complement it. It’s also vital to consider your existing home’s overall look, feel, and style and whether your new bathroom will complement or detract from it.
Understanding and sticking with your style is important; avoid style clashes to ensure consistency throughout your bathroom. When walking between rooms, you should feel like they belong in the same house and not be a collection of interior trends from different decades.
3. Getting The Layout Wrong
Each bathroom renovation will have different needs and purposes depending on who uses the space. For example, families need lots of storage and wall space for towel rails and kids’ baths. Conversely, elderly clients may need easy access to showers and baths or more room to move around freely and quickly access regularly used products.
Start thinking about what you need in your bathroom: a bath, an oversized vanity with double sinks, or a large walk-in shower with dual shower heads. Once you work out what you need (or want), play around with spacing them out with some masking tape to see how it will all fit together.
You should consider your electrical needs early on; this includes lighting (ceiling, wall, strip lighting under vanity, etc.), fans, heating, home automation tech, underfloor heating, and, most importantly, power points!
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The layout design is a personal decision and varies significantly from one client to the next. There is no one size fits all!
4. Not Including Enough Storage
The bathroom is one of those rooms that runs the fine line between style and function. Like every other room in the house, good storage in a bathroom is essential if you want it to function well and keep it clean and uncluttered.
It can be easy to overlook, as it’s often not something that people think about. However, you can avoid this mistake by taking time to plan your storage. You’ll need storage for all your cosmetics, medicines, hairdryers, straighteners, towels, and toilet paper.
The key is smart storage, combining eye-level and under-bench storage, giving you a home for everything you need to store without swallowing up too much precious space in your bathroom. Look to incorporate different-sized drawers in your vanity to accommodate items of various shapes and sizes. Recessed mirrored shaving cabinets with shelves are also great for all those daily products you use. Don’t forget generous towel rails and recessed wall nooks for extra storage.
5. Messing Up The Waterproofing
If you take one thing from this article, it should be this: Don’t skimp on your waterproofing!
Waterproofing is one of the most common major defects that cause damage to your property. It’s so common that Fair Trading has now classed waterproofing as structural works, and any failure to waterproof it is now classed as a structural defect.
In most states of Australia, a certified waterproofing tradesperson must do waterproofing, and they must give you a certificate and warranty after installation.
You don’t want to get through your significant bathroom investment only to rip it all out due to a waterproofing defect.
6. Poor Ventilation
The old bathroom fan can often be overlooked in the bigger scheme of your renovation, specifically, buying an appropriately sized fan. Without proper ventilation in your bathroom, humidity gets trapped in the enclosed space, which is the perfect breeding ground for mould and mildew. Mould and mildew degrade paint, grout, and metal and have adverse health side effects.
It’s also nice to have a window that you can crack open to let fresh air in, which brings lots of natural light into your bathroom.
Indoor plants look great, are super on-trend, and act as natural dehumidifiers and air toxin removers! Plants can also help remove mould from rooms by releasing phytochemicals that suppress mould spores and bacteria. Rooms with plants have 40 to 60 percent fewer mould spores and bacteria.
Some common indoor house plants to use in a bathroom are Snake Plants, English Ivy, Orchids, Spider Plants, Boston Ferns, and Palms, to name a few!
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7. Skimping On Fixtures
Usually, the fixtures and tapware are selected in the bathroom renovation planning stages, and the specifications and measurements are given to the tradies for installation at rough-in. Choosing the wrong fixtures for the space can impact the completion and function of your bathroom.
If you have an above-vanity basin, you will need a tall mixer and spout or a wall mixer and spout high enough to reach the bowl. Consider what will be practical in your bathroom for all family members. If it’s the main bathroom, will a wall-hung vanity have enough storage for everyone?
Cheap bathroom fixtures will show their wear within 6-12 months of use, sometimes quicker in large families. Quality will always serve you well in a bathroom as all household members touch and handle the fixtures multiple times a day. Choose the best quality finishes on tapware and fixtures you can afford.
We recommend selecting well-known bathroom items, tiles, taps, and brands from reputable plumbing hardware stores. Remember to measure twice and consider practicality.
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8. Unrealistic Budget
Many people don’t spend enough time researching the costs before starting the bathroom renovation, causing setbacks like skimping on fixtures, making sacrifices on design, or, worst case, not finishing the bathroom.
It is essential to establish your renovation budget as accurately as possible before work starts. Lighting, tile amount, product selections, tapware, towel rails, vanity styles, and raw materials all add up. The bathroom is also the only room in the house that uses every trade: plumbing, electrical, carpentry, gyprock, waterproofing, tiler, painter, and glazier.
Do your homework, work out an honest budget, and then decide on the must-haves, would-like-to-haves and can-live-withouts.
A good rule of thumb is the average bathroom renovation will cost around $25,000 to $35,000.
It’s recommended that a buffer of about 10 per cent be added to the budget to cover any unexpected costs that arise during the works.
Recommended Reading:
- How Long Does It Take To Renovate a Bathroom?
- How Much Does a Bathroom Renovation Cost
- Top Bathroom Styles
Looking To Renovate Your Bathroom?
Let’s journey together to discover the right bathroom design for you. Join us in our Newcastle bathroom showroom to find inspiration for your bathroom renovation or new bathroom project. We have 18 complete bathrooms for you to explore and quality bathroom supplies, including vanities, vanity tops, baths, shower glass, hand showers, shower fittings, basins, toilets, bath tapware, shower outlets, mirrored cabinets, tiles and accessories. Plus, we offer ZipPay, making it easier to start your dream bathroom without the upfront cost.
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Visit Newcastle’s largest bathroom showroom to see a wide range of styles and to touch and compare bathroom products easily.