- Services
- Renovations and extensions
Renovation and extension design in Sydney
Open the living areas, bring in light, and reconnect the house to the garden it has been ignoring for forty years.
The short version
A well designed renovation can completely transform the way a home functions. Whether you are opening living areas, adding bedrooms, improving natural light or creating stronger connections between indoor and outdoor spaces, we develop considered design solutions that respect the character of your home while improving the way you live in it.
Most houses do not need to be bigger. They need to be arranged differently, and to face the right way.
What usually needs fixing
The same four
problems
The living areas are cut into small rooms
Older Sydney homes were planned for separate rooms and separate lives. Opening them up is rarely as simple as removing a wall, because that wall is usually holding something up and the roof above it was never designed to span further.
The house faces the wrong way
Living spaces at the front, bedrooms at the back, and the north side given to a laundry. Reorienting the plan is the single change that makes the biggest difference to how a house feels, and it costs nothing extra to get right on paper.
There is no connection to outside
A door to the garden is not a connection. Floor levels, sight lines, thresholds and where the sun actually falls are what make an inside space and an outside space read as one room.
You have outgrown it
Another bedroom, a second living area, somewhere for teenagers or for parents. Extensions work best when they resolve the existing plan rather than hang off the back of it.
The honest question
Renovate
or rebuild
Worth settling before anyone draws anything. The answer usually comes from the existing house rather than from a preference.
| Renovating tends to win when | Rebuilding tends to win when | |
|---|---|---|
| The house | There is character worth keeping, or a sound original structure | The layout fights you everywhere and the bones are ordinary |
| The block | The house is well placed and only part of it fails | The house sits badly on the land, wrong orientation, wasted yard |
| The scope | One or two zones need work, the rest is fine | You would end up touching almost every room anyway |
| Heritage | A conservation area or a listed item usually points here | Rarely an option on a heritage item |
If the answer is rebuild, there is a whole page on knockdown rebuilds.
Common questions
Renovations
and extensions
- Should I renovate or rebuild?
- It depends on the existing house and where it sits on the block. If the structure is sound, the house is well placed and only part of it fails, renovating usually wins. If the layout fights you everywhere and the house sits badly on the land, a rebuild often costs less than fixing it room by room.
- Do I need council approval for an extension?
- Usually yes, in one of two forms. Straightforward alterations and additions that meet the state standards can go through the faster complying development pathway. If your house is heritage listed, in a conservation area, or the design does not meet the standards, it goes to council as a development application.
- Can I stay in the house during the work?
- Sometimes, and it is worth deciding early rather than late. Staging the work so you keep a kitchen and a bathroom is a design decision, not a building one, and it affects the drawings. If moving out is simpler and cheaper overall, we will tell you.
- How much does the design cost?
- For a complete design service, fees typically commence from 10% plus GST of the construction value, set finally by the scale and complexity of the project. Smaller scopes can be engaged stage by stage. The full structure is on the process page.
- Will you work with my builder?
- Yes. We are a design studio, not a building company, so you choose your builder and we coordinate with them through documentation and construction. If you have not found one, the documentation lets you tender the job and compare quotes on the same drawings.
- My house is in a conservation area. Is that a problem?
- Not a problem, but it does change the path. Heritage and conservation controls rule out the fast approval pathway and shape what can be altered at the front of the house. It is one of the first things we check.
Next step
Tell us what
is not working
The suburb, roughly when the house was built, and the rooms that frustrate you. That is enough to start.