Small Bathroom and Ensuite Renovations Canberra

Small is a design problem, not a defect. A small room can work better than a large one laid out carelessly, but only if the plan is right before the first wall comes out.

Most of the rooms we are asked about fall into one of two groups. The first is the ensuite, usually 3 to 4 square metres, added off a main bedroom and now showing its age: a cramped shower, a vanity with no storage, an exhaust fan that barely moves the air. The second is the original main bathroom of an ex-government house or a 1960s to 1980s brick home, laid out for a bath-and-basin household and never touched since.

The job is a full renovation - strip-out, substrate preparation, waterproofing, tiling and fit-off - at a scale where small errors show.

• Measured before anything is ordered. Clearances around the door, the toilet and the shower screen are checked at the site inspection, before the quote is final.
• Wall-hung where the wall allows it. A wall-hung toilet or a floating vanity leaves floor showing underneath, and the room reads larger for it. Whether the framing and plumbing can take one, we confirm on site.
• Storage off the floor. Wall-mounted cabinets, a mirror cabinet over the basin and a shower niche give you somewhere to put things without a cupboard standing in the room.
• A bath where a household needs one. A combination bath-shower keeps the bath without giving up the floor a separate shower would take.
• Tiling that works with the light. Colour, tile size and pattern are chosen for the room's window and its lighting. Bright colours, and even a bold pattern used deliberately, can make a small room feel larger rather than busier. Our tiling services page covers how the tile is laid.
• Air that actually leaves the room. A small, unheated bathroom on a winter morning is where condensation and mould start, so the exhaust fan is chosen to actually clear the room. Our waterproofing and ventilation guide explains why it matters.

• Keep the layout, or change it. Leaving the toilet and the shower where they are is the biggest single saving on a small job. Moving either in a slab-on-ground house means cutting the concrete, and that adds two to four days to the program.
• Bath or no bath. If nobody in the house uses one, a shower across the full width of the room is often the better use of the floor.
• The door. A door that swings into a small room takes floor you can never use. Ask whether a different door is possible in your wall before you settle on a vanity width.
• Your only bathroom, or one of two. If it is the only one, plan the weeks around it now rather than in the middle of the job.

For the ideas themselves - tile colours, screen types and where the storage can go - read our guide to small bathroom and ensuite ideas. Then build the room in the instant quote designer and send it to us; there is no price on screen, and the quote comes from us in writing after a site inspection.

A small room does not mean a short job. The waterproofing membrane needs the same curing time in a compact ensuite as it does in a large main bathroom, so a small renovation still sits inside the standard two-to-four-week program. The order of work, from the free measure and quote to the handover pack, is on our bathroom renovations page.