North Shore — Auckland

Two bathrooms reworked in a moody charcoal-and-oak palette

Completed March 2021

Quick answer: This was a contemporary bathroom renovation in Albany, on Auckland’s North Shore — two dated bathrooms, the main and the master ensuite, rebuilt around matte charcoal floor tiles, off-white walls and Black Forest Oak floating vanities. Same materials across both rooms, so the house reads as one piece.

Two Tired Bathrooms in a Contemporary Home

The rest of the house was already done up in a clean, contemporary style. The two bathrooms hadn’t kept up. They were old, short on everyday comfort, and nothing much to look at — the kind of rooms you stop noticing because you’d rather not. The brief was continuity: make both bathrooms feel like they belong to the rest of the home, not like two leftovers from an earlier decade.

So we kept the existing layouts and let the materials carry the change. A contemporary bathroom leans on clean fixtures without fuss or extra detailing, and that suited this home down to the ground. We anchored both rooms in matte dark tiles underfoot, lifted the walls with an off-white tile, then warmed the whole thing back up with timber. It’s a simple recipe. The discipline is in matching it across two rooms so nothing feels stitched together.

That’s why both bathrooms share the same contemporary bathroom design — same tile, same vanity finish, same tapware. Walk from the main bathroom to the ensuite and you wouldn’t know they were done as separate rooms.

“Both bathrooms ran as one job, not two. Same trades, same materials ordered together, one schedule — which is part of why the finish lines up so cleanly room to room.”
— Kevin Yang, Project Manager, Superior Renovations

“A dark floor can swallow a small bathroom if you let it. We paired the charcoal with off-white walls for contrast, then brought in a Black Forest Oak vanity so the room had some warmth to sit against all that grey.”
— Superior Renovations Design Studio

Why Albany Bathrooms Often Get This Treatment

Most of Albany’s homes have gone up since the 1990s, as the area grew from rural fringe into one of the North Shore’s main centres. That means interiors here tend to read modern already — so when a bathroom is the one room left untouched, it stands out. That was the story in this house: a contemporary home with two bathrooms still stuck a generation behind.

It’s a common North Shore brief. The bones of the house are fine, the layout works, and the owners don’t want to move walls — they want the dated rooms brought up to the standard of everything around them. We see it across Albany, Schnapper Rock and the newer streets nearby.

If you’re weighing up something similar, our Wairau Valley showroom at 16B Link Drive is set up so you can see tile, tapware and vanity finishes together before you commit — which is exactly how the palette for this project was settled.

Inside the Main Bathroom

The Master Ensuite

A New Look Without Moving a Wall

Here’s the part worth knowing if your own bathroom feels dated: the layout never changed. Both rooms kept their original footprint — the transformation came entirely from tile, tapware and the oak vanities, not from demolition or reconfiguring plumbing.

That keeps a project like this tighter and more predictable than a full structural redo. The trade-off is honest — if your layout genuinely doesn’t work, new fixtures won’t fix that, and we’ll tell you so. But where the bones are sound and the rooms simply look tired, a considered set of materials does the heavy lifting.

💡 Quick tip: If you’re updating more than one bathroom, do them together. You share the demo, the trades and the tile order — and you get a finish that actually matches room to room.

What a Two-Bathroom Renovation Like This Costs in Auckland

Every bathroom is priced to its own scope — the size of the room, the tiles and fixtures you choose, and whether any plumbing or structural work is involved all move the number. Doing two rooms at once changes the maths again. Rather than quote a figure that won’t match your home, use our bathroom renovation cost calculator to get a realistic Auckland estimate for your own project.

💡 Quick tip: Choices like a freestanding bath, a fully tiled shower with a custom glass door, and a double-bowl vanity sit above a standard fitout — it’s the fittings and the tiling labour that move the price, not the floor area.

Thinking About the Same for Your Place?

Two dated bathrooms, one contemporary home, no walls moved — and a finish that finally matches the rest of the house. If that’s the gap in your own place, we’re set up to do exactly this kind of work across the North Shore.

➡ Book your free in-home consultation with Superior Renovations
➡ See how we approach bathroom renovations on the North Shore
➡ Request a free feasibility report for your project

Albany Bathroom Renovation FAQs

Further Resources

1. More completed Auckland renovation projects
2. Real client stories from across Auckland