South Auckland

A large designer bathroom in tones of moody grey

Completed October 2024

Quick answer: A dark, moody-grey contemporary bathroom renovation in Wattle Downs, South Auckland — we reconfigured a dated 1990s family bathroom, fixed the water damage hiding behind the shower wall, and built a custom charred-oak vanity and tiled shower around a freestanding bath.

“A dark bathroom can read as small or closed-in if you get the lighting wrong. So before a single tile was ordered, we ran a video walk-through with Steve and Jennifer — they got to stand inside the space at full size, and we worked out exactly where the light needed to sit.”
— Dorothy Li, Lead Designer and Consultant, Superior Renovations

A Tired 1990s Bathroom That Had Quietly Started Leaking

Steve and Jennifer had been in their Wattle Downs home for about four years when they decided the main bathroom had to go. The house was built in the mid-1990s, and the bathroom was the same age — original tiles, original fittings, a layout that never quite worked for two people sharing it.

There was a spa bath they’d never once used. It had hairline cracks across the shell, and they suspected it was leaking. Once they’d lived in the house a while, they also realised there was likely water damage sitting behind the shower wall — the kind of problem that doesn’t fix itself and only gets worse the longer you leave it.

So the brief was simple to say and harder to deliver: a contemporary, functional bathroom in tones of moody grey, that both of them could use comfortably, with the water problems sorted properly rather than tiled over.

Why They Chose Us

Steve and Jennifer talked to more than one company. What tipped it for them, in their own words, was being listened to.

💡 Quick tip: When you’re comparing renovation companies, watch how closely the first design matches what you actually described. A good designer’s first concept should feel recognisably like your idea — not a template with your name on it.

Dorothy could be straight with them about what would and wouldn’t work in the space, but she built the design around what they were after, not around what was easiest to quote. The first concept came back close to exactly what they’d pictured. That’s the moment most clients relax — and they did.

Not Your Typical Design Process

This one took more design work than a standard bathroom. Most of our bathroom projects run through a clear design stage — we get to know your style, sort out the functional changes, show you similar past work, and put it all into 3D with a fixed quote. That’s the usual rhythm of a bathroom renovation across Auckland.

Wattle Downs was different. It was a larger space, Steve and Jennifer wanted to reconfigure the layout and add elements, and they were committed to a dark, moody grey theme. Dark schemes are where bathrooms most often go wrong — get it slightly off and the room feels like a cave.

So Dorothy did something she doesn’t do on every job: she built a video walk-through and handed it to the clients before anything was ordered.

On top of the video, the design pack ran to multiple CAD drawings — the shower, the tiles, the rain head, the light switches — looking into the room and back out of it, from the shower, from the bath, from the vanity. Enough angles that Steve and Jennifer could properly picture the finished room and sign off knowing what they were getting. As Steve put it, there was so much detail you could visualise the end product and go, yep, that’s it.

Before the Renovation

The 3D Drawings Behind the Wattle Downs Bathroom

The Design Brief: Moody Grey, Without the Gloom

The whole room was pulled back to a single, restrained palette and then built up with texture, so it reads as deliberate rather than dark for the sake of it.

Tones of Grey, Warmed Up With Timber

Grey travertine-look tiles run wall and floor for continuity, the vanity and storage fronts are a charred oak that warms the cool tones, and the tapware is gun metal throughout to tie it together. The freestanding bath sits as the one clean, bright shape in the room.

“Once the old spa bath and the linings came out, the water damage we’d suspected was right there behind the shower wall. That’s exactly why you don’t tile over a problem — better to find it with everything open and fix it properly while we’re in there.”
— Dorothy Li, Lead Designer and Consultant, Superior Renovations

A Space Built for Two to Share

The reconfigure was about everyday use. A 1800mm custom vanity gives them room either side, a separate freestanding bath and walk-in tiled shower split the wet zones, and a storage tower keeps the clutter off the bench — practical things that matter more at 7am than they do in a render.

Bathroom Fittings and Specifications

Tiles

• Artisan matte Travertine Grey 600 x 600, wall and floor, from The Tile Depot — run through the whole room, including the shower, for continuity.

Tiled Shower

• Custom tiled shower, same tile as the rest of the room.
• Custom-cut glass door.
• Recessed shelf for shampoo and the like.
• Shower diverter mixer, gun metal — WATERWARE.
• Rain shower with ceiling arm, gun metal — WATERWARE.
• Three-function slide hand shower, gun metal — WATERWARE.

Custom Vanity

• Custom-built 1800mm vanity, charred oak cabinet fronts with brushed-nickel extrusion.
• Sparkling White 30mm benchtop — Uniquartz.
• 400mm round basin, matte white — WATERWARE.
• Tall basin mixer, gun metal — WATERWARE.
• Clicker basin waste with overflow, gun metal — Newtech.
• Newtech Broadway round black-frame LED mirror, 600 — Newtech.

Freestanding Bath

• Posh Solus freestanding bath, 1700 x 800 x 560mm, white — from Reece.
• Floor-mounted bath spout, gun metal — WATERWARE.
• Shower and bath mixer, gun metal — WATERWARE.
• 40mm bath spout, gun metal — Newtech.

Toilet and Finishing

• Vivo toilet suite with slim seat, gloss white — WATERWARE.
• Loft toilet-roll holder, gun metal — WATERWARE.
• Storage tower, charred oak fronts with brushed-nickel extrusion.
• Single-bar round heated towel rail, gun metal.

How the Build Actually Ran

The design stage was the long part of this job. Once the team was on site, it moved.

The old bathroom came out in a single day — full strip-out, gone. From there the crew turned up on time every day, and Steve and Jennifer could see real progress at the end of each one. That’s the part people remember after a reno: not the showroom visit, but whether the team actually shows up when they say they will. This one did.

Finding the water damage behind the shower wall during strip-out was the only real surprise, and it was the expected kind. Because the walls were already open, it got dealt with as part of the job rather than becoming a separate drama down the track.

💡 Quick tip: In a 1990s home, a cracked or leaking bath is rarely the only water issue. If one wet area has failed, it’s worth budgeting for the possibility that the linings behind it have copped damage too — finding it during demolition is far cheaper than finding it through your ceiling.

Renovating a Bathroom in a Wattle Downs Home

Wattle Downs sits on a peninsula reaching into the Manukau Harbour, about 25 minutes south of the Auckland CBD and a short hop from Manurewa. It’s a family suburb — quiet streets, the harbour-edge walkway, the nine-hole golf course in the middle — and its homes went up in waves, from the first subdivisions in the 1970s right through to the 2000s.

Steve and Jennifer’s place is from the mid-1990s, and bathrooms of that era are now hitting the point where they need more than a tidy-up. Thirty-year-old waterproofing, a moulded spa bath that’s cracked, tapware and tiling that have simply dated — it’s a pattern we see right across South Auckland’s 80s and 90s housing.

The coastal setting doesn’t help. A harbour-edge peninsula carries more moisture than an inland site, and the bathroom is the one room where that shows up first. When the original waterproofing in a wet area starts to give — as it had behind this shower wall — the damage stays hidden until something forces it into the open. Sound familiar? If you’re in a 90s Wattle Downs home and the bathroom has never been touched, it’s worth assuming there’s more behind the tiles than you can see.

That’s the argument for doing it properly once instead of patching: strip it back, find what’s actually going on, fix the waterproofing, and build for the next thirty years.

What a Renovation Like This Costs in Auckland

Every bathroom is priced to its own scope — the size of the room, the materials, whether the layout moves, and what’s hiding behind the walls all shift the number. A like-for-like swap and a full reconfigure with a custom vanity are different jobs at different prices. 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: A full gun-metal tapware suite and a custom 1800mm vanity are two of the biggest line-item differences between a standard bathroom and one like this. The finish on the tapware and the custom cabinetry carry the premium — not the tile.

What Steve and Jennifer Said

“We ended up choosing the company that actually listened to us and designed what we were looking for. The initial design came back pretty much exactly in line with what we wanted, and that filled us with confidence. They turned up on time every day without fail — smashed the old bathroom out in a day — and the workmanship is just so good. We’ve got a second bathroom to do, and we won’t even be asking anyone else.”
— Steve & Jennifer, Wattle Downs

Steve and Jennifer’s video testimonial

A Wattle Downs Bathroom Built to Last

This was a 1990s South Auckland family bathroom with real problems under the surface, turned into a dark, calm, contemporary room that works for two people sharing it — and the water issues are sorted properly, not papered over. The clients are confident enough in how it went that their next bathroom is already ours to do.

If you’ve got a tired bathroom in Wattle Downs, Manurewa or anywhere across South Auckland — especially in a 90s home where you suspect there’s more going on behind the tiles — that’s exactly the kind of job we handle from design through to handover.

➡ Book your free in-home consultation with Superior Renovations
➡ See how our in-house Design Studio plans a bathroom like this
➡ Request a free feasibility report for your project

Wattle Downs Bathroom Renovation — Your Questions

Further Resources

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