Interior designer Gold Coast: apartments and penthouses

Working inside a shell you cannot move

The concrete is the plan. Slab, columns and the lift core were poured with the tower, and none of it shifts for a fitout. Wet areas usually stay put too, because the drainage runs inside the slab or down a shared riser. Move a bathroom two metres and you are chasing a fall you do not have.

So the design works in the gaps. Non structural walls come out. Joinery takes over the job a wall used to do, stopping short of the ceiling where the slab runs uneven. Ceiling height is the tightest number in the job. After the drop over ducts you may have 2.4 metres left, and that sets door heights, cabinet tops and whether a stone island reads heavy or right.

Measure the real slab, not the drawing. These towers were built to a tolerance and it shows.

Two decorating rules get asked about a lot. The 70/30 rule holds about seventy per cent of a room in one style and puts the other thirty in contrast. The 3-5-7 rule groups objects in odd numbers, threes or fives rather than pairs. Both still work up here, but keep the groups low, because anything tall on a bench spends ceiling height you cannot spare.

Approval before anything starts

An apartment renovation on the Gold Coast starts with a form, not a mood board. Almost every tower needs written approval for a fitout, and the rules sit in the by laws, not the sales brochure. Most schemes want a scope of works, the builder's licence and insurance, an acoustic report for new floor finishes, and confirmation that no common property is touched. Committees meet monthly. That date, not the trade calendar, sets your start.

The usual traps are hard flooring where the by law wants carpet or a rated underlay, a new penetration through the slab, anything fixed to the facade, and window film. Buildings guard their outside appearance, so curtains often have to read white from the footpath whatever colour they are inside.

Sorting this out early is much of what an interior designer Gold Coast apartment owners hire is for.

Noise, and the neighbours who share your slab

You share a floor with the unit below and a wall with the one beside you. Hard finishes carry. A tiled kitchen over somebody's bedroom will be heard, and so will a chair dragged across timber at six in the morning.

The fixes are dull and they work. Acoustic underlay beneath any hard floor, rated to whatever the by law asks for. Rubber mounts under the fridge and the dishwasher. Pipework wrapped where it passes through a party wall. Soft finishes where sound gathers.

Sound coming in matters too. On the beach side of Surfers Paradise and Broadbeach the low floors get traffic and the high ones get wind against the glass.

How the balcony changes the plan

The best room in an apartment is often outside, and that rearranges everything indoors. Keep the floor level and the finish close on both sides of the door, and the living room reads twice its size. Step down, or switch to a dark tile, and the eye stops at the threshold.

Then decide what the balcony is actually for. A dining table outside means the inside dining can shrink and the kitchen can grow. On a windy corner above the twentieth floor the balcony is a morning spot and little else, and the plan should not pretend otherwise.

Glass is rarely yours to change. Frames, tint and balustrade belong to the building. Shading comes from inside: sheer layers, deep reveals in the joinery, and seating placed out of the afternoon sun.

What it costs, and when it is worth paying for

Interior designer fees in Australia take one of three shapes. A fixed fee against a written scope, an hourly rate for advice and selections, or a percentage of the build cost on a full fitout. They suit different jobs, so ask which one you are on before work starts.

An apartment adds line items a house never sees. Acoustic underlay and whatever flooring build up the by law asks for. Service lift bookings. Price those at concept stage and the surprise never arrives.

Whether it is worth paying for depends on how reversible the decisions are. Wet areas, joinery and flooring in a tower are close to permanent, and a scope of works knocked back at a committee meeting costs you a month.

The Aria Penthouse, and how a fitout runs

Luxxe completed the Aria Penthouse, along with a new build at Carrara and projects in Brisbane, Sydney and Mackay. Tammy has a Bachelor of Design behind her and eight years in residential interiors.

On site the building runs the job. Deliveries go up a service lift you book by the hour, so a long stone slab or an oversized sofa gets solved at design stage, not on delivery day. Trade hours come from the by laws, often eight to four on weekdays and nothing on Sundays. Rubbish leaves the way it came in. Before any of that the apartment gets built in 3D, and in virtual reality, so you walk the plan while changes still cost nothing.

• Apartment and penthouse interior design, concept through to installation
• Kitchen, bathroom and laundry design within existing wet areas
• Spatial planning and joinery inside a fixed concrete shell
• 3D renders and virtual reality walkthroughs
• Body corporate documentation and building management liaison

Where the studio works

The studio takes on apartment work across Surfers Paradise, Main Beach, Broadbeach and Paradise Waters. An interior designer Gold Coast tower owners can rely on has already delivered inside an occupied building. When you compare interior designers Gold Coast wide, that is the question worth asking. Which buildings, and what did the committee say.

An interior decorator Gold Coast owners bring in for furniture, colour and styling is doing a narrower job, and doing it later. If the kitchen sits in the wrong place or the floor build up fails the by law, no amount of styling repairs it.

The building name and your floor are enough to start.