Perfect for flooring, walls, kitchen benchtops and as design elements such as border tiles (paired with ceramic or porcelain tiles) and fireplace surrounds, natural stone adds a beautiful and lasting statement to your home renovation.

The type of natural stone commonly used is limestone, slate, granite, travertine, sandstone and marble.

Each of these has a different colour and texture, with colours ranging from soft creams through to dark ash tones. As a natural stone, you will of course see variations in one sample to the next in the same type of stone, and this is part of its warmth and appeal.

Different types of stone also vary in their degree of ‘hardness’ so some will be more suitable for areas that receive tougher treatment, such as flooring in heavy traffic areas. Slate, for example, is formed from volcanic ash and is very hardwearing and durable.

Natural stone supplied by CDK Stone

You can also achieve different looks depending on how the stone is finished. Honed stone is ground to a smooth finish. By being hand split, riven stone creates a more rustic, irregular look. With a layer of gloss applied, polished stone features a high shine.

You can highlight the colour and veins that appear in the stone through well thought out lighting.

Natural stone offers a great many advantages in terms of great looks and hardworking functionality.

Talk to the dbm team in Sydney and be inspired by the great ideas we have for incorporating natural stone into your home renovation.

Think about last time you walked into a great restaurant, bar or hotel. Most likely it featured a variety of lighting – from soft, moody light for people to relax in, to brighter, task-oriented light in ‘work areas’ to help the staff do their jobs properly.

It’s the same in your home. You can mix and match from a choice of lighting options to create a particular mood and also to supply the right type of light for work areas.

For example, a lovely ambience can be easily achieved with lamps, accent lighting such as up-lights or lights that focus on a piece of art.

Mood lighting such as LED strip lighting under the edges of cabinetry will enhance architectural details and give a subtle glow.

Task lighting over working areas (for example over kitchen bench tops) tends to be bright and broad so that you can comfortably work there.

It’s also possible to install lighting behind features such as granite walls or glass splash backs to softly illuminate their beauty. And there is a huge range of statement pendants to choose from that can quickly become the focal point of a space.

At dbm, we know that great lighting makes your home feel more inviting and easier to live in.

In the work we do with our Sydney home renovation clients, one of the services we offer is to guide and advise our clients on the best choice of lighting. In doing so, they are able to create beautiful and highly effective lighting for their kitchen, bathroom or living space at the flick of a switch.

Talk to one of our experienced kitchen, bathroom or living space designers about our Sydney lighting design service.

Improvements in the durability of sealants and finishes mean that polished concrete floors – when installed correctly by a professional – can now also perform really well in wet areas such as kitchens, laundries and bathrooms.

For open plan areas that combine living space with a kitchen, laundry and bathroom, it’s great to be able to keep a seamless look by extending polished concrete flooring throughout.

Critically important for wet areas is the correct laying of the concrete. This creates falls that allow the water to rapidly drain away. It’s also vital to incorporate a slip-resistant finish to improve safety in wet areas. An experienced professional installer will be skilled in applying the appropriate sealant in a manner that completely protects the concrete from water and moisture.

Polished concrete floors also allow you a lot of scope in the look you can achieve in your renovation project. With the availability of different types of aggregate such as quartz and granite that can be used, you are able to create a stunning visual effect for your flooring.

Apart from looking great and being easy to maintain, a quality polished concrete floor doesn’t harbour dust and microbes like soft floorings such as carpets sometimes do. This can help create a healthier living environment, particularly for people who suffer allergies.

For a successful polished concrete floor for bathrooms, kitchens or laundries, it is essential to use a qualified professional. Talk to the team at dbm about a polished concrete floor for your kitchen, bathroom or living area.

With an ever-increasing range of fabulous designs to choose from, your bathroom makeover can include a style that matches perfectly with the look you want for your new bathroom.

Many of our bathroom renovation clients request a freestanding bath as a main feature.

In this Sydney bathroom renovation below, our client wanted a clean-lined free standing bath in their main bathroom.

The purity of this design and its elegant shape perfectly complement the other elements of the bathroom.

Its sculptural lines and depth are very inviting and its glossy finish works well with the vanity bench top.

For a bathroom renovation that creates a real ‘day spa’ experience at home, a free standing bath is a great inclusion.

Talk to us about the possibilities for your bathroom makeover and your bathroom design Sydney.

A specialist kitchen or bathroom designer will intuitively ‘see’ how you can achieve much more than you may think is possible in your renovation.

For example, a kitchen renovation we recently undertook for a client in Sydney transformed it from being a poky and awkward area into an energised space that integrated seamlessly with the adjacent living room.

“I love my new kitchen,” said the owner. “dbm’s design ideas have given me a kitchen that reflects exactly how my family lives. The cabinets have been designed to exactly match their purpose and what’s stored in them. This means everything I need to use is easily accessible and there’s no visual clutter.”

In the design we came up with for this client, we suggested relocating an adjacent bathroom to a more logical position, which allowed us to convert the former bathroom into a generous, purpose built pantry.

“While the actual footprint of the kitchen is not all that much bigger than the original, it feels vastly bigger,” said the owner. “Everything from the choice of finishes to the placement of each element has contributed to making the kitchen seem more generous and expansive.”

In the previous ‘standard’ kitchen layout, the family members had found themselves continually in each other’s way. By introducing distinct zones and considering carefully how the family uses the kitchen, the kitchen design we developed significantly reduced the amount of ‘traffic’, making it much easier to use.

“By focussing on getting the design of our kitchen renovation absolutely right, we’ve ended up with a space that contributes a lot of energy and happiness to the way we live,” said the owner. “When people come to visit they can’t get over how much bigger the kitchen seems since the renovation.”

Sometimes, home renovations are mostly functional. When your family expands with the addition of a new kid or two, for example, then you will soon have an urgent need for an extra bedroom to accommodate the newest members of your clan. An older relative moving in with you (rare as such an event is in our modern world) or a frequent need for a guest bedroom can also prompt renovations adding an extra sleeping space.

Improvements in your financial fortunes can also be an excellent opportunity to expand the possibilities that your house offers. Whether you have always dreamed of having a small conservatory, want to add a snug den where you can retreat and relax away from the demands of the outside world, or need a workshop for a new hobby, such a renovation is a good use of a monetary windfall.

Renovations can also be carried out by home renovators to bring your home up to date. If floors are starting to look worn and weary, the lack of light in a room with insufficient windows is starting to depress you, or the clumsy layout of several rooms designed by a sloppy or inexperienced architect are causing daily inconvenience as you move around your house, rebuilding your abode to some degree can give it new life and perhaps even cancel your plans to move to a new home (with all the trouble and inconvenience that entails).

With our strong, active design sense and steely determination to provide you with only the highest quality home renovations in Sydney, DBM is one of your best choices for all of these projects and many others. Contact us today at www.dbm.net.au or by telephone for more details.

Modern design favours this type of easily cleaned bathroom, of course – though we can also provide more traditional interior decoration if you wish. This means that the substances used are typically those that are non-porous, hard, smooth, and easy to clean. Ceramic, vinyl, linoleum, and polished concrete are all possible materials for modern interior decoration and a bit of cleanser and a sponge will restore them to sparkling purity in a matter of moments.

Our bathroom renovations in Sydney are designed with the best use of space of mind – including giving you “elbow room” to keep your bathroom sanitary – and also use fine materials and solid, robust construction methods. The clear lighting that we include in each design makes inspection of the room for areas in need of scrubbing easy, too.

Above and beyond ease of cleaning, having your bathroom renovated by DBM will eliminate the wear and dirt of time. Old, cracked grout where water might seep in and cause mould to grow behind the tiles will be chiselled out, and the tiles themselves replaced with fresh, new fittings.

Corroded faucets will give place to gleaming new designer fixtures, dusty lamps will be removed and their place taken by stylish, clean ones, and all the aging, stained, scuffed remnants of the older design taken out and unsoiled replacements installed.

Best of all, we at DBM pride ourselves on keeping our prices as affordable as possible for you, considering the skill and excellence that we guarantee in our renovations. There are further details about us online at www.dbm.net.au, and we are ready to answer your questions by telephone as well.

The bathroom designs for Sydney that DBM (www.dbm.net.au) offers to you are both full of modern flair and given the proper technical attention to make sure that your bathroom will serve you well for many years with no problems. A well-constructed bathroom looks crisp and inviting, and at the same time is engineered to stand up to the moisture and humidity commonly found in the space.

Slapdash construction, no matter how flashy, is unacceptable in a room which is exposed to the wetness that bathrooms experience in their day to day use. Waterproof tiles, such as glazed ceramic, linoleum, stone or faux stone and the like are used by all knowledgeable interior designers in order to keep dampness confined to the room itself. These materials lend themselves to modern designs, with their emphasis on clean, smooth, blank surfaces and the use of geometric volumes for decoration.

Proper ventilation helps to vent this humidity, and DBM’s designers pay attention to this matter as well. Warm, steamy air is transferred outside and drier air pulled into the bathroom, while simultaneously avoiding drafts. This keeps the atmosphere comfortable and less stifling even when you are taking a long shower.

Visit our website today at www.dbm.net.au to see some examples of our high quality bathroom designs for Sydney, and then call us for a free, no-obligation consultation and quote on the renovation of your own bathroom by the expert interior designers at DBM!