Architect-led renovation of London homes — reconfiguring layouts, opening up living space, modernising services and transforming tired or compromised houses into homes that work the way you actually live. RIBA Chartered architects, RICS surveying support through our sister company, in-house structural engineers and directly-employed trades, delivered under one fixed-price design-and-build contract from first brief to handover and aftercare.
A whole-house renovation is the most effective way to get the home you want without leaving the address you love. Done well, it does not simply refresh finishes — it rethinks how the house works: where the light falls, how the ground floor flows, where the kitchen sits, how many bathrooms there are and how the whole building performs. Done badly, it leaves new paint over the same cramped layout, the same cold rooms and the same tired wiring — a house that looks updated and lives exactly as it did before.
House renovation, home renovation, whole-house renovation — whatever you call it, this is the page for a complete, layout-led programme in London. As an established design-and-build renovation company — architects, structural engineers, surveyors and builders under one roof — we take an existing house and reshape it around the way you actually live, under one fixed-price contract. If your priority is restoring a period property's condition and finish rather than changing how it works, our house refurbishment service is the closely related route.
We are not a builder who sub-contracts the design, nor an architectural practice that hands over a drawing pack and walks away. We are a single integrated studio: RIBA Chartered architects, RICS surveying support through our sister company, MIStructE structural engineers, MCIBSE M&E consultants, interior designers and our own directly-employed core build teams — operating under one JCT fixed-price contract with a single point of accountability. The architect who reconfigured your floor plan walks the site every week. The estimator who priced your bill of quantities is the same person you call when you want to add a Crittall screen in week eleven.
We have refined this model across 103+ residential projects in NW3, NW8, NW1, SW1, SW3, SW7, W1 and W11 — opening up Victorian terraces in Primrose Hill, reconfiguring Edwardian villas in Hampstead Garden Suburb, modernising mid-century homes in St John's Wood and transforming Georgian townhouses behind retained period frontages. Every house starts compromised in some way. Every one is held to the same standard once we are done.
Our approach inverts the industry default. We agree the price before we start. We resolve the layout, structure and services on paper before a single finish is chosen. We programme to the day, retain our trades on long-term framework agreements rather than chasing the cheapest tender, and we do not leave site until you are happy.
The right renovation strategy depends on what you are starting with. A Georgian townhouse, a bay-fronted Victorian terrace and a 1960s detached house each present different opportunities to reconfigure space, improve light and modernise services. These are the six house types that account for most of our work.
Tall, narrow and vertically organised across four or five floors. Renovation usually focuses on making the vertical plan work for modern life — reworking the lower-ground kitchen and garden link, improving the stair and circulation, and modernising services discreetly — while respecting the proportional discipline and (where Listed) securing consent for internal change.
The classic London renovation. The cellular rear almost always wants opening up — a structural opening into a side-return or rear extension to create a single kitchen-dining-living space — alongside a loft conversion for a primary suite, a full re-service and damp diagnosis. The biggest gains come from layout, not finish.
Larger and more generously planned than their Victorian predecessors, but often chopped into small rooms by post-war partitioning. Renovation typically removes those later walls to recover the original generosity, adds a full-width rear opening into the kitchen, converts the loft and brings the services and insulation up to current standards.
Characterful, hand-made and frequently in a Conservation Area, so external change is tightly controlled. Renovation here is internal-led: improving thermal comfort without losing breathability, reworking awkward service rooms, upgrading kitchens and bathrooms, and restoring the joinery and plasterwork that give these homes their value — all designed to satisfy conservation officers.
The most under-rated renovation opportunity in London. Solid construction but cellular, poorly insulated and often still on original wiring. The transformation is usually dramatic: knocking the small reception rooms into open social space, a thermal and services overhaul, replacing asbestos-bearing components, and frequently a loft and rear extension to add the bedrooms and family room these plots can easily take.
Modern homes renovate for performance and technology rather than layout. The work is usually keeping pace with the cycle — smart-home rewires, EV charging, photovoltaic and battery integration, MVHR and heat-pump upgrades — and updating the original specification to current Building Regulations Part L and F while refreshing kitchens, bathrooms and finishes.
Comprehensive is not a marketing word for us — it is the contractual scope. Every line item below is delivered, certified and warranted under the same fixed-price agreement, sequenced as one coordinated programme.
RIBA Stage 2–4 design by chartered architects: spatial planning, structural feasibility, daylight modelling and full drawings. We resolve circulation before we touch a finish — opening up the ground floor, relocating the kitchen, adding en-suites, a boot-room and utility, and creating a properly planned primary suite. The layout is where a renovation earns its value.
MIStructE-led calculations and detailing for steel beams (RSJs), transfer beams, padstones, lintels, underpinning where required, floor strengthening and roof alteration. Building Control submission via your authority of choice and full Party Wall etc. Act 1996 service of notices, schedules of condition and award negotiation by RICS surveyor through our sister company.
NICEIC-certified rewire to BS 7671 18th Edition — new consumer unit with RCBOs, LED architectural lighting with multi-scene dimming, ample sockets with USB, Cat6a structured cabling, Wi-Fi access points, EV charging supply, fire and CO detection to BS 5839-6, AV pre-wire and full smart-home infrastructure (Lutron, Crestron or Control4 on request).
Complete replumb removing lead, galvanised steel and ageing copper. New high-efficiency condensing boiler or air-source heat pump, unvented mains-pressure hot water cylinder, zoned heating with smart controls, underfloor heating to the ground floor, and stainless-steel pipework with brass fittings to specification. Gas Safe certified.
A fabric-first upgrade: roof and floor insulation, internal wall insulation (breathable wood-fibre systems on heritage walls), acoustic separation between floors, and draught-proofing. SAP and EPC uplift modelled at design stage — a renovation is the one chance to materially cut a period home's running costs.
In-house kitchen design with bespoke cabinetry from our framework joinery partners — solid timber carcasses, hand-painted or veneered finishes, and your choice of Miele, Sub-Zero & Wolf, Gaggenau or Liebherr appliances. Stone selection from specified yards — book-matched marble, quartzite, sintered surfaces or honed limestone — coordinated with the open-plan layout.
Full waterproofing tanking to all wet zones, electric or hydronic underfloor heating, wall-hung sanitaryware (Duravit, Villeroy & Boch, Catalano), brassware to specification (Vola, Dornbracht, Lefroy Brooks), bespoke vanity joinery and frameless shower enclosures. New en-suites and family bathrooms planned into the reconfigured layout.
Engineered or solid timber boards — European oak, Douglas fir, walnut, smoked or fumed finishes, oil-sealed — run continuously through opened-up spaces. Natural stone laid on heated screed: Burlington slate, Yorkshire stone, French limestone, or large-format porcelain with rectified joints.
Our joinery shop produces every fitted element: floor-to-ceiling wardrobes, walk-in dressing rooms, alcove cabinetry, window seats, panelling, internal doors, and skirting and architrave profiles drawn to match your home's period — or detailed plain for contemporary work. Storage designed into the new layout, not added as an afterthought.
Cornicing, ceiling roses, dado rails, panelled doors, sash windows, encaustic floors, fireplaces and balustrades — repaired by traditional plasterers, joiners and conservators on our roster. Where features are missing, we draw, mould and reproduce to period accuracy, so a modernised layout keeps its character.
Premium specifications: Farrow & Ball, Paint & Paper Library, Edward Bulmer, Little Greene. Five-coat decoration to walls and ceilings with full sanding between, and specialist finishes — lime wash, Venetian polished plaster, veneer panelling and fabric-lined walls — on premium projects.
A two-stage snagging process — an internal pre-handover walk by our project manager and quantity surveyor, then a joint walk with you. Defects rectified before completion, not after. A 12-month defects period, a 10-year workmanship warranty, and one free post-handover service visit at six months.
The single biggest return on a renovation is rarely the kitchen you can see — it is the layout you can feel. Most of our renovations are won or lost on these five moves, all resolved on paper before site starts.
Removing internal and load-bearing walls to create open-plan or broken-plan kitchen-dining-living space. Supported on calculated steel beams with padstones, engineered and signed off, with the structure resolved before the kitchen is even specified.
Roof lights, larger rear glazing, internal glazing and re-planned circulation to pull daylight deep into the plan. We model daylight at design stage so the open space is bright at 4pm in January, not just in the CGI.
Renovations almost always add an en-suite or two and a proper primary suite. We plan the soil and water runs into the structural design so new bathrooms land where you want them, not where the existing pipework happens to be.
Lofts, cellars, side-returns, under-stair voids and oversized landings — the square metres you already own but cannot use. Folding these into the renovation is far cheaper per sqm than moving to a larger house.
A renovation is the one moment a whole home's wiring, plumbing, heating and insulation are exposed at once. Renewing them together — rather than room by room over a decade — is cheaper, cleaner and the only way to genuinely improve comfort and running costs.
Renovating for how you will live in ten years, not just today — adaptable rooms, future home-working space, and an envelope ready for a heat pump and solar. The structural and service decisions made now define what is easy to change later.
We work to the RIBA Plan of Work 2020. Below is what each stage means for your renovation, and exactly what you receive at the end of it.
An initial consultation at our Finchley Road studio or your home. We discuss how you live, the rooms that do not work, and what you want the renovated house to do for you. We talk realistic budgets — not inflated trade-press guides — and agree the broad shape of the brief. No charge, no obligation.
Measured survey of the existing house (laser-scanned to 3mm), a planning and conservation review, an asbestos screen if pre-2000, drainage CCTV, and a written feasibility report covering structural opportunity, layout options, planning risk and an outline cost band — a 30–50 page document.
Two distinct layout directions developed and presented at design review — plans, sections, materiality and a 3D walk-through — before we converge on a single preferred direction and refine it. Photoreal CGIs of two key spaces are produced at the end of this stage.
If your renovation requires Planning Permission, Listed Building Consent or a Lawful Development Certificate, we prepare and submit the application, manage statutory consultees and respond to conditions. The Building Regulations Full Plans submission runs in parallel.
The pack the trades build from: 1:50 plans, 1:20 sections, 1:5 details, full structural calculations, M&E schematics, a schedule of finishes, joinery elevations, kitchen and bathroom layouts and a written specification of typically 80–140 pages.
JCT contract signed. Site set-up, strip-out, structural openings and steel, first-fix, second-fix, decoration and installation. Weekly written progress report with photography, weekly architect site visit, monthly QS cost report. You retain full visibility throughout.
Pre-handover deep clean, full M&E commissioning, a joint snagging walk with you, the certification pack (electrical, gas, structural, building control completion), the O&M manual and key handover.
A 12-month defects rectification period — anything that emerges as the building settles is corrected free of charge — a six-month complimentary service visit, and a 10-year workmanship warranty. Most clients return to us for a second project within five years.
Most renovation websites quote a single “from” price. We don't, because the cost of renovating a London house depends entirely on the specification you choose. Here is exactly how our four tiers differ — line by line.
For a representative high-end (Considered tier) renovation of a 200 sqm Victorian terrace at £1,000/sqm — total contract £200,000 — here is the honest breakdown of where every pound is spent.
A renovation is, before anything else, a technical exercise. Here is what is actually being designed, calculated and installed behind the walls once the layout is fixed.
Most clients arrive weighing a renovation against simply buying a bigger house. It is worth doing the maths honestly — we help you model it at feasibility before you commit either way.
Moving in prime London is expensive in ways that are easy to underestimate. Stamp duty alone runs to roughly 5–15% of the purchase price on a substantial home, and once agent fees, legal costs, removals and the inevitable works on the new house are added, the true cost of trading up is frequently £150,000–£400,000 or more — spent before you have changed a single thing about how you live. And the next house rarely fits perfectly either.
A renovation puts that same money into the home you already own. You keep the address, the garden, the street and the school catchment, and you reshape the house around exactly how your family lives now — opening up the ground floor, adding the bedrooms and bathrooms you need, and modernising the services so the house is warm, quiet and cheap to run. A well-executed whole-house renovation also typically returns much of its cost in resale value, particularly when it adds usable floor area through a loft conversion or extension.
Renovation is not always the right answer — if the plot simply cannot deliver the space you need, moving may win. That is exactly why we model both honestly at feasibility, including realistic build cost, the resale uplift and the disruption involved, so the decision is made on numbers rather than estate-agent optimism. Start with the renovation cost calculator for an early read.
A representative programme for a 180 sqm three-bedroom Victorian terrace renovation at Considered specification, including opening up the rear ground floor. Yours will differ — but this is what a properly run renovation looks like in real time.
There are perhaps fifteen design-and-build practices in London capable of delivering whole-house renovation at this standard. Here is what makes us one of them.
One JCT agreement covering design, statutory approval, structure, services and finishes. No cost-plus surprises, no inflated provisional sums.
The RIBA Chartered architect who reconfigured your layout walks the site every week for the entire build. Decisions made in person, not by email tag.
We fix the structure, services and floor plan on paper before a finish is chosen — the discipline that keeps a renovation on budget and on time.
Our core carpenters, plumbers, electricians and decorators are PAYE staff, not gig labour — continuity of standard from project to project.
Successful applications across Camden, Westminster, RBKC, Kensington and the City. Conservation officers know our practice by name.
Professional indemnity and public liability cover at £10M, well above industry standard — the level prime-London freeholders require.
An insurance-backed workmanship warranty (LABC, Premier or Build-Zone) protecting your investment long after the defects period closes.
One free service visit at six months and a 24-hour emergency line for live defects. Most clients return for a second project within five years.
A whole-house renovation usually combines several of the services below. Start here to understand each element, or speak to us about packaging them under one fixed-price contract.
The closely related, restoration-led route — bringing a period property's condition and finish back to a coherent standard.
The heart of most renovations — bespoke kitchen design and install coordinated with an open-plan layout.
New en-suites and family bathrooms planned into the reconfigured floor plan, fully waterproofed and warranted.
Recovering wasted roof space for a primary suite — one of the highest-return moves in any renovation.
Adding floor area — rear, side-return or wrap-around — integrated into the wider renovation programme.
Excavating or converting lower-ground space to add living area without changing the footprint above.
Renovating Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian homes with the heritage care these buildings demand.
The single-contract model behind every renovation we deliver — design, structure and build under one roof.
Premium-postcode projects with comparable scope, planning context and finishing standards. A renovation succeeds when structure, services, layout, joinery and finishes are planned as one coordinated sequence — start with the whole-house case study, then browse the wider case-study hub. For survey-led due diligence before you commit, see surveying support before renovation.
Five-storey period house: full renovation with basement conversion, extension and loft works.
View case study →Four-storey townhouse: complete renovation with structural reconfiguration, period restoration, a bespoke kitchen and three new bathrooms.
View case study →Double-storey rear/side extension and loft conversion delivered within a full renovation programme.
View case study →Grade II listed duplex: renovation with roof reconstruction and structural steel works.
View case study →“I would like to thank Ross and his team for their consistent commitment to quality and their unerring reliability. They delivered our property to specification and on time, proving to be an extremely effective, experienced, and proactive contractor.”
“We have worked with Ross and his company many times. They are extremely professional and hardworking individuals who can work under any circumstances. There was no variation to the works.”
Book a no-obligation consultation at our Finchley Road design studio or in your home. The first meeting is free, lasts 60–90 minutes, and concludes with an honest indication of feasibility, programme and budget band. No salespeople. No pressure.
Site visit · feasibility assessment · outline cost estimate · programme indication. No obligation. Saturday appointments available.