Key Interiors designs and builds villa and bungalow renovations across Auckland — layout, joinery, structure and the final finish, delivered by one team with a fixed price after design.
Key Interiors · Est. Auckland
Beautiful from the footpath. Cold, dark and chopped into small rooms once you're inside. We've renovated more than 100 Auckland homes, a lot of them character homes, from Ponsonby bay villas to Mt Eden bungalows — and the job is always the same two halves. Restore what makes it a villa. Be ruthless about everything else.
Key Interiors is a true design-and-build studio. Design, custom joinery, construction and the final master-painted finish, all under one roof. No juggling a designer, a builder and a string of trades who each point at someone else. One accountable team, one fixed price after design.
See what a villa renovation costs
Most companies show you the finished kitchen. This is the part that decides your budget — and the reason a villa costs 25 to 40% more than the same job in a modern house.
Original totara or matai piles, often sunk or rotted at the ground line, over a damp subfloor with no ventilation. A house that's still moving will telegraph through every new door, floor and tile you install.
Flight holes in the floorboards are the easy part. Structural borer in the joists and bearers, or a bearer sitting on a pile that's no longer there, is the expensive part.
Hessian stretched over sarking boards and papered over for a century. It's a genuine fire risk and it has to come out before you can insulate or line the walls properly.
Rubber-insulated wiring with no earth. Galvanised plumbing that's been quietly narrowing since the 1950s. Earthenware drainage with tree roots through it. All of it gets replaced.
A hundred and twenty years of movement means sloping floors and out-of-plumb openings. Every cabinet, benchtop and tiled surface is scribed and packed to fit. You don't order a carcass, you make one.
Most of the villa belt sits in a Special Character Area, which constrains the street-facing form and adds a consent step. Anything painted before 1980 likely has lead in it, which changes how it's prepared.
Restore what makes it special. Replace what's just old. The 1970s kitchen at the back of the house is not heritage.
The whole house, once, properly. Re-pile, rewire, replumb, insulate, scrim out, open the rear and restore the front. You keep the street presence and get the way people actually live now.
A three-metre stud is the opportunity. Full-height bespoke cabinetry against an original cornice, and a scullery carved out of the old rear service area. Nothing standard fits, so nothing is standard.
You are building a wet room on a timber floor that flexes. Substrate, fall and waterproofing decide whether it lasts thirty years or five. The tiles are the easy part.
Before
After
Garfield Street villa bathroom, Parnell. Drag the handle to reveal the transformation.
Most villa quotes are a number someone hoped was right, and the variation lands on you six weeks in. We front-load the investigation, then fix the price once the design is locked and we know what we're dealing with. We've opened enough villa walls to know what's behind yours.
We walk the house, look under it, talk through what you want, and give you an honest scope and budget range. You keep the plan whether you use us or not.
Free · No obligationConcept, developed design, documentation and engineering — and we run the council process. Six to ten weeks of design, four to twelve of consent.
Strip-out through structure, services, linings, joinery and finish. One team, one project manager, one point of contact. Four to eight months.
Master-painted finish, full documentation, a final walkthrough — and we come back if a detail needs attention.
Real 2026 numbers from more than 100 Auckland homes, for a typical 140–190m² villa. Nobody else on page one will show you theirs.
Kitchen, bathrooms, flooring, paint and finishes without touching structure or services. The house is already warm, dry and level.
Re-pile, rewire, replumb, insulate, scrim out, rear opened up, new kitchen and bathrooms, restored front rooms. The one that actually fixes the house.
Everything above plus a significant rear or second-storey addition, bespoke joinery throughout and premium finishes.
Budget 25–40% more than the same renovation in a modern house. That's bespoke joinery instead of standard, substrate preparation before any finish work, full rewire and replumb, re-piling, and lead-paint protocols on anything pre-1980. Per square metre: a refresh runs $1,000–$1,600, a full renovation $1,700–$2,700, premium $2,900–$4,200. Room by room — kitchen $45k–$70k, bathroom $35k–$55k, laundry $15k–$25k. Figures are indicative and depend on your house. After the design phase you get a fixed price, so the number you sign off is the number you pay.
Book a free, no-obligation Renovation Roadmap. We come to your home, get under the floor, look at what you're actually dealing with, and give you a direction, an honest scope and a budget range — so you start with a plan, not a guess.
Once you sign off your design, your build price doesn't move — we wear the difference, not you. Every home is finished to our master-painter standard, and if a detail isn't right at handover, we make it right. That's the deal.
We deliberately take on only a handful of character homes at a time so yours gets our full attention — Auckland calendars book out months ahead.
Book your free Renovation Roadmap →No cost. No obligation. Just a clear next step.
"Max and the team made my new kitchen renovation an absolute dream — I couldn't be happier. I'll be using Key Interiors for all my future work."
"Max has a keen eye for design and is detail orientated. He really listens to your brief and comes back with a beautifully considered design that goes beyond what you asked for. High quality and well priced."
"Your go-to for kitchen, bathroom and laundry projects. Would highly recommend Max and Suzanne."
"Loved the outcome. Had a tiny living area and they helped with the interior while staying in budget. Loved the process — totally recommend."
"Key Interiors were fantastic to work with — very professional and over-delivered on their service. They made our dream our reality."
"They came up with great suggestions for my reno. A great team to work with — really impressed. Now for the kitchen!"
Tell us a little about your villa and what you're hoping to do with it. We'll be in touch to book your free, no-obligation consult.
A full renovation on a typical 140–190m² Auckland villa runs $280,000 to $445,000. Premium and architectural work with a significant extension runs $480,000 to $695,000. A cosmetic refresh, where the bones are already sound, starts around $165,000. After your design phase we give you a fixed price, so you know exactly what you're investing before any work begins.
Budget 25 to 40% more. Nothing in a villa is square, standard or insulated, so every cabinet and benchtop is bespoke and scribed to fit. Most villas also need re-piling, a full rewire and replumb, insulation and scrim removal before any of the visible work starts. And anything painted before 1980 likely has lead in it, which changes how it's prepared.
Plan on six to ten weeks of design and documentation, four to twelve weeks of consent depending on whether resource consent is involved, then four to eight months on site for a whole-house renovation. Longer with a significant extension. Anyone quoting you a whole villa in eight weeks hasn't opened the walls yet.
Often, but not always. If the floors have dropped noticeably, doors are binding, or the original timber piles are sitting directly in the ground, it needs assessing before anything else gets priced. A house that's still moving will telegraph through every new door, floor and tiled surface you install.
Scrim is hessian cloth stretched over the sarking boards and wallpapered over, often many layers deep. It's a genuine fire risk and it has to come out before you can insulate or line the walls properly.
Usually yes, and you should. Under the carpet in most of these houses is heart kauri or rimu that sands back to something you simply can't buy any more. We check for borer and structural soundness first, then sand and finish them.
Most of Auckland's villa belt sits inside Special Character Areas under the Auckland Unitary Plan. Broadly, changes to the street-facing form of the house need resource consent, while work behind the original building line has more freedom. Structural, plumbing and drainage work needs building consent wherever it is. Rules vary by overlay and by property, so check yours early — we run the whole process for you.
For a full renovation, usually not. Once the linings are off you have no insulation, no working services in most of the house, and dust in everything. Most of our villa clients move out for the main build and come back for the finishing stages. For a single room or a staged renovation, staying put is doable.
Yes. Bungalows have their own quirks — lower studs, different framing, often better bones than a villa — but the approach is the same. Open the living, warm it up, keep the casement windows and the native timber.
Right across the villa belt — Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, Herne Bay, Mt Eden, Kingsland, Westmere, Point Chevalier, Sandringham, Epsom, Remuera, Parnell, St Marys Bay and Devonport — plus the wider central and North Shore suburbs.
Auckland homeowners trust Key Interiors to design and build character homes done right — one team, one fixed price, one beautiful result. Start with a free Renovation Roadmap.
Book your free consultation →
