Renovating a Bathroom in a Sydney Strata Apartment? Here's the Approval You Actually Need in 2026

If you own an apartment in Sydney and you're planning a bathroom renovation in Sydney homeowners in a free-standing house never have to think twice about, there's a step most renovation guides skip entirely: getting it past your owners corporation. A huge share of Sydney's housing stock is strata, from the art deco blocks in Bondi and Randwick across our Sydney service areas to the newer towers around Wolli Creek and Olympic Park, and the approval process for a bathroom is genuinely different to anything else in the home. Skip it, and you're not just risking a fine. You could be personally liable for every bit of damage that waterproofing failure causes to the apartment below you, years after the tiler's gone.

Most people start researching bathroom renovation cost in Sydney wide before they've even checked their by-laws, and that's understandable. Cost is what keeps you up at night. But strata approval timing affects your budget and your schedule just as much as tile prices do, and getting it wrong is the single most common reason strata bathroom jobs stall halfway through.

Why bathrooms get special treatment under NSW strata law

Under the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015, renovation work in NSW falls into three tiers: cosmetic, minor and major. Cosmetic work, things like hanging a towel rail or repainting, needs no approval at all. Minor renovations, such as swapping cabinetry or laying new hard flooring, need either a committee sign-off (if your by-laws allow it) or a vote at a general meeting where more than half the votes cast are in favour.

Bathrooms almost never fall into either of those first two categories. The line that matters is waterproofing. Any work that touches a waterproof membrane automatically becomes a major renovation, and nearly every real bathroom job, short of a cosmetic refresh that leaves the shower recess completely untouched, involves re-waterproofing at some point. That pushes you straight into the major works pathway, which means a special resolution at a general meeting, not a quick committee tick. (Learn more about NSW standards in our guide on council approvals and AS 3740 waterproofing).

What a special resolution actually involves

A special resolution passes unless more than 25% of the value of votes cast is against it. That's a lower bar than it sounds, but it still means you need an actual general meeting on the calendar, which could be the scheduled AGM or a meeting you request specifically. If your strata manager needs to call an extraordinary general meeting just for your renovation, build at least four to six weeks into your timeline before work can legally start, on top of however long the tiling and fit-out itself takes.

There's a second catch that trips up a lot of owners doing a full ensuite renovation for the first time. If the resolution makes you responsible for maintaining the waterproofing afterward (which owners corporations usually want, since nobody wants to be on the hook for your shower leaking in ten years), that resolution has no legal effect on its own. Under section 108(5) of the Act, the owners corporation first needs your written consent to a specific by-law covering that ongoing maintenance obligation, and then it needs to actually pass that by-law. Skip this step and the owners corporation may struggle to ever enforce your maintenance responsibility, which usually means the whole arrangement gets revisited, sometimes after the tiling is already down.

The $5,000 trigger most owners don't know about

Here's a detail that catches out plenty of people budgeting for a mid-range standard bathroom renovation. For any strata building work costing more than $5,000, a registered design practitioner has to prepare the regulated design documentation, and a registered building practitioner has to oversee the work on site. Almost any genuine bathroom renovation in Sydney, even a fairly modest one once you've added tiling, a new vanity, waterproofing and labour, clears that $5,000 threshold easily. (See our trade-by-trade breakdown on where your money really goes in a Sydney bathroom renovation). That's not a reason to panic. It just means the licensed tradesperson you were going to hire anyway needs to be the kind who can produce proper documentation, not a mate doing cash work on weekends.

Structural changes need extra notice

If your renovation plan includes anything structural, moving a wall, changing the footprint of the shower recess, or altering plumbing stacks shared with neighbouring units—frequently required in custom bathroom designs and luxury bathroom renovations—the owners corporation must give at least 14 days' written notice before work begins, even after the special resolution has already passed. Build that into your schedule separately from the resolution itself. It's a formality, but it's a formality with a fixed minimum timeframe that you can't compress by asking nicely.

Check your by-laws before you assume anything

Every scheme can expand its own list of what counts as cosmetic or minor, which means two apartments in different buildings a street apart in Surry Hills can have completely different approval requirements for what looks like the same job on paper. Before you get too far into planning a small bathroom renovation in your unit, ask your strata manager for the current by-laws and read the renovation-specific ones properly, not just the summary in the owners corporation newsletter. Some buildings have pre-approved renovation guidelines for bathrooms that spell out acceptable tile types, approved waterproofing products and even preferred contractors, which can genuinely speed up your approval if you follow them.

What happens if you skip approval

Plenty of owners figure a bathroom reno is "inside the lot" and nobody else's business, and that's where things go wrong. Waterproofing membranes sit against common property, the slab, and a failure doesn't stay politely inside your four walls. If a strata inspection or a neighbour's ceiling leak later reveals unapproved work, you can be ordered to restore the bathroom to its prior condition at your own cost, on top of whatever you already spent building it. Research into NSW strata buildings has consistently found waterproofing defects among the most common serious issues owners corporations deal with, which is exactly why committees take this particular approval so seriously, even when they wave through other renovations with barely a glance. For details on waterproofing compliance costs, see our guide on walk-in shower costs and NSW waterproofing rules.

A realistic approval timeline for a strata bathroom reno

If you're trying to plan backward from a target start date, a sensible estimate looks like this: two to three weeks to get your design and contractor documentation together, four to six weeks (sometimes less if your scheme has frequent meetings) to get a general meeting scheduled and the special resolution passed, and then whatever your builder quotes for the actual build, typically four to eight weeks for a full gut renovation once it starts. All up, you're usually looking at two to three months from "I want a new bathroom" to tiles on the wall, and that's before accounting for any council input if your building also needs that layer of approval for the work. Browse our completed renovation gallery to see examples of beautifully completed Sydney apartment renovations.

None of this should put you off renovating. Sydney apartments with dated, poorly laid-out bathrooms sell and rent for noticeably less than equivalent units with a decent reno, and getting the approval right the first time is far cheaper than redoing waterproofing twice. It just means the planning conversation for a strata bathroom needs to start with your strata manager and your by-laws, not with a tile showroom. Check out the latest Sydney bathroom trends for 2026 to inspire your strata-friendly design.

Getting the right people involved early

The renovators who do strata bathrooms well in Sydney aren't necessarily the cheapest quote you'll get. They're the ones who've sat through enough owners corporation meetings to know what documentation a committee wants to see before they'll even put a resolution to a vote, and who can produce the design and compliance paperwork a $5,000-plus job now legally requires. Ask any contractor quoting your job directly whether they've worked on strata renovations before and whether they can supply the regulated design documentation themselves or coordinate with a registered design practitioner who can. If they look blank at that question, that's useful information before you sign anything, not after. Learn more about our licensed team and trade credentials, or contact us for a free consultation to discuss your strata apartment renovation.