Laundry renovation cost Melbourne: a real breakdown
Quick answer: A laundry renovation in Melbourne costs between $5,000 and $20,000, and most standard jobs land at $8,000 to $14,000. One decision moves that number more than every other choice combined: whether the plumbing stays where it is. Leave it alone and plumbing is under $600. Move the trough to another wall and add $1,500 to $5,000.
What a laundry renovation costs in Melbourne
The laundry is the room people leave until last and then discover is oddly expensive for its size. That is because it has almost everything a bathroom has, plumbing, waterproofing, tiling, cabinetry, electrical, packed into three or four square metres.
| Scope | Range | What that covers |
|---|---|---|
| Budget update, flatpack | $5,000 to $8,000 | Flatpack cabinetry, new benchtop and trough, tapware, paint. Everything stays where it is. No tiling beyond a splashback. |
| Standard Melbourne renovation | $8,000 to $14,000 | Semi-custom cabinetry, new floor and wall tiling, waterproofing redone, better trough and tapware, minor plumbing adjustment. Where most jobs land. |
| Full custom | $15,000 to $25,000 | Custom joinery, full retile, plumbing relocated to a different wall, sometimes a new window or a wall moved to borrow space. |
Market ranges from published Australian cost guides for 2026, several of them Melbourne-specific. Not gutted. quotes. We price after a site visit, in writing, never off a page.
Where the money actually goes
| Line item | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| Flatpack cabinetry, 2.4 metre wall | $800 to $2,500 |
| Semi-custom cabinetry | $2,500 to $5,000 |
| Custom joinery, same 2.4 metre wall | $4,000 to $8,000 |
| Plumbing left where it is | under $600 |
| Plumbing relocated across the room | $1,500 to $5,000 |
| Tiling, labour and materials | $1,500 to $3,500 |
Look at rows four and five. Same room, same cabinetry, same tiles. One decision, and a swing of several thousand dollars.
The four things that decide your number
Where the plumbing stays
This is the whole game. Leave the trough and the machine taps where they are and the plumbing is under $600. Move the trough to a different wall and you are looking at $1,500 to $5,000, because the waste has to be re-run with the right fall and that often means cutting the slab or going under the floor.
Flatpack or joinery
Flatpack cabinetry is 50 to 70 percent cheaper than custom, and the gap on a single 2.4 metre wall is roughly $800 to $2,500 against $4,000 to $8,000. Custom earns its money in an odd-shaped laundry where flatpack sizes leave dead gaps, and earns nothing at all in a standard rectangle.
Waterproofing
A laundry is a wet area, so waterproofing is mandatory under the National Construction Code, not optional and not a line item to negotiate away. If the floor is coming up, the membrane is being redone. Any quote that retiles a laundry floor without waterproofing in it is missing something that matters.
Borrowing space from somewhere else
Melbourne laundries, especially in worker's cottages and units, are often a cupboard or a lean-to off the back. Half the briefs we see are really about making the room bigger by moving a wall or stealing from a hallway. That is a structural conversation, not a cabinetry one, and it changes the number entirely.
The case for doing it with the bathroom
Here is the thing no laundry cost guide mentions, and it is the single most useful piece of advice on this page.
In most Melbourne houses the laundry shares a wall, or at least a wet wall, with the bathroom. They need the same trades in the same order: plumber, waterproofer, tiler, electrician, cabinetmaker. When those trades are already on site, already set up, already with the water off and the tiles ordered, the marginal cost of doing the laundry as well is dramatically lower than bringing all of them back in six months for a room the size of a cupboard.
Doing them separately means paying twice for mobilisation, twice for a minimum tiling charge, twice for a waterproofer to attend, and living through the disruption twice. Doing them together means one set of trades, one set-up, one mess.
A bathroom renovation with gutted. runs $18,000 to $40,000 as a written fixed price, and a laundry alongside it is a far smaller addition than the $8,000 to $14,000 it would cost standing alone. If the bathroom is anywhere on your list for the next couple of years, get both quoted at once even if you only do one. Our bathroom renovation cost breakdown covers where that money goes, and the budget bathroom guide covers holding the lower end.
The Melbourne laundry problem, it is usually too small
In a Footscray or Yarraville worker's cottage the laundry is frequently a lean-to tacked onto the back, or a cupboard off the kitchen with a machine wedged in. In a unit it is a European laundry behind bifold doors.
So a lot of laundry briefs are not really about the laundry. They are about wanting the room to be bigger, which means moving a wall, stealing from a hallway, or absorbing part of a back verandah. That is a different job with a different answer, and it is worth being honest about at the start rather than trying to solve it with cleverer cabinetry. Sometimes the right move is a smaller ambition: a stacked machine and dryer, a benchtop over the top, and the space you already have used properly.
The trough, the machine, and the stacked question
Almost every laundry layout decision comes back to three objects and how much wall they eat. Get this settled before anyone quotes cabinetry, because it decides how much cabinetry there is.
Side by side or stacked. A washer and dryer beside each other need roughly 1.3 metres of run and give you a continuous benchtop over the top. Stacking them frees up around 600mm of bench and cupboard, which in a Melbourne laundry is often the difference between having somewhere to fold and not. Stacking needs a bracket kit and a dryer that will sit on that particular washer, so it is worth confirming before the joinery is measured rather than after.
Trough size. The default 45 litre trough is there because people soak things and wash out paint rollers in it. If you genuinely do neither, a smaller trough or a laundry-style sink in the benchtop buys you cupboard space underneath. If you have a dog, a big trough is the most useful thing in the room. Nobody can answer this for you, but the cabinetmaker needs the answer.
Where the machine drains. Front loaders and top loaders want their waste at different heights, and a machine sitting under a benchtop needs the tap set behind or beside it rather than above. These are small details that become expensive when they are discovered after the tiling is finished and the plumber has to come back.
How long you are without a laundry
Worth planning for honestly, because a laundry renovation is short but total. Unlike a kitchen, where you can microwave things for three weeks, there is no partial laundry.
A flatpack refit with the plumbing untouched is a few days. A standard renovation with the floor up, new waterproofing and a retile is one to two weeks, and most of that is not people working. It is the membrane curing, then the tiler coming back, then the grout, then the plumber returning to reconnect. Four separate visits with waiting in between, which is why a small room takes longer than the amount of work in it suggests.
Practical version: assume two weekends at a laundromat or a friend's place, and ask for the sequence in writing with dates rather than a single duration. A written timeline with a start and an end is the thing that makes a renovator accountable to a calendar, and on a job this short the difference between eight days and eighteen is entirely about whether anyone booked the trades in the right order.
Check the registration, not the sales pitch
A laundry is a small job, and small wet-area jobs are exactly where unregistered operators turn up. The pitch is usually a good price and a quick start, and the work that matters most on this job is the work you will never be able to see again.
Waterproofing goes under the tiles. Once it is covered, you have no way of knowing whether it was done properly until a wall two rooms away goes soft. Plumbing work in Victoria has to be done by a licensed plumber and a registered building practitioner has a number that is checkable on the public register. "Fully licensed" as a phrase in an ad is not checkable at all. Ask for the number, then look it up. It takes two minutes and it is the only part of vetting a trade that does not rely on your judgement of a person.
Worth knowing
If the tiles and the waterproofing are sound and you just want it to look better, do not renovate the laundry. Paint it, put flatpack cabinetry in, change the trough and the tapware, upgrade the light. That is a weekend and a licensed plumber for an hour, and it is a genuinely sensible outcome that does not need us.
We are the right call when the floor is coming up, when the plumbing needs to move, when the room needs to get bigger, or when the bathroom next door is on the list too. Below that, you are paying a renovation company to manage a job that does not need managing.
Common questions
How much does a laundry renovation cost in Melbourne?
Published 2026 cost guides put a Melbourne laundry renovation between $5,000 and $20,000, with most standard jobs landing at $8,000 to $14,000. A flatpack update with the plumbing left alone sits at $5,000 to $8,000. Custom joinery with relocated plumbing runs $15,000 to $25,000.
What makes a laundry renovation more expensive?
Moving the plumbing, more than anything else. Keeping the trough and machine taps in place holds plumbing under $600. Relocating them adds $1,500 to $5,000 because the waste needs the right fall, which can mean cutting the slab. After that it is custom joinery against flatpack, then the amount of tiling.
Is waterproofing required in a laundry renovation?
Yes. A laundry is a wet area under the National Construction Code and waterproofing is mandatory. If the floor tiles are coming up, the membrane is being replaced underneath them. It is also the part of the job you can never inspect once it is finished, which is a reason to care who does it.
Do I need a permit to renovate a laundry in Victoria?
Usually not for a like-for-like refit, because you are not changing the use of the building or its structure. It changes if you move a load-bearing wall to make the room bigger, or extend the footprint. Plumbing and electrical work still has to be done by licensed trades and certified, permit or no permit.
Is flatpack laundry cabinetry worth it?
In a standard rectangular laundry, usually yes. It is 50 to 70 percent cheaper than custom joinery and the difference in a room nobody entertains in is hard to justify. In a narrow or odd-shaped laundry, flatpack sizes leave dead gaps and custom starts to pay for itself.
Should I renovate the laundry and bathroom at the same time?
If they share a wall, almost always. The waterproofer, tiler, plumber and electrician are already on site and already set up, so the marginal cost of adding the laundry is far lower than doing it as its own job six months later. You also only live through the disruption once.
How long does a laundry renovation take?
A flatpack refit with the plumbing left alone is a few days. A standard renovation with retiling and new waterproofing is one to two weeks, most of which is waiting on the membrane to cure and the tiler to come back. Relocating plumbing adds time before any of that starts.
Can I just replace the trough and cabinetry myself?
The cabinetry, yes. The plumbing connection, no. Work on the water supply or waste has to be done by a licensed plumber in Victoria, and the licence is checkable on the public register rather than taken on trust. A laundry is also the room where a slow leak goes unnoticed longest.
If the bathroom is on the list too, start with bathroom renovation costs and get both priced together. For the whole-house picture see the home renovation cost breakdown. Before signing anything, read what should be in a renovation quote. See finished work on our work page. Licences and registrations are checkable through the Building and Plumbing Commission, and contract guidance is on Consumer Affairs Victoria.