A high end apartment renovation means using top of the line products and materials, but also having a high quality team. New York City has many luxury apartments which deserve a high end design.
I am Jorge Fontan architect and owner of Fontan Architecture in NYC. I want to be clear about defining what makes an apartment high end. A high end apartment should not only have high quality materials and products, but should have a high quality overriding design and high quality construction. As an architect I will review a few things to take into consideration when planning a high end apartment renovation in New York City.
Planning A High End Apartment Renovation In NYC
Loft Bedroom Design
High End Renovation Budgets: $500 Per Square Foot and Up
Luxury Budgets: $600 Per Square Foot and Up
A high end apartment renovation starts at about $500 per square foot and goes up from there. Over $600 per square foot, I would say you have a luxury budget in NYC. These budgets are rough estimates, and of course will vary from project to project. Architects like me tend to use a cost per square foot budget in the planning phase. Let’s keep it simple and use a few examples. If you are renovating a 2,000 square foot apartment with a 500 dollar per square foot budget you would spend about one million on the renovation. If you are renovating a 5,000 square foot apartment with a 600 dollar per square foot budget, we are looking at a three million dollar renovation budget.
Cost per square foot is what architects usually use to plan a budget. A general contractor will provide a take off price or full cost budget. These are not the same thing. The rough cost per square foot budget that I mention is just me, as an architect, using a simplified method to start. Once a full set of architectural drawings and specifications are prepared, a contractor can actually price out the entire job.
Luxury Bedroom
Hard Costs vs Soft Costs
In order to understand your budgeting and prepare you for speaking with professionals, let’s look at some common terminology.
Hard Costs refer to actual material and labor. All products, materials, and construction labor are hard costs. The General Contractor and subcontractors are hard costs, as are construction materials, appliances, fixtures, etc.
Soft Costs are basically everything that is not a hard cost. Soft costs include architect fees, engineers, interior designer, Department of Buildings fees, Asbestos testing, printing drawings, fees to your management company, etc. The Soft Costs on a high end project will be between 15% – 20% of the budget. It can go over 20% as well, but this will be for very special projects. It will vary based on the services, extent of work, and the team. A famous architect will generally charge more than a smaller boutique firm. One thing to consider when hiring a famous architect, is that you never want to be somebody’s smallest project.
Please realize these numbers are very rough and every project is different. The extent of the work will affect the price of your apartment renovation.
There are lots of ways to cut a budget, but it tends to be a lot easier to increase the budget than to reduce it.
Budgetary Factors for High End Residential Renovations
The picture below is of a Luxury quality kitchen faucet in a Manhattan apartment we renovated. This faucet has a list price in the neighborhood of $3,800 for just the faucet alone. If you are purchasing this level of product, the budget will quickly increase.
High End Kitchen Faucet
High End Quality vs Everything Custom
You have two choices when you are doing a high end apartment renovation: you can do custom work, or you can do high-end non custom. People always assume custom is better. In many cases this is true, but it depends on the company and product. I have seen some disappointing custom kitchens, as well as some spectacular ones. There are also a lot of very high end kitchen cabinet companies that you can look at.
High end Renovations
Almost Anything Can Be Custom
Nearly anything can be custom made: millwork (cabinets), doors, even sinks can be custom made. You should discuss this with your team and understand the differences. If something is custom and the price is unusually low, I would stay away from it. There are plenty of low quality custom companies. If you are going to spend the money on custom, make sure it is high quality and worth it. Otherwise, you can find lots of good manufacturers out there.
Custom Cabinets
The picture below is of a kitchen in a Tribeca Loft, with simple custom white cabinets.
High End Tribeca Loft Renovation NYC
Simple Modern High End Cabinets
The picture below is of an apartment we worked on with concrete finishes. In this kitchen, we did not do custom cabinets, but installed high end cabinets made in Italy. If you are going to go with European cabinets, one thing to consider is the lead time for these products, which can be quite long. This is a good option if your project is not on a deadline.
Modern High End European Kitchen Cabinets
Critical Thresholds
One challenge with high end apartment renovations is that they can easily go from a high end budget to an extreme luxury budget. As an architect, I always ask my clients (even when they have high budgets) about critical thresholds on the budget. Let me share an anecdote to explain.
We have a client, a young woman and her husband, who hired us to renovate their 6,500 square foot Soho Loft. They were interested in wide plank floors, so we brought them to showrooms where we came up with a few options. We presented them with a 10″ plank and a 12″ plank. The 10″ plank was going to cost about $100,000 for the entire apartment. The 12″ plank would cost $200,000 for the entire apartment. That is where we hit a critical threshold. The price jumped drastically just for going from a 10″ to a 12.” While they had the budget for it, they could not make sense out of spending an extra 100K just for a two inch difference in planks. There are many people who would be willing to spend that money for details, so identifying these issues is important.
You can do a high end apartment without going overboard. These are frank conversations that I like to have with my clients, but some people do not like to discuss budgets.
Hiring an Architect For High End Apartment Renovations
I have never understood people who are looking to spend millions of dollars on purchasing an apartment and then another million or more on the renovation, but hire cheap architects. Of course, I do have a bias, as I am an architect.
High End Architectural Services
High end architectural services include a team that provides a great deal of attention to your needs, desires, and concerns. This means they are looking out for your best interest and stay on top of your project in order to ensure a quality final product. High end services means full service. The team will be involved in every decision. The architect’s work does not stop when the drawings are complete. It should stop when the apartment renovation is complete.
During construction, you will want the architect to go to the job site every week, but, of course, this brings a price to the project fees. It is advised for a high end or luxury apartment renovation that the architect goes to the job site weekly.
The Design Team
The architect should assemble and coordinate the design team. Of course you can hire a separate interior decorator or interior designer if you prefer that. Some architects also do interior design and decorating, while others do not. You can have these under your architect’s contract or not. I generally think it is easier on the client if they hire one person and the architect manages all the consultants. I personally have worked both ways, and have noticed the jobs where the client hires everyone separately seem to have the most coordination issues.
Some of the professionals that might work on your renovation, dependent on the scope of work.
- Architect
- Mechanical Engineer
- Structural Engineer
- Filing Representative (some architects do in house)
- Lighting Designer
- Interior Designer (can be the architect)
- Interior Decorator
- AV Consultant or Smart Home Consultant
- Security Consultant
High End Apartment Example Drawing
The drawing below is of an apartment we are currently working on. In this project we are combining 2 lofts in Soho with a combined floor area of 6,500 square feet. The drawing below is of their kitchen.
High end apartment kitchen renovation Architectural Drawings
The Design Process
When planning a high end apartment renovation in NYC, you will need to hire a New York Residential Architect familiar with high end design. You want to discuss early on with your team how much you want to be involved with a project. If you are a couple, it is good to know who is involved in what and how often you want to meet and review. I have had clients that are very hands on and want to be involved in every decision. Those are usually the types of clients I get. As far as I am concerned, the client is a part of the design team, unless they do not want to be.
Designing your home is a really personal experience. You should feel comfortable with the people you work with on this. When I have clients who want to be very involved on gut renovations we usually set a weekly time to meet and review. These weekly meetings can also be good for showroom visits or reviewing details at the apartment.
Working sessions are also very helpful with hands-on clients. Clients sometimes come to my office where we’ll go over progress projected on a big screen, or do a screen share meeting. We can also bring a laptop to their home for working sessions. In these sessions, we can put the drawings and 3D model on the screen and go over the design while tweaking as necessary in real time. Some of my clients love this, but others do not have the patience for it. You might want to think about what your preferences are and discuss it with the architect. I always ask my clients early on about how involved they want to be.
High End Kitchen Renovation Plans in a Soho Loft we are renovating
Hiring a High End Residential Contractor in NYC
I want to keep this simple, so lets just be clear about one thing. You do not want to spend a fortune on purchasing your apartment and on materials and products, just to have it installed by a cheap contractor who is in over their head.
One of my clients purchased an 8 million dollar loft renovated by the previous owner. The apartment had brand new very expensive materials, finishes, and fixtures, but all installed with low quality. Nothing in the apartment works and the place is falling apart despite having been renovated only four years earlier. The showers do not drain properly, the bathroom exhausts do not work, the floor boards are popping up, just to name a few problems. I am now redesigning the apartment and we will use a high quality General Contractor to finish the work. Make sure that the team is equally high end as the materials that they will be installing.
The architect and contractor need to work well together. I personally have been in luck on this so far, but there certainly are some contractors I prefer to work with. It is good to get advice on the contractor from the architect. As I tell my clients, I am happy to recommend a contractor, but the final decision is up to the client.
It is never too early to bring a contractor on board.
Custom Finishes
The apartment below is a high end apartment in the Financial District that we renovated. This apartment has a lot of custom finishes. The walls have concrete finishes, which I understand is not for everyone. This is a more modern industrial look. You can see more about this apartment in another blog post that we wrote on this Concrete Apartment Design.
Tall Modern Loft Door Design in concrete apartment
The Contractor for the above project was KJ Remodeling owned by Konrad Jankowski.
During Construction
The architect will do site visits during construction and coordinate sign off paperwork at the completion. As we already discussed, you may want to pay for weekly site visits during construction, as it is money well spent. The architect will review for quality control, but also for issues that come up. There are a million little details and many of these get taken care of in the field. Towards the end of construction the architect and contractor will work on punch lists to finish up. You should let the team know if you want to be involved in this process.
Some clients are in town and want to go to the job site constantly. If you are not that kind of client, you can ask the team to submit regular progress reports and pictures.
NY Architect Jorge Fontan at an Apartment Renovation Jobsite Visit
High End Loft Renovation
The picture below is of a High End Tribeca Loft Renovation. This apartment is currently for sale, listed for 7.65 million.
High End Tribeca Loft Architect NYC
NYC High End Apartment Renovations
As an architect, I study design and construction, but these are complicated and quite involved issues. Every project is different and must be assessed on its own unique characteristics. This post does not assume to cover every possible issue or condition, but rather to provide a general overview of the topic.
SoHo Loft Exposed Brick NYC
Thank you for reading our blog post on Planning High End Apartment Renovations In NYC
I hope this was helpful. Please leave questions and comments below. If you would like to speak with an architect, you can contact us directly.
This post was written by Jorge Fontan AIA a Registered Architect and owner of New York City architecture firm Fontan Architecture. Jorge Fontan has earned 3 degrees in the study of architecture including two degrees from the City University of New York and a Masters Degree in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University. Jorge has a background in construction and has been practicing architecture for 20 years where he has designed renovations and new developments of various building types.
