Mumbai is full of good apartments in old buildings: generous ceilings, solid walls, mature trees outside the window, and decades of tired plumbing and wiring hidden behind the plaster. Renovating one well is mostly about the parts you never see. That’s why we treat renovation as an architectural job, not just a decoration job.
what we look at first
Before we talk about finishes, we look at the building and the flat itself:
- Structure: cracks, spalling concrete, previous alterations, and what can and can’t be moved.
- Plumbing and drainage: old GI pipes, leaking joints, slopes, and how the flat ties into the building’s shafts.
- Electrical: load, wiring condition, earthing, and the space needed for modern appliances and air-conditioning.
- Waterproofing: bathrooms, kitchens, external walls and window frames, especially before the monsoon.
- Society rules: NOC requirements, permitted working hours, debris removal, lift use, and anything the building won’t allow.
We walk through these in detail in renovating an old Mumbai apartment: what to check before you start.
then the design
Once the bones are sound, the renovation becomes a design project like any other. We plan around how you live, choose materials that suit the age and climate of the building, and draw custom joinery that makes the most of every corner.
Plum House is a good example. It’s a 386 sq. ft. renovation within a 650 sq. ft. flat in a roughly 50-year-old Breach Candy building. It became a home that hosts twelve, with a teak display wall, raw brass and Levanto Red marble.
renovation or redevelopment?
Many older buildings in Mumbai are considering redevelopment. If yours is, it affects how much you should invest and in what. We’ll talk through the trade-offs honestly. Sometimes a lighter refresh with portable, high-quality furniture is the right call. Sometimes the timeline is long enough that a full renovation is well worth it.
heritage and character buildings
If your flat is in an older South Mumbai building with arches, timber, stone or lime plaster worth keeping, see heritage homes and The Seed.
timeline
Most apartment renovations take 4–9 months on site, depending on how much of the services are replaced and how restrictive the society’s working hours are. Design and approvals come first. See our process.
See also: home interiors · how much does interior design cost in Mumbai? · FAQ