Love domino, but the proportions here are creating an uncomfortable blocky-ness to it. Definitely paint your fascias and barge boards in the eave colour. I think by highlighting this overshadowed proportion will help draw your eye to the architectural outline, rather than the infill colour. Don't paint your window trims light, as they will only highlight the contrast and make the domini look darker and less complimentary. White windows with dark boards for example are better suited to wider trims, like architraves or timber framed windows, yours are a slim aluminium? And they should blend seamlessly into the cladding. I would however, repaint the protruding section,right in front of your entry, perhaps the stairwell, both on ground floor, and top level, so the entire elevation that sticks out is perhaps a lighter grey, mid range colour like urban grey. It will refocus the attention to the entry, drawing your eyes upward and the domino will simply help to minimise the heaviness upstairs, by almost. Disappearing. Domino is a strong architectural colour, it works to define or delete areas of elevation quite well. go with your gut instinct, just re- paint your front focus, and the domino will do its job. But it shouldn't be the element that steals the show, in this case, it doing so is causing doubt.

Does using 19mm high performance glass make enough difference? What about using a system with frames to use double glazing? Sure it's not frameless but it'll make life a lot easier. What about a combination of different glazing systems from south to north? Or as noted before reduce the glazed area. Rather than full height drop the height down to reduce the area. I'd still change designers though because if this hasn't been considered until now what other hidden 'land mines' are there around to trip you up and lighten your wallet even further. A new (good) designer will go through the plans and assess what needs amending. Designing is complicated and complex and needs a lot of thought, planning and forward thinking.

For storage, I used a mirrored lift up cupboard door above the sink area in my very small ensuite with some success. We put power points inside the cupboard too - it was a very good place to have them as the door lifts up & is out of the way. I also used some of the wall space to allow slightly deeper shelves, without the cupboard jutting so far into the room. The cistern was recessed into the wall cavity, (in our case below the window) & it worked well to save a little space in the room. Photos are not very good, but I hope you can get the idea.. It worked very well. The ensuite was 1mx2m. We use vertical towel rails. They're really good & very compact, but do make sure the electrician installs them up the right way. They work on the heat rising principal & do not work well upside down as ours were installed!Hope this is helpful. Good luck.

Hi clau. Whilst we were in those very early stages of reno-ing, we got told all sorts of things couldn't be done - even very basic things. We were also told there was only one way to some parts of our multi-room makeover. However, after speaking with alternative tradies, we learned that previous advice had been totally wrong; and there's almost always more than one solution. Some will tell you "it can't be done", but what they really mean is "I don't want to do it". There's a huge difference. It all depends on the experience and can-do attitude of the tradie. Unfortunately, it's left to us to work out if something really is impossible, or a huge, costly mega drama, or if they've embellished the negatives because they simply can't be bothered going to any effort. Can I suggest that if someone tells you something can't be done, ask them to explain why. If they can't explain it in a way that us novices can understand, or it sounds vague, illogical or dodgy, it probably is! Then it's definitely time to talk to someone else. If we had taken the initial "nuh, can't do that" as gospel, we wouldn't have a great, practical outcome. It would have been limited by what a lazy tradie wanted to do - or one who didn't respect that their client has to live with the results. We would've been miffed if we had spent all that moolah and found out later on that we didn't have to settle for a less than ideal outcome after all. Research, research, research, and fire off questions, questions, questions, and I'm sure you'll end up with a brilliant outcome. You'll wonder why you ever got stressed about it! :-) (PS: I'm not suggesting your sparkie may be a lazy tradie, far from it. I just wanted to share the benefit of what we discovered, that's all).