MALIBU, CA · BATHROOM REMODELING
Malibu Bathroom Remodels, Without the Coastal Wait
A bathroom remodeled in place, inside your home's existing footprint, is exempt from Malibu's Coastal Development Permit. What's left is a standard city building permit (typically four to six weeks) and a licensed family crew that treats one bathroom as a real job.
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A member of the Mayer’s team will reach out personally. If it’s urgent, call (888) 394-4041.
Verified where it counts
Licensed California general contractor, CA #1063024 (verify with the state). Family-owned since 2009.
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No coastal permit for an interior bathroom — here's the rule
Every remodeler who works the coast will warn you about Malibu's Coastal Development Permit. Fewer will tell you when it doesn't apply. The city's Local Coastal Program exempts interior remodels that add no square footage and no height. A bathroom remodeled in place, inside your existing walls, is exactly that.
So the process is the normal one: a City of Malibu building permit covering the plumbing, electrical, and construction, reviewed by Planning and Building Safety. With a complete, clean plan package, that review typically runs four to six weeks. Moving fixtures around inside the room (shower where the tub was, double vanity where the single stood) stays interior work.
The city's calendar is the one piece nobody controls, so we don't promise dates. Our in-house design team submits packages built to pass the first review, and we handle every correction ourselves.
Around here, crews committed to very large projects can make a single bathroom feel like an errand nobody wants. Not to us. Normal-size family jobs are what Mayer's Construction was built on in 2009 and what our crews are staffed for now. Send the form or call, and a real person calls you back within five minutes during business hours.
- No coastal permit for interior bathroom work*
- Approval: typically 4–6 weeks
- Plumbing & electrical on one city permit
- *Interior work only: no added square footage, inside the existing footprint.
When a bathroom project does go coastal — told straight
Some bathroom plans cross the line from interior remodel to coastal development, and we will tell you before anyone draws anything. The Coastal Development Permit path (commonly measured in months, often a year or more in appeal and resource-protection zones) applies to the five cases below.
We handle coastal-path projects too, with the timeline stated honestly up front. And there is almost always an interior answer in the meantime: most of what makes a bathroom feel new (layout, light, storage, surfaces, water pressure you can feel) lives inside the footprint you already own.
Added floor area
Adds floor area — a new bathroom wing, a widened footprint, a bumped-out shower.
Added height
Adds height or changes the roof line.
Work near a bluff edge
Involves any work within 50 feet of a bluff edge.
Exterior walls
Removes or replaces more than half of the exterior walls.
Outdoor structures
Adds outdoor structures: an outdoor shower enclosure, a spa deck, anything beyond the existing walls.
Bathroom remodeling in Malibu, neighborhood by neighborhood
Bathrooms age faster than any other room on the coast — moisture, salt air, and decades of daily use. Where your home sits shapes what yours needs.
Point Dume
The ranch homes on the Dume plateau often keep their original compartmentalized bathrooms: small primary bath, tub nobody uses, a layout drawn in 1968. Reconfiguring inside the same footprint (walk-in shower, double vanity, real storage) is interior work on the city-permit path. On bluff-side lots we check the 50-foot line before anything else and tell you exactly where your project stands.
Malibu Park & Malibu West
Family houses on the big parcels above Zuma, and in the Malibu West cul-de-sacs toward Trancas, live hard on their hall baths: two kids, sandy feet, morning rush. We build those baths to take it, with durable surfaces, storage that closes, and ventilation that actually clears the mirror, and we sequence the work so the household keeps a working bathroom whenever the layout allows.
Eastern Malibu — Big Rock, Las Flores, La Costa, Carbon Beach
Beach-house bathrooms on the eastern stretch fight the ocean every day, and the compact floor plans leave no room for error. Inside the existing walls we find it anyway: curbless showers that stretch the room, wall-hung vanities that free the floor, and moisture control designed in (membranes in the wet zones, ventilation sized for the space, hardware that shrugs off salt air).
Central Malibu — Malibu Knolls, Serra Retreat, Malibu Country Estates
In the '80s and '90s homes around the civic center and Pepperdine, bathrooms are usually the last original room in the house. A primary-suite upgrade or a guest-bath redo here is squarely interior scope — weeks of city review, then a few focused weeks of build.
Built for water, salt, and daily life
A coastal bathroom lives or dies on what you can't see. We design real ventilation (not just a fan on a switch), install waterproofing membranes through the wet zones, and specify moisture-rated substrates behind every tiled surface. Hardware, fixtures, and finishes are sourced by our own team and rated for salt air, because chrome that pits in two winters is not a savings. A bathroom's exterior touches are few: a vent cap, sometimes a window. Where they exist, Chapter 7A of the building code sets ignition-resistant standards, and we spec to them from the first drawing so plan check has nothing to flag.
Four steps, one crew
- 01
Call or send the form
A real person calls you back within five minutes during business hours.
- 02
Free on-site estimate
We look at the bathroom, listen, and confirm the permit path.
- 03
Design & plans
Our in-house team draws the room and files the Malibu Building Safety package.
- 04
Build
One licensed crew start to finish, with a written schedule before demolition begins.
Questions Malibu homeowners ask
Is a bathroom remodel in Malibu exempt from the coastal permit?
Does moving the shower, tub, or toilet trigger coastal review?
How long does a Malibu bathroom remodel take start to finish?
Can you remodel two bathrooms at the same time?
What do you do differently in beach houses close to the water?
Our house is on the bluff side. Is interior bathroom work still exempt?
Do you handle smaller bathroom projects, or only full remodels?
In our clients’ words
Rated 5.0 on Google
Impeccable workmanship. Mike was a stickler for quality — insisting the tiles have mitred corners, even if I didn’t ask for it. Great communications, every step of the way.
They worked hard to capture our vision, and if we ever ran into any issues, they worked with us to figure them out. We would happily use them again for another project.
High-quality materials, outstanding craftsmanship, and a very professional team. The entire project was well organized and completed on time, with great attention to detail.
Los Angeles County
Bathroom Remodeling nearby
Let's plan your Malibu bathroom.
Tell us what the bathroom needs. A real person calls you back within five minutes during business hours.