Samuel and QiQi, both in their 30s, describe their house hunting experience with a simple phrase: “You just know it.” They were looking for a first home that vibed with their personalities, one they could see themselves growing old in. The couple, who live in a 5-room HDB flat at Woodlands Drive 14 with their Shiba, Kiko, hired Threehaus Works for the interior design. The project, spread across 1,356 square feet, was built around things that make the pair go “wow” and their dog go “woof.”
A Laissez-Faire Approach to Colour
Samuel works in IT and his mantra is: “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” QiQi is a marketing data analyst consultant and they share the home with their Shiba, Kiko, also affectionately referred to as “ruler of the household, watcher of the neighbourhood, napper of all afternoons, sunbather of warm patches, supervisor of all things that require zero dogs, and barker of delivery parcels”. It is their vivacious personalities, rather than a fixed style or theme, that the home was designed around. It is about things that they like and it allows them to fill the home with more things that they like, just like a blank canvas.
As Threehaus Works interior designer, Jax Ren, puts it: “We did not want everything to match perfectly. A lot of the charm comes from things being a little unexpected next to each other. The fixed parts of the home are really just the framework. The house becomes more ‘them’ through their furniture, artwork, toys, prints and all the random things that they continue to add.” The couple had the idea of using primary red-blue-yellow colours and along the way, orange also became part of the colour palette.
There was no hard and fast rule, just a more relaxed, laissez-faire approach. “If there is too much red, we do blue, and if there is too much blue, we do yellow, and so on,” says homeowner Samuel. Interior designer Jax let his intuition take the lead and when he felt that one colour was starting to dominate, he would balance it with another hue. Although the home comes across as being colourful, the big surfaces are actually quite calm- white walls and tiles, light grey floors, raw concrete, timber, and stainless steel.
More than just aesthetics, Jax used colours as punctuation and for wayfinding. “Instead of painting every big surface a strong colour, we put the stronger colours on doors, frames, thresholds, exposed pipes and certain pieces of carpentry. So the blue wall and yellow door tell you where the kitchen is, while the different coloured doors along the corridor give each room its own identity,” he explains.
Designing for a Dog and Her Humans
An important decision was to have the new full-height window frames in white instead of dark bronze. Due to the prominence of the windows within the living room and study area, the dark bronze frames would have been overwhelming. Having them in white helps to make them visually disappear and allows the rest of the colours to come together more harmoniously. Not just another nondescript entrance along the common corridor, a bright yellow gate welcomes visitors and announces to everyone QiQi’s favourite colour. The existing storeroom was removed to widen the former corridor-like space to create a proper entrance foyer.
A trail of Kiko’s paw prints leads from the gate into the home. Samuel and QiQi got the idea when they noticed accidental paw prints on the road pavements and thought that it would be a cute feature to incorporate into their home and have Kiko be a part of it. The cement floor strikes up a dialogue with the exposed concrete beam above and they make up a neutral backdrop against which the colourful palette can stand out. To the right of the main door is a pair of yellow and green old school chairs that remind the couple of their childhood.
These sit beside a vintage timber cabinet that gives the entrance foyer a retro feel that does not feel over designed. An opening has been created in the wall between the foyer and the kitchen. Outlined in a red frame, it offers a peek into the goings on in the adjacent kitchen from the foyer. As the couple cooks fairly often, the kitchen was an important part of their brief. They wanted to accommodate a gas range, built-in oven, microwave, dishwasher and ample storage.
The idea of an open concept kitchen appealed to them, but with all the frequent cooking, a semi-enclosed design would be more feasible. A red doorway echoes the red window opening and leads from the entrance foyer into the kitchen. The kitchen is also accessible from the dining area via a yellow sliding door set against a blue wall. To balance these strong colours, Jax toned down the colours in the kitchen itself, but played up the contrast between different materials and finishes instead – from the terracotta-coloured floor tiles and wood grained cabinets to the white backsplash tiles and stainless steel counter tops.
The full height windows are one of the key features of the home and the star of the living area. Replacing the old windows with these floor-to-ceiling ones posed quite a challenge. It involved a fair amount of co-ordination with HDB and approval from BCA, which added to the renovation duration. The windows were installed only on the actual handover day itself. However, looking back, it was all worth it because the windows allows plenty of light into the home, as well as offer views out. “Kiko really likes to ‘kaypoh’ and the full height windows give her full access to her day job of being a snoop,” says QiQi.
To complement the full height fenestrations, the rest of the living room was deliberately kept simple and neutral, with minimal carpentry so that the couple can switch things around easily. However, the lively colours and personalities of the home and homeowners still come through in the assortment of furniture, rugs, lamps, prints and other objects from their collection. “We collected these things over the years when we travel or come across items that we like and in the recent two years, a lot of them have been collected with the thought of ‘I think this will look nice if we put it up in our house next time’,” shares Samuel.
Both Samuel and QiQi required dedicated work areas within the home and this space behind the living area is QiQi’s. The existing wall between the living room and original study was hacked and replaced with a low partition wall that offers some degree of spatial separation without being totally cut off from the rest of the space. It provides QiQi with a defined work area that also enjoys the natural light and view from the full height windows.
Another beam was revealed with the removal of the original wall. Continuing the same approach as the beam above the entrance foyer, interior designer Jax decided to leave it exposed and raw instead of boxing it up, which adds to the character of the space. There are a lot of colours happening in the dining room, but interior designer Jax managed to make it work by keeping the walls and the floor light and monochromatic.
