Bold Vision

Practical features make the most of this dusky two-bedroom apartment’s compact footprint.

- ISABELLE TOW

Space Two-bedroom condominium apar tment

Location Siglap

Reno period 12 weeks

Home to A couple

Budget $90k

Entrance area Since English homes traditionally feature wooden floors, the existing marble floors were overlaid with grainy wood-effect vinyl to achieve the style.

The approach that most homeowners take when faced with a space-constrained home is to expand it visually through a bright and light interior design. The owners of this 760sq ft apartment, however, had the opposite instinct. They wanted to fashion their apartment in a modern English style, fleshed out in dusky shades of slate and ebony.

To bring this vision to life, they enlisted the expertise of designers Ean Chu and Vanessa Goh of Happe Design Atelier. Both designers intuitively understood that a pure black scheme tended to overwhelm small spaces, so they sought to temper their design with balancing details that would add illusory height and volume to the home.