Mid-Century Japanese Inspired 4-room BTO with a Charming Cabin Entryway

Hi everyone, my name is Winstar from Noble Interior Design. Right here, we are at a four-room BTO at Tampines Greenverge, and today we're going through the design journey of this beautiful home. Here we are at the foyer, the entrance of the unit. It's very important to make sure that it's inviting and exclusive in this space. One of the key things that we notice here is that the ceiling is intentionally brought down. The reason why we did this was to make it more cozy and more inviting. One good tip that you can take note of is that if you don't like the colour of your door, you don't actually have to buy a whole new door because fire-rated doors are very expensive. So what you can do is get a film, a sticker, that matches the colour of the laminates in your place and stick over it. Over here is one of my favourite part of the place. It's an island and we intentionally built it over here. You can see that it's curved. You walk around this area quite often, so it's pretty important to make sure that it's not sharp. Functionality-wise as well, we made sure that there is enough storage space here for their shoes, drawers for their masks, their socks, etc. Beautiful piece with functionality in mind. Moving over to the other side, we also made sure to cover everything that is non-aesthetic. So this was initially the DB box area. We did cabinet doors with fluted panels to conceal all the wires and not-so-nice stuff. We placed a very huge mirror over here, so that they can check themselves out before they leave the house. While designing the place, we also made sure to understand the client's requirements, their needs and their interests. So this homeowner, they love to drink. They are whiskey lovers and they love to entertain their guests. So we designed a bar counter over here. It's a whiskey lover's haven. They can have their collection here, more cabinets in here to keep all their alcohol. And there's a mini fridge here as well. And now, over to the kitchen. When I first met the homeowners, they actually wanted to have an open concept kitchen. But because of the layout constraints, they aren't able to achieve that because the bomb shelter is right smack in the middle between the kitchen and the living area. But they still like to have a spacious feel to it. So to achieve that, there are a few elements that I did. Coming in here, you will notice that the walls of the service yard are hacked away. So we elongated this area. This portion, we didn't have any top cabinets so that when you see here, it's wider. You can see that the tiles are intentionally selected bigger and wider so that we see less route lines and it actually feels bigger as well. While designing a kitchen, we also need to understand the homeowners' requirements, how often they cook, heavy cooking, light cooking. And right over here, what we did was there's a gas stove and an induction cooker. The benefit of this is that when one is down, the other will still be functioning. With this particular space, if you've got a big pot, you can actually only put one here and max two smaller pots here. So some people, they like to have four burners which sometimes may not be the most practical. Find out what kind of things you cook, the pots that you use, and make sure that this space serves your needs. Coming in here, beside the sink, usually there'll be a food preparation area. Something quite interesting that we did here was to ensure that all these sockets are concealed below the cabinets so it's not very visible. And also there's this paper towel holder that we actually placed at the bottom here. And once you're done with this entire area, we made sure that there's a convenient place for them to throw their trash. Most of the time, you'll notice that it's a one-door flip-up. But this, we use another bloom system that is a double-door flip-up. It's called a THF system to make sure that the entire look of this place looks seamless. Now coming back to the living room, the important factors for the homeowners are that they wanted to make sure that the living area is big and spacious. To achieve that, we actually hacked away one of the bedrooms to make sure that they've got a bigger space here. They wanted like a huge dining table to be able to feed like six to eight packs. To make the whole space bigger and taller, this foyer area, we brought it down. When they enter into the living area, it feels like they've got a really high ceiling. All their furniture here are purposely selected to be lower. So their consoles are lower, their sofa is lower than usual, and even their dining table and chairs are lower. So it's a more Japanese kind of style. Dining table heights are usually about 75 to 76cm. So this table height here is intentionally made to 70cm. And over here is the TV console that is bought from Commune. We intentionally selected this to match the entire theme of the house. The walnut color as well as these little details of the handles. And while talking to the homeowners one day, they actually mentioned that they didn't like to have conventional flooring like, you know, vinyl flooring because everyone's using it. And they didn't like tiles because of all the groutings. So you can actually see over here where it's cement screeded. And what's beautiful about this is that you don't see anything that is repeated. The entire thing is one full big piece. And to finish off the living and dining area, we customized this mirror over here. It's semi-circle, customized to make sure that it ends nicely. And this adds depth and space to the dining area. The homeowners, they love to read. So we intentionally built in this space where they can keep all their books and all their stationeries. The coffee table as well as the sofa, they're from HomeAge, which sells more Japan-like furnitures. And also coming to the dining table, this dining table is customized with the table guys. We went down to the showroom, selected the slab of wood that we liked, and we stained it into a color that matches the entire theme seamlessly. Hey Google, I'm home. As you can see, this homeowner has also done up a smart home system. So these are smart switches. You can control the lighting as per what you program it to be. We actually created more storage space for them at the top here. And following the fluted design, we did this feature wall to conceal the bomb shelter door as well as the common bathroom. Coming in here, you'll notice that the towels are not done all the way to the ceiling. We actually semestrated the top part as well. If you notice, this glass is curved. And to make it seamless, the mirror over here is also curved as well. Okay, now we're here at the master bedroom. So while talking with the homeowners about what they wanted in their master bedroom, they mentioned to me that they wanted something more spacious, open as what they did in their living. What we did was that we shrunk one of the bedrooms and enlarged the master bedroom. So for a conventional 4-room BTO layout, the master bedroom starts from somewhere here where this is part of the common bedroom. This space is technically just a walk-in. You can't do anything here and then you enter the bathroom. So we actually pushed it back here, made sure that we included one dresser area where they can put all their bags and makeup stuff over here. And they wanted this space to be spacious, easy to walk and potentially put their baby cot here as well. And if you were to realize, this wardrobe was also designed with the same laminate throughout the entire house. The dresser, the wardrobe, even the kitchen. The entire house, we selected the same laminate to be cohesive and seamless. And moving over to the bed area, it's also a customized bed frame with a heat board. And the side tables are also customized entirely with the same laminate as well. What we included in here was this LED strip lights at the bottom of the bed to make it feel like it's hovering. They mentioned to me at night, usually when they are just chilling and reading their book, they'll just turn on this light at the bottom which is very cozy. And tip for you homeowners is that it's really beneficial to have a huge mirror in the bedroom. Stepping into one of my favorite portions of this master bedroom is entering into this ensuite master bathroom. And this you see here is a pocket sliding door. When you slide open, it actually conceals to the back of the dresser. So it's amazing. What I like here is this suited glass. It's concealed, you don't see the inside but it makes it interesting. So coming in here, you will also see this beautiful bathroom where the tiles are selected to be big as well. So it enlarges the space of the master bathroom. So big tiles as well as this wooden tiles here to emulate wood planks. And over here, we've got this beautiful vanity cabinet as well as this mirror cabinet which slides open. So there's only one joint line. Yep, so this brings us to the end of the design showcase. This is how the entire journey of our conceptualization, the execution to the end product which is what you see today. So once again, my name is Winstar from Noble Interior Design. Check out our next video.