Transcript of NEVER TOO SMALL: Self Taught Interior Designer’s Apartment, Hong Kong - 48sqm/516sqft

The main idea was to create a tranquil and cozy space that has adequate storage to hide things. I want the space to look bright and neutral and implement arches and curves to soften the irregular shape of the space. This apartment is located in Kwun Tong an area in Kowloon, Hong Kong. Kwun Tong is an iconic industrial area turned business district. with lots of small businesses and creative studios. My name is Daphney Ho. I'm a self-taught interior designer based in Hong Kong. I live here with my husband and we moved in about a year ago after we got married. When we took over the apartment, it hadn't been renovated since the last owner first moved in in 1990. It looks very aged and worn. This apartment has a diamond shaped layout which is common in large scale private housing estates in Hong Kong. I demolished two bedroom wars which increased the size of the bathroom. All of the doors in the apartment were changed to sliding doors in order to save space. The entrance is a small foyer area to take shoes off. There is a platform and shoe cabinet to separate it from the living room. This idea is influenced by the Japanese not to bring dirt inside the home. Behind the door, I made a full height peg board to hang and place everyday necessities like masks and grocery trolley. The living area is on the wooden platform Next to the door, there’s a full body mirror so we can have a final look before leaving home. The whole sofa is custom made with an angled shape. The shoe cabinet continues from the wall and together it forms the sofa back to safe space. I want a deep sofa because it can act as an afternoon bed too. It also makes the space look more spacious and comfy. There are drawers below the sofa for additional storage. Originally there was a beam above the sofa I covered it by building a niche to place some decorations on The window allows a lot of natural sunlight into our apartment. It is a great spot for our plants and adds some greenery to the room. The TV cabinet connects to the bay window and aligns the height of the sofa. We chose to lift the cabinet off the floor so it looks lighter and visually cleaner without the legs. Our walls and ceilings are applied with shikkui an ecological nontoxic Japanese lime plaster. On the other side of the living space is the dining area. It is a step down from the living space and the wooden platform acts to divide the two areas. A circular dining table is a must for me because in feng shui it is a symbol of uniting the family. I wanted to maximise the dining seating space, so I went with the idea of booth seating, which wraps around the corner. The booth is based on a similar design as a sofa so using the same materials for the wood and cushions. In addition to the booth seats. There are two foldable rattan chairs to serve more guests if needed. On this side of the booth seats I made a rattan sideboard as a snack station Mixing closed and open storage, making the space look less heavy. Beside the seat there is a white full height cabinet. It is low profile and comes out upto the same depth as the wall on the other side. The kitchen size is a bit small and the shape is a bit like a pentagon, so it was hard to change the layout. So I kept the original placement of the sink and stove, but rebuilt it with a full height cabinet to maximise storage space. I especially added a narrow vertical drawer to hide our lengthy tools like our brooms and mops. Since there is not a lot of counter space on the kitchen top, I used full length bars to keep the drying racks off the working surface. There's an arch in between to transit into bedroom and bathroom. Our air con can be placed above the arch and make it less visible with ventilation cover. After going through the center arch, there are some fluted panel walls. They are actually sliding doors for two bedrooms. This is our main bedroom. It was designed solely to fit a king sized bed. The custom bed is built higher to make storage underneath to store things that we don't use often. The three panel sliding door hides a full height storage closet. The reason I made it fluted is because the door gaps can look less obvious. This closet is also our dress up and daily care station. The bathroom is an open space. The separation of dry and wet areas also inspired by the Japanese bathrooms. The size and the shape of sink was conceded to allow us to fit the washing machine below. Next to the sink It is our toilet room. The space is limited, so I use a frosted glass sliding door as partition. Opposite the toilet is the wet room. The wet room is behind the glass door When privacy is needed. the storage closet door can also be used to cover the glass, The flooring and ledge around. the bathtub is made of Japanese Aomori hiba wood, which has a strong anti molding and antibacterial properties. The second bedroom is currently our dressing room and multifunctional room. All of the furniture settings in this room are not fixed so as to make it more flexible to transform it for other purposes in the future. Currently we use adjustable hanging system and storage boxes to create a walk in closet. We hid it behind a curtain to hide the clutter To better utilise the space around the bay window. I ordered a custom desk that has two shorter feets on the bay window and the others on the floor. The desk is so light, so I can easily move it in and out. I have installed a foldable on board on the wall Behind the big sliding door. there is another hidden full height cabinet to store our shoes. I found these stackable shoe boxes online and I think they are perfect to keep and organise our shoes. When designing a small space, it is important to be open minded to the possibility of each area and corner but at the same time to spare black space as balance Thanks for watching. And if you are an architect or designer with a project we could feature, please share it with us at nevertoosmall.com/submissions