Practical and Paradisiacal

Parenthesis Studio's Yanika Gunawan designed this four-bedroom apartment with plenty of storage to keep clutter at bay while managing to give it a luxury hotel vibe.

- AARON DE SILVA

Life is full of unexpected surprises, often steering us in directions we never anticipated. Take for example, the owners of this four-bedroom, 167 sqm apartment in The Serenade @ Holland. The married couple — a pair of civil servants in their 40s — used to live in a two-bedder in Pine Grove. It was done in an urban style, with a monochromatic palette and glass partitions.

While they initially did not plan to have children, life threw them a curveball in the form of a son and a daughter, now aged eight and four, respectively. The kids had to share a glass-walled room, which, while not the most ideal scenario, allowed the parents to keep an eye on them. As the kids grew older, clutter began to accumulate, which the apartment’s open plan and open shelving could not keep at bay.

“Eventually, the kids will need their own rooms. And we found that it was really hard to keep the place clean and tidy,” said the wife. The couple decided it was time to move.

After an arduous search for the right-sized unit — which had to be in the vicinity, as the wife’s mother lives in the area and helps raise her grandchildren — the couple settled on this generously proportioned four-bedder just a stone’s throw away from their original nest.

MANIFESTING THE DREAM 

To create their dream dwelling, they approached interior designer Yanika Gunawan of Parenthesis Studio with a brief to design a low-maintenance, child-friendly home that would incorporate as much storage as possible. In addition, having grown weary of the black-and-white scheme of their former abode, they gave Gunawan free rein to tint the space in colour.