New To Renovating?

This guide will give you more confidence with savvy tips and essential info for your renovation.

- Yaiza Canopoli

1. Figuring out the Floor Plan

So, you've got your BTO secured and want to embark on your first renovation-but you have no idea what all the lines, shapes, and letters on your floorplan actually mean. Well, this is a good starting point to kick off this guide.

Before you accidentally plan to knock down a structural wall or confuse the air-conditioning with a wardrobe, here's how you can read your BTO floorplan and identify all its elements at a glance.

The walls

There are essentially three types of walls you can find in a BTO flat: structural, gable-end, and standard.

The structural walls can be identified by an eye-catching bold line. They ensure that the flat is structurally sound and can thus not be hacked.

Gable-end walls are a bit more difficult to spot-they're usually characterised on the floorplan by a narrow rectangle with a second hollow rectangle inside. They are unique to corner units and are designed to keep the heat at bay. Since they're exclusively external, they obviously cannot be hacked.

Standard walls are the simplest structure on the floorplan: narrow rectangles that separate most of the rooms.

The windows

While there are three types of windows in HDB flats, you'll likely only see two in any one flat. The main windows along the living area and bedrooms are usually either sliding or casement windows, with casement windows being the most common.

Casement windows are represented by three parallel horizontal lines and an extension showing the reach of the window when opened. This can be a simple rectangle around the windows or a wedge showing the way each window swings open.

Sliding windows are more difficult to spot and usually represented by two horizontal lines stacked closely on top of each other and almost meeting in the middle, replicating a real window sliding close.