Woodlands — 5-Room HDB

The floor is cement screed from the front door to the bedroom corridor, with no thresholds and no grout lines. Screed is harder to get right than tile: it has to go down in one continuous pour, cure slowly and be sealed properly, or it stains and hairline-cracks, and unlike a tile there is no single piece to replace. Run through the whole flat, it ties the living, dining and kitchen together without any walls.

Instead of a row of separate cabinets, storage is built as full-height blocks in a grey oak laminate. One block stands between the kitchen and the dining area and holds the tall storage for both, so neither room needs wall cabinets and the walls stay plain. Laminate was chosen over veneer because it takes knocks and cleaning without needing refinishing, which matters on surfaces this large at hand height.

The false ceiling is dropped only around the edge of the living and dining areas, with LED hidden in the lip, so the middle of the ceiling stays at full height and the room is lit by light washing down the walls. That has to be decided before the electrician starts, because the cove lighting needs its own circuit and the ceiling depth has to fit the fittings. In the dining area a long, shallow recess is set into the wall above the bench table, giving a ledge for display without a protruding shelf.

The kitchen keeps to the same materials: a long run of laminate drawers under a white counter, with the bulky storage moved into the cabinet block next door. Down the bedroom corridor the doors are timber in black frames, and at the entrance a black steel gate with perforated mesh panels lets air through while keeping the main door secure — a common HDB request that usually ends up as a standard grille.