10 Amazing Interior Design Hacks That Will Transform Your HDB
Whether you’re looking for the perfect BTO to start your new life in, or if there’s a resale flat that’s already caught your eye, HDB living is a huge part of our lives in Singapore. But when you live in a small space, finding the room to fit everything you need while also keeping your design goals in check can feel like a huge struggle.
To help you with this, here are some expert HDB interior design tips that’ll help you transform your small apartment into something that feels open, spacious and inviting.
1. Define Your Spaces
When you’re trying to make the most out of your HDB apartment, it’s important to know what you’re gonna do with every bit of space. So before you do anything else, make sure you know exactly what you want to do with each room!
Start off by asking yourself what you want to do with each area. Will your living room feature a small dining table? Do you need extra storage available? Do you need a desk for work, or is a sofa enough?
Defining what you want out of each room will help you find out exactly what you want, and plan how you can optimise and decorate your space! This will also help you build your overall theme for your home at the end of the day.
2. Make it multi-functional
Another major HDB interior design tip is to fill your home with pieces or furnishings that are multi-functional. For instance, you could get a convertible couch that turns into a guest bed at night or fit your bedroom with a desk that can double up as shelving.
It’s all about working smart so that your home has maximum functionality without accumulating clutter. In the same way, when you’re buying a singular piece of furniture, it’s worth considering how many uses you can get out of it.
A dining table could be used as a makeshift desk in the day, or a coffee table could be turned into a communal eating area. These things all depend on your personal preferences, but with these small considerations, you could end up saving tons of space!
3. Invest in a Statement Piece
We talk a lot about functionality when it comes to making the most out of a smaller apartment. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to forget about the look and vibe of our homes! With smaller spaces, many of us can often stay away from getting a big statement piece because it sounds like it’s going to take up too much space and make our rooms feel cluttered.
A smart way to get visual impact and tie together the theme of a room is to opt for paintings or pictures that you can mount on a wall. This way you don’t have to sacrifice any precious floor space while adding a little flair to your rooms!
4. Lift Your Lighting
An important part of making a room feel bigger and more spacious is good lighting. When a room is well lit, it tricks the eye and your senses into thinking that your space is more open and airy than it actually is.
While an ornamental lamp may help with this while lending to the overall theme and decor of your HDB, we suggest lifting your lighting. So installing lights into your ceilings, or getting ceiling lamps can be a great way to do that. This saves a ton of floor space and lets you evenly spread light through your home.
5. Open Up a Room With A Unifying Colour
You don’t have to keep your entire home a singular colour, but painting all the walls and even your ceiling in one colour makes a room look and feel much bigger. We suggest going for soft neutral colours such as eggshell, cream and white to really brighten up your living space as well.
Using these neutral tones also lets you create a theme for your home more easily. For instance, you could complement a white room with woody furniture, and introduce pops of colour without having it look too busy.
6. Install Glass Panels
Similar to the last hack, replacing your regular walls with partial glass walls or glass partitions instantly makes your HDB feel much bigger. It’s the same principle of opening up a room with colour. Your eye has more space to go to because you’re not cutting off the view from one room to another, so it makes your space feel much larger than it actually is.
If you want to have an element of privacy however, you can keep the glass walls and partitions to your entertainment areas such as your kitchen or your living room!
7. Invest in Custom Storage
When you invest in customised storage for your home, not only are you maximizing the space you have, but you’re able to do this seamlessly so that it blends with the structure of your home. From storage nooks to carefully crafted ceiling shelves, customised storage solutions are a major way to get the most function out of your HDB interior design!
In some cases, you can also consider storage that lets you “hide” your belongings. This can be easily done by installing drawers that roll under your bed or flooring, allowing you to utilise space that you might have otherwise overlooked.
8. Mount Your Devices
A simple hack that applies to so many things is to mount what you can! We talked about how paintings can make a great safe-saving statement piece because they add tons of visual impact to your rooms without taking up floor space.
In the same way mounting devices like your television will not only save you valuable space in your HDB, it’ll help you free up space for more decor that could help tie in the theme of your home even better.
In the same way, you could consider mounting extension outlets strategically so that you can seamlessly plug in all your devices without having tons of wires running across your room. Not only does this help you stay organised, but unruly wires can also ruin the whole look and feel of the home you’ve so carefully designed.
9. Think About Proportions
With small apartments, we often get the idea that we can’t and shouldn’t buy big pieces of furniture for our homes, but strategically filling a small space with a few carefully selected large pieces can make a room feel wider, grander, and more spacious.
The trick to making your room feel spacious when you have larger pieces in it is to keep a good amount of space between them. So though you may feel like you need to save as much space as you can, don’t cram all your things together.
10. Maximise with Mirrors
This is a trick that many interior designers use in homes or even in shops! Opening up a room with mirrors is a trick we’re not unfamiliar with, but how can you do it tastefully and strategically in your home?
To really make your HDB feel bigger and roomier, place mirrors on a wall adjacent to a window. And you don’t have to have a large mirror either. Decorating your wall with a small ornamental mirror can bring the same effect to a room while lending to the decor and feel of your space!
HDB Home Interior Design Tips
Our HDBs have so much potential that’s just waiting to be tapped into. With these home interior design tips, you can maximize space, and create a home that looks as good as it feels to be in it. To help you reach your ultimate dream home goals, contact us today at +65 63451730, or drop us an email at info@ipoisedesign.com.