Home tour: an intimate pre-war Tiong Bahru apartment rewritten in green

The entry sets the tone of the Tiong Bahru home. A curved seating booth is tucked against the wall, its geometry softening what might otherwise be a tight threshold. A pendant lamp, hung low, casts a pool of light that draws you in rather than announcing itself. Opposite, a metal mesh screen holds a floating painting in suspension, part divider, part provocation. Behind it, storage and a wine display are concealed, the latter lined in richly veined Rosso Orobico stone. It is a compact composition, but it does a lot of work.

Step further and the Tiong Bahru apartment opens. The living, dining and kitchen areas form a single, continuous zone anchored by a wraparound counter in peacock green sintered stone. The colour is not an accent; it is a constant, threading through cabinetry and surfaces without becoming overbearing. The counter bends to meet the dining table, encouraging a certain kind of gathering where cooking, pouring wine and conversation happen in the same orbit.

A bronze-tinted mirror runs along one side, doubling the space while hiding a storage room. It is a familiar trick, but handled with restraint. Above the dining table, pendant lights fashioned from zippers hover with a slight irreverence. Nearby, a scallop-profiled hood turns a utilitarian element into something closer to sculpture. Shelving overhead carries objects collected from travels, but the display never tips into clutter. The room feels used, not staged.

Read more: Malaysia and Singapore’s Art Deco legacy: Buildings that tell stories

Light enters from a courtyard, a rarity in apartments of this vintage, and moves across the space over the course of the day. It is this light that keeps the palette in check, lifting the deeper greens and the weight of stone.

Beyond the communal zone, the mood shifts. A corridor becomes a gallery, lined with illustrated wallcoverings depicting extinct animals. There is a quiet wit here, but also something more personal. A full-length mirror stretches the passage, concealing the guest bathroom behind it. At the far end of the Tiong Bahru home, reeded glass doors mark the transition into the private suite, filtering views without fully closing them off.

The guest bathroom, though small, is not treated as an afterthought. Green subway tiles meet a burgundy door, while an amoeba-shaped mirror floats above the basin. It is a brief, vivid interlude before the apartment settles again.

The bedroom is deliberately calmer. Timber surfaces replace stone, and edges soften into curves. A Hästens bed sits at the centre, not as a statement piece but as an anchor for rest. Here, the connection to the outdoors becomes more pronounced. Light enters from both the courtyard and a skylight above the bathing area, shifting the room’s atmosphere throughout the day.

A smart glass partition separates the bedroom from the bath, turning opaque at the touch of a button. When clear, it allows the two spaces to read as one. When frosted, it restores privacy without heaviness.

The bath itself draws on the language of onsen culture. Honed granite tiles line the space, while patterned glass blocks diffuse light into a soft glow. Above, a skylight filtered through wooden trellises casts changing shadows across the surfaces. Water spills gently over profiled granite edges, creating a subtle waterfall effect. It is not large, but it feels deliberate, a place designed for pause rather than efficiency.

Elsewhere, details reveal themselves slowly. A mirror that conceals a door. A pendant that reads differently depending on where you stand. A kitchen surface that holds both colour and reflection. None of these gestures shout for attention, but together they shape how the apartment is experienced.

The project took a year from concept to completion, much of it spent negotiating the constraints of the original structure. Walls could not simply be removed; circulation had to be rethought within what was already there. The result is a home that feels open without denying its origins.

What emerges is not a stylistic exercise but a lived-in narrative. The owners’ interests, in wine, in art, in hosting, are embedded into the plan rather than layered on afterwards. The apartment accommodates a dinner with friends as easily as a quiet evening alone.

In a neighbourhood often defined by its past, this home suggests another way forward. It does not preserve for the sake of preservation, nor does it overwrite. It edits, inserts, and occasionally disrupts. Most importantly, it feels inhabited from the moment you walk in.

NOW READ

Inside Sentosa Cove’s Plinth House, the first landed home with structural mass engineered timber in Singapore

Inside interior designer Patricia Ho Douven’s autobiographical East Coast apartment

A tour Chandara, Lan Kwai Fong Group founder Allan Zeman’s private estate in Phuket