Beverly Hill Blue-Toned Family Home, Modern Home Issue 553

The text below is a translation of the original Modern Home feature.

The Beverly Hill flat runs to about 1,650 square feet, planned as two living areas and three bedrooms for a household of five. As Modern Home tells it, the couple had spent years living abroad and grew up overseas, returning to Hong Kong with three children who were used to the space and pared-back ease of life away. They turned to Regina Kwok of Artwill Interior Design House to carry that familiar feeling into a home in the city. Working with a simple, natural palette, Regina Kwok set out to give a roughly thousand-square-foot flat the openness of an overseas residence.

The biggest contrast between the two places is the sheer amount of living space, so the team started with proportion. Overseas families tend to centre life around the home, and the open living and dining room is the heart of the household. The designers flattened the room's original stepped wall, echoed it with a run of off-white cabinetry behind the sofa, and opened up the former guest room so the lines of the whole space read clean and clear. Light from the guest room, dining area and balcony now reaches deep into the living room, leaving room to spare for family gatherings or larger get-togethers. As the magazine's NOTE points out, the opened-up guest room becomes a flexible, multi-purpose zone.

Storage is the other priority. Moving a family of five from a large overseas home into a Hong Kong flat means plenty to put away, yet too many bulky cabinets would eat into the space they wanted to open up. The designers used several moves to add storage throughout: a cloakroom built between the foyer and the long, narrow kitchen, with a shoe-changing area set near the entrance so the foyer feels wider; floor-to-ceiling cabinets that flatten the recessed living-room wall, their corners softened with curves so they never look heavy; and drawer units added along several window sills for odds and ends and toys. Where the master bedroom balcony had a poor outlook, it was simply concealed behind wardrobes and turned into storage.

Colour is the soul of the home. The family loves blue, so Regina Kwok layered different blue notes over a generous white base. The kitchen pairs powder-blue cabinet fronts with white upper units, a white marble worktop and deep-grey floor tiles, balanced by blue-and-white patterned tiles that give the blue an worldly, away-from-home character. The master bedroom features a soft velvet-blue headboard and azure wall fabric, while the son's room indulges his passion with blue-lacquered cabinets, sky-themed wallpaper and a stadium scene to ease any homesickness. The shared bathroom rounds things off with friendly pale-blue tiles and a powder-blue vanity. To see more of this blue-toned Beverly Hill home and its material details, you are warmly invited to visit the full project page on the Artwill website.

Originally published by Modern Home, Issue 553 . June 2024