Windsor Court

The owner used this flat to host visitors from abroad, so we could not tailor it to any one person's taste. The honest answer was a practical, hard-wearing studio that would still feel like a home. We took down the two original rooms to open the floor into a single flexible space, and worked out the interior design around how many people might be staying at once.

Guests were unlikely to cook much, so we shrank the kitchen to a compact kitchenette and gave the extra room back to the bathroom, which is where a traveller actually wants the space. We chose versatile pieces, one double bed and one sofa bed, so the flat sleeps up to four without ever feeling crowded.

It would have been easy to leave it as a generic serviced apartment, but the owner wanted his friends to feel looked after. We leaned on warm colours and a few well-chosen accessories for comfort, and kept the windows openable, a small luxury when so much of Hong Kong sits behind sealed air-conditioning.