Living Room Refresh

After five years in our first Hong Kong home, Team NickelWorks moved just a few streets away to a spacious new flat. Here's how we updated the living room to create a bright, open space for the whole family to enjoy.

Few things excite me more than design. Whether it's my house, my wardrobe, or a graphic design project, I will happily tinker, edit, and obsess for hours. When we arrived in Hong Kong we found a little jewel box of an apartment that was just right for our family. At just under 700 square feet, it had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an open plan kitchen/dining/living space.

For five years, I tweaked and tinkered with our space to meet the changing needs of our family. It was a lovely, cozy home. But after welcoming another child into our family and a global pandemic keeping everyone in that small space for months on end, it was time to look for something bigger. Luckily we found the perfect flat just a few blocks away from our old one.

One silver lining of spending so much time at home together was that I had a much better understanding of what we needed individually and as a family. Our last flat was maximalist, with art and furniture everywhere. For our new home we wanted something that felt light, bright, and airy.

Reinventing What You Already Have

Our family is working to be more conscious of waste in general, so when designing our new space I reinvented or repurposed as much as possible. In our old flat, the living room was tiny, so we did need to buy some new things to fill the space.

What we kept: everything! Our tuxedo sofa came with us when we moved from New York, and its design is versatile and timeless. The Scandinavian style armchair, the wooden shelving system, and the c table were all purchased here for our previous apartment. The Moroccan pouf was a Facebook find from a neighbor who was relocating. The record player, books and most of the art and knickknacks were things we had already.

Making It Feel New

We've got some fantastic natural light in our living room and freshly painted off-white walls, so we decided to lean into that. I kept the overall palette fairly neutral and layered in two primary accent colors (blue and coral) and reduced visual clutter wherever possible.

Our upholstered furniture is neutral by design so that we can easily change up the look of our space without having to invest in new pieces. The texture of the fabric on both the sofa and the armchair can read as a bit masculine, especially when paired with the wooden shelving unit. To soften it, I added in some cotton velvet.

Curtains and Cushion Covers

H&M Home has some good finds, and I picked up these velvet curtains at the Causeway Bay branch. I love the warm stone color and when the light shines through the fabric, it adds dimension. The other spot of velvet comes from these coral Ikea cushion covers. Last bit of feminine texture came from a new throw blanket I made to replace the old one. I used a cornflower blue yarn to complement the blue in the Hong Kong toile cushions (from Works of Wonder) that we already had.

Art

We also changed up our approach to art in the room. Before, I had a large gallery wall over the sofa and nearly every wall in the flat was covered. It was quirky and fun, but after nearly a year of pandemic living, it started to feel more like visual clutter. To start, I went through all of our art Marie Kondo style and picked out a few pieces that spark joy or have some kind of special meaning.

With the art whittled down, I hung three beloved pieces on the walls and tucked a few more into the bookcase. The biggest change was replacing the gallery wall over the sofa with one large piece of art. After seeing some videos on Jackson Pollock, we were inspired to try action painting and make that big statement piece ourselves. My boys decided on the rainbow color scheme and we all took turns splashing paint across the canvas and were very happy with the results.

Lamps and Side Tables

In a lot of Hong Kong apartments, the overhead lighting can be very bright. We had one small table lamp tucked into the bookcase, but that wasn't going to give off the soft, ambient light that we were after. The solution was to add side tables on either side of the sofa with a lamp atop each.

Finding the right side table for a tuxedo sofa can be a bit tricky as you have to find something that is a decent height. The space was also quite tight, which meant I was looking for something tall and narrow. I found a lovely little shop in Central called Fuurn (with a larger showroom in Kwai Hing) and they had the perfect thing at a very good price.

The lamps needed to be quite tall as well to make the proportions work with the sofa. I love, love, love, all of the lamps from The Ginger Jar Lamp Company, but they weren't quite right for this space. I ended up going for these lovely blue ceramic lamps from Staunton & Henry. The gold rim around the bottom of the lamp ties in nicely with the frame of the c table.

The Floor

Initially, we planned to reuse our existing rug in the new space. It's a beautiful silk rug in gold and navy blue that we picked up on a trip India, but in addition to being too small, when combined with the grey floor tiles and the other neutral elements of the room, it just looked muddy. With two small children and a big dog, we decided to go with a dhurrie rug from Maya Rugs. It's durable, easy to clean, and better yet extremely affordable! Ritika was great to work with and together we came up with a custom design, size, and color scheme that fits our space just perfectly.

Final Tweaks?

Like any work of art, my spaces are never really done. I'm thinking to add another armchair on the other side, but should it be the same chair or a different one? The wooden boxes underneath the tv hide all of the wires, but I'm not so keen on how they look so crammed in next to the little green suitcase, which is actually a vintage typewriter (and really should be displayed!). I've also got to figure out a new storage solution for the CDs and DVDs that live in those grey felt baskets. Leave your thoughts and ideas in the comments!