Downsizing from a four-storey house in London to a flat in Mid-Levels doesn't have to cramp your style. As one Hong Kong newcomer shows, it's not how much space you have, it's how you use it that counts.
Downsizing your life can be liberating, but swapping a spacious house complete with garden and swimming pool for a considerably smaller flat? Although it sounds headache-inducing, Debby Amias, who left a large townhouse in north London for an apartment in Mid-Levels, tells a different tale.
'I am very happy to be in an apartment and I love not having stairs,' she says. 'My house in London had four floors and I was always forgetting things and running up and down. It's also nice to have our bedroom next to our daughter's.'
Amias, who moved to Hong Kong with her husband Jeremy and four-year-old daughter Ellie, viewed some 'gorgeous' new flats around town but felt they were almost 'too perfect'. She wanted something older, with more character and outdoor space, and when she was shown a flat on Tregunter Path, she knew it was the one for her.
'We're quite urban people - we like living in the city - but it doesn't feel claustrophobic because we have a great outdoor seating area and still have a view,' she says. 'I think it seems more like a New York apartment than something you'd expect to find in Hong Kong.'
Working with interior designers in London and Nicole Cromwell in Hong Kong (tel: 2521 9299), Amias achieved this feeling by using a mixture of fabrics and colours and by incorporating elements from her previous home.