For Karen Chang, inheriting the family home in Mid-Levels posed a challenge: how do you make it your own without losing its sense of history? Chang found the answer in colour, art and heirlooms.
The desire to create an instant home is natural for young property buyers in Hong Kong. Inheriting an apartment that has been the family home for 30 years is a different story. Strategic corporate communications consultant Karen Chang faced that challenge when her parents retired and moved to Australia seven years ago, leaving her in charge of a 2,800-square-foot, classically proportioned, 1960s apartment in Mid-Levels. It wasn't until last year that she decided to renovate it.
'It took a while to feel ready to do something that reflects me,' she says. However, she couldn't bring herself to gut the place and wipe out all traces of her childhood and family history. Instead, she decided to work around the few major pieces of furniture her parents had left behind, integrating them with her own impressive collection of modern art.
'The apartment has always been very comfortable and friends come over and kick off their shoes and lie around. But I didn't really feel it was my place,' Chang says. 'With the renovation, I didn't want to lose that relaxed, intimate experience; a home is about having family and friends drop by - that's what creates the good vibes, not the colour scheme.'
Yet, aside from the overriding sense that this home is an anchor because of the family ties and the surrounding heirlooms, the first impression is one of colour. 'Being brave with colour was important,' Chang says, which is why she brought in renowned colour expert Paola Dindo (Paola Dindo & Associates, tel: 2804 6181). 'It started with the archway in the entrance hall; I really wanted a feature of some kind,' Chang says. It seems to have taken off from there: the flat features a mural of climbing foliage, Venetian plaster walls, a Georgian red dining room, and a master bedroom painted British racing green. 'She asked me what colours I like and mixed some shades and daubed streaks on the walls to let me live with it for a few days before making a decision.'
The apartment feels like a series of formal salons - entrance hall, drawing room, dining room, kitchen and study. Each opens into the next through twists and turns; it is very different from the typical Hong Kong apartment layout where the rooms radiate from the lounge in a stunted arrangement. If any room could be said to be the heart of Chang's home it is the passionate red dining area, which forms a pivotal point between the public entertainment spaces and the private sleeping quarters.