A delightful Scandinavian home in Hong Kong
White can be so boring, says Hong Kong designer who turned a couple’s Tseung Kwan O flat into a bright, clean and very Scandinavian space
Search Google images for Scandinavian design and you’ll enter a black-and-white world. Pages and pages of pictures pop up of monochrome rooms with snow-white walls, clean-lined furniture and bare floorboards. Scandinavian-style rooms are minimal, airy and functional.
Well-designed Scandinavian-style rooms are also serene and welcoming, layering the monochrome palette with splashes of colour and geometric patterns, quirky furniture and assorted textures, pulling off a design sleight of hand by being both warm and cool at the same time.
But not all Nordic-style interiors stick to the rules.“White can be so boring,” says Yu-Chang Chen, founder and creative director of Hong Kong interiors company hoo. “There are two kinds of Scandinavian style: there’s the Danish, mid-century modern style and a more contemporary style, which we’re more about. This style is younger and more playful, with lots of greens and yellows.”
It certainly appealed to IT professional Cheri Wong, a long-time fan of Chen’s work. When she and her partner, Patrick Yip, decided to renovate their newly acquired 690 sq ft Tseung Kwan O apartment, hoo seemed the natural choice.
“They were the perfect clients,” Chen says. “Cheri had been following our work online for a long time and loved the Scandinavian style. So when she came to us at the end of 2014 and asked us to do their apartment, she said, ‘Do whatever you think is right.’”