A small Hong Kong apartment that is big on style

First there was wallpaper. Not just any wallpaper, but an attention grabbing mural of an artfully distressed wall, peeled back layer by layer to reveal graffiti-sprayed and ornate tiles, crumbling plaster and raw brick. Pasted onto one wall of this Causeway Bay apartment, it is the statement piece on which the design hangs.

The flat’s Dutch owners, Wijnand van Hoeven and Pierre de Rooij, wanted a loft-style treatment for the neglected, 580 sq ft, three-bedroom apartment in a 47-year-old building on one of the busiest roads in Hong Kong. It was the wallpaper that clinched the commission for interior designer Louis Lau Chin-ki, of Ample Design.

“We loved it immediately,” van Hoeven says, pulling out Lau’s artist’s impressions. “[The finished apartment] looks almost exactly like his drawings. We’d worked with Louis before and he said, ‘Trust me,’ so we did. We barely changed a thing.”

Lau effectively used the wallpaper as a mood board, specifying distressed and industrial materials, including concrete, black metal door frames, wired safety glass and brick- and retro-look wall tiles for the bathroom and kitchen. Adding chic to the shabby, he created a sleek timber box running the width of the apartment, forming a continuous loop around the walls, floor and ceiling, in warm contrast to the hard materials.

Inset from the walls and ceiling, the box provides plenty of hidden storage. Suitcases are tucked into the cupboards above the timber ceiling and there are more concealed cupboards behind one timber-strip wall. On one wall of the bright living area, a grid of concrete boards hides yet more storage.

“We ripped everything out and started again, installing storage everywhere we could,” Lau says.