Home-Styling Tips: Achieving a cohesive island-living inspired home
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- Beach Resort
- HDB (Resale)
- ~1,000 sqft
- 3 br
- Couple Living
Hi there! This week, we're so excited to share a little bit more about how we style our home. This photo sums it up perfectly - our home perfectly balances out the same materials throughout the house for a cohesive look - we love the use of natural and dark stained wood, rattan, stone, and black accents. We really wanted to step away from a light-wood vibe because we find that harder to keep clean and maintained. Keeping our colours warmer and darker also gives us a more cozy feeling at home, and really helps us just unwind and de-stress. Our entryway shoe cabinet has shelves where we put our decorative items on - we swap these items around depending on the season (Christmas, Chinese New Year, so and so). We use a mix of plants / flowers, scented items, religious things, or even just travel keepsakes. I'm pretty sentimental at home so I do make sure whatever we have lying out has a meaning and we avoid buying things just for the sake of it! For example, the red scarf you can see, is my second ever Hermes scarf. It's precious and so we framed it up and hung it as a piece of art. For example, in this corner. we have our potted plant, we also have a decorative candle, and a small lantern that holds tea candles. When there's a lit tea candle inside, it reflects off elephants in the shadows - we got this from our recent trip to India. In this photo, you can see our two teddy bears. They were a complimentary gift from Fullerton Hotel to all couples who get married there. This is such a sweet reminder of our wedding day and the brown bears fit the theme! We also have a few ceramic pieces from some pottery classes I attended with my colleagues, which houses two miniature perfumes - easy to grab just before we leave the house. 
When styling our bedroom, we use the same philosophy - a mix of rattan and wood and dark accents - and you can see how consistent and disciplined we are with this. Our bed frame at the side is made of dark wood and rattan, our photo frame is made of wood, our bedside table is made of wood and rattan, our catch-all is made of dark wood, our tissue box is made of rattan, and our candle warmer is black. The key to cohesive styling is being disciplined with your materials! 
Since homes in Singapore are so small, we don't really have the benefit of using up a lot of large statement pieces. So we've had to be very selective on which statement pieces to buy. We thrifted these tall (1.5m) tiki candle sticks from a furniture clearance and although they're tall and heavy, they only serve the use of holding mini tea lights. Where we can, we try to add a pop of colour too. Pictured here is a yellow pillow case amongst our favoured browns. During Chinese New Year and Christmas, the home decor will be gold or red, and we're just happy that most of these festive colours go well with browns anyway! Back to the point of my sentimentality -- this painting of us was done by my closest friends in the Philippines. My husband and I are painted on a wooden slab and they shipped it to me here in Singapore so I could have a literal 'piece of home' with me. We love this so much because we didn't want to hang photos of us around the house (in fear it would go against our aesthetic), and what's more in line with our style, than a literal painting of us on a piece of wood?? I love combining aesthetic and functional items. My chopstick holders are in shapes of dumplings and mini veggies, and they're in a steam basket! Speaking of aesthetic and functional things, our wine bottle holder is this antique wooden slab that we thrifted as well from the furniture clearance.
- 2 August
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