A Malaysian living room has to do four things at once. It has to look beautiful. It has to handle our climate. It has to gather a family. And it has to remain itself for fifteen or twenty years. Most fail at the third or fourth, regardless of how the photographs come out.
Here are seven principles we return to every time we design a living room for a Malaysian home.
1. Plan around cross-ventilation, even if you have air-conditioning
A living room that can be cross-ventilated is a fundamentally more pleasant room than one that cannot. The breeze through the room at 9am or 6pm is one of the great quiet luxuries of Malaysian living. Even in fully air-conditioned homes, we plan rooms so that the windows or sliding systems on opposing walls allow a path of air.
2. Treat the ceiling as the most important surface
In Malaysian rooms, the ceiling is doing more work than you think. It reflects light, hides services, and shapes how the room reads in different times of day. We specify ceiling treatments before we specify floors.
3. Specify upholstery the climate respects
Linen, properly woven cotton, certain natural blends. Synthetic blends and tightly-woven contemporary fabrics in a Malaysian living room can develop a grim humidity. The right upholstery breathes.
4. Layer the lighting
A single ceiling pendant is not lighting design. A Malaysian living room used at every hour of the day needs at least three layers: ambient, task, and accent. Lamp light at night is a different room from overhead light at noon.
5. Choose seating for actual sitting
Sofas in luxury photography are often deeper, lower, and less comfortable than they look. We test seating with our clients. The sofa is the most-used object in the house. Compromising here is rarely worth it.
6. Bring in plants you can keep alive
Living rooms with one or two well-chosen, well-cared-for plants are calmer than rooms without. Living rooms with twelve plants the family doesn’t have time for become melancholy quickly. Choose few, choose well.
7. Leave room for the room to be lived in
The best Malaysian living rooms are not over-designed. They have a generosity of empty space that lets the family take ownership of the room over years. The most beautiful rooms we deliver age in beauty as the family lives in them.
If you are planning a Malaysian home and want a designer who treats living rooms with this level of consideration, we would be glad to hear from you.