Inside a Multi-Storey Bungalow in Bangsar Designed like a Luxury Hotel

A home that thoughtfully incorporates feng shui into everyday living.

When the homeowners purchased this hillside bungalow in Bangsar, they were careful to follow the guidance of their feng shui master. One of the key requirements was to have the beds in every bedroom repositioned whenever their feng shui guidance changed. Blaine Robert Design took on the task of transforming the existing house into a complete, turnkey residence.

What started as one of the most unusual requirements in the brief eventually became one of the project's most memorable design challenges. Read on as Blaine Robert, Founder & Director, and Nurul Shamin Abdul Wahab, Design Manager of Blaine Robert Design, share the challenges the team encountered along the way and how they overcame them to bring the homeowners’ unique requirements to life.

About the homeowners

Nurul Shamin (NS): With a large household that includes pets and domestic helpers, the homeowners needed a home that could comfortably accommodate their day-to-day routines while making the most of the property’s unique layout.

Located on a hillside in Bangsar, the property is a 15-year-old subsale bungalow that spans approximately 11,000 sqft across 4 floors, with 5 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms.

The defining feature of the property is it's stepped layout. From the street-level car porch, the house descends floor by floor, with the entertainment level, pool, and terrace located two storeys below the entrance and opening out towards the view. A lift serving all four levels makes navigating each floor more convenient.

While the existing structure was in good condition, the interiors needed to be reworked to best support the homeowner’s lifestyle. This was where our team came in, adapting the spaces and layout to make the most of the home while retaining the majority of the home’s original structure.

About the house design

Blaine Robert (BR): The house can best be described as contemporary hotel luxury, but the design goes beyond simply creating a polished, high-end look. The homeowners wanted every room to feel intentional, with no space treated as an afterthought.

They also wanted the home to function like a private hotel, where everyday services are kept discreet and out of sight. The laundry, locker room and maids’ room are grouped on one floor, away from the main living areas, allowing different functions to be clearly separated while giving each space a sense of privacy and purpose.

The homeowners knew what they wanted and more importantly, had an in-depth knowledge of rare stones, where they chose like a connoisseur, not from a sample board. Most of our conversations were about why a stone behaves the way it does, not whether it looked nice. That raises the standard for everyone in the room.

This in turn influenced how the design team approached the material selection and presented options throughout the project.

NS: The colour palette was also chosen by the homeowners themselves. They weren’t afraid to go with bold, rich, luxurious colours so gold was chosen as the key tone for the home.

Emerald green runs through the house as a recurring accent, balanced against champagne gold, natural veneer and velvet. For the metal details, we used stainless steel with a gold PVD hairline finish, which gives the richness of gold but with far better durability.

Underneath it all sits a warm neutral base — travertine and cream stone floors, walnut and rosewood veneers — with burnt orange as a secondary accent.

Although there’s a mix of different materials and textures throughout the house, the same overall colour palette helps to keep everything looking visually unified.

About the renovation works

The main living space

NS: The main living area was one of our key focuses during the renovation. It is an open-plan layout that brings the living room, dining area and dry kitchen together in one seamless space.

One of the highlights is the black cosmic granite in a leathered finish, which runs across the kitchen island. The homeowners wanted something that felt luxurious but still had a sense of texture, and the leathered finish gave the granite a tactile quality that you simply don’t get with a polished surface.

The faceted kitchen island was one of the more challenging parts of the renovation. The homeowners had a very specific sculptural form in mind, with angled planes meeting like a cut gem — a shape that was not easy to fabricate.

Getting it right required close coordination between the carpenter and stone installer to work out the slopes and how each surface would meet. We first created a mock-up to test the proportions and detailing before moving on to the actual island. Once both the carpenter and stone installer were happy with how everything came together, we proceeded with the final version.

The lower portion of the island is finished in mirror-polished stainless steel, which creates a reflective base and gives the heavy stone top a floating illusion.

The same black-and-gold stone is carried through to the dining area, where it features on the dining wall and table. Paired with the coved ceiling and gold trim, it ties the space together while adding a touch of luxury.

Entertainment floor and listening room

NS: Besides the main living areas, the house also has a dedicated entertainment floor with a steam room, living hall and bar. The bar features lemurian labradorite granite, a striking stone that changes colour when exposed to direct light. It’s one of those materials that need to be appreciated in person, especially in the evening.

The homeowner is an avid classical music listener, so we created a dedicated listening room with full acoustic treatment. The AV and listening areas are combined into one space, with the room carefully designed to create the right acoustics for enjoying his classical music.

Home offices

NS: The largest structural change we made to the home was extending the hillside part of the house on the first and lowest floor, adding roughly 2,000 sqft. Since both homeowners work from home, they wanted a space where both of them could work comfortably without getting in each other’s way. We created two spacious home offices, each with visitor seating and proper document storage. Between the two offices is a central lounge that doubles as a pantry.

The home extension was also one of the biggest challenges we faced during the renovation. Since the new addition sits on the highest floor, we first had to assess the existing structure to make sure it could support the additional weight from the new roof, walls and windows.

On the lowest floor, there was also an existing sloping retaining wall that couldn’t be removed. Instead of trying to work against it, we concealed the slope with cladding and turned what was once an awkward structural constraint into part of the entertainment floor.

The bedrooms

NS: I would say the biggest design challenge we faced throughout the renovation was the bedroom design. According to their feng shui master’s advice, every bed in the house needed to be movable and repositionable depending on the season. This pushed us beyond the usual bedroom layout, where everything is typically designed around one fixed bed position.

To make it work, we designed every wall in each bedroom as a potential feature wall. Each one was finished, composed and lit as though the bed could be placed against it. We also carefully planned the lighting, air-conditioning and power points so that no matter where the bed was positioned, the room would still feel intentional and complete.

The master bedroom features separate walk-in wardrobes for him and her. Hers even comes with a glass-fronted display for her bag collection.

The bathrooms

NS: Major renovation works can also be seen in the two master bathrooms and the powder room. The homeowners wanted separate his-and-hers bathrooms for added privacy, so the layout was completely reconfigured around how they use the space. The renovation included adding new tiles, sanitary fittings, and plumbing, giving the bathrooms the hotel quality they were after.

To sum up

BR: What I like most about this renovation is that it doesn’t feel like we changed things just for the sake of it. We kept about 80% of the original house, so rather than demolishing unnecessarily, we focused on the areas that needed to work better for the homeowners’ lifestyle. Having the design, build and interiors all handled under one contract also helped make that possible.

It’s also one of our most memorable projects because the brief was quite unusual and specific, from beds that could be repositioned according to feng shui principles to creating a home that could accommodate two people running businesses from it and an entertainment floor that actually serves a purpose. In the end, I think we managed to give them what they were looking for.

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