Dyel Design

Apart from basic hygiene factor that the ID firm has to be trustworthy, I placed heavy emphasis in sourcing for a designer who is client focused, consultative and able to grasp my preferences to entrust the makeover of my house where I have lived in for near to two decades. I spent few months meeting up with no less than twenty ID firms and decided to grant the project to sixth-time Qanvast Supertrust accoladed Dyel and their designer J. It is a wise decision that I am glad that I had made. J is always very encouraging and embracing to ideas. I would give all the credit to J for giving a new lease of life to the former tired looking house, transforming it into a cosy home with design that is uniquely mine and reflects my personality. J invested in time to visit the house to gain better understanding of the environment and my lifestyle in order to propose layout drawing even when I have yet made any commitment. He does not cut corners but instead insisted to go through in details be it drawings, quotation, schedule or process, to align understanding. Throughout the renovation journey, I am appreciative for J who has always been very patient to listen and ensure that I am satisfied even if it means having to make multiple rounds of re-work on his end. Unlike unpleasant experiences shared by friends who had renovated their houses, I felt assured with the regular updates of the work progress to the point I hardly took leave from work to check on-site. While there were unexpected hiccups, J was upfront with the information, quick to respond and resourceful to resolve. On the handover day, J saw that the floor tiles’ grouting was partially discoloured caused by cleaners the day before. He explained the situation and insisted to redo the grouting on his own account. Honestly, the discolouration was not too obvious to layman like me at first sight. Through this incident, J demonstrated integrity and that he is a designer who takes pride in his work. The house was handed over on time within the scheduled 2-month period which is very important for especially existing house owners like myself as any delay would mean additional cost for storage and temporary housing. Despite having paid up fully, J remains responsive and follows up earnestly even with minor touch ups. I would like to express heartfelt gratitude to Dyel and J for such a pleasant house renovation journey and helping me to transform my house into a cosy sanctuary with budget.

We engaged Ryan from Dyel Design during one of the Qanvast meetups as he showcased a more creative layout and usage of our resale flat layout than the other IDs. He understood the design and style requirements right from the start with our provided mood board, as we were going for a Scandi style. During the in-depth design discussion, he was able to provide good suggestions to strike a balance of style and cost. The kitchen layout we swapped back to a more conventional U-shaped to save some costs on his advice. During the actual renovation, Evelyn the project manager handled all the sub-contractors and also helped to coordinate with vendors we engaged promptly. There were some minor adjustments to the carpentry design during actual measurement. Which resulted in the built-in shoe cabinet being shallower than expected and not so practical. But we were compensated by an offset of some of the carpentry cost. Overall Ryan's vision and ours matched, with a good eye for details. Aesthetics, practicality, lighting, punctuality, overall comfortability and cost were met in our opinion.

I had approached a few designers for quotes but ultimately felt that Diana understood best the “look” I was going for, and felt that she had the most experience of all the designers so I trusted that she would be around for the long term. She and her project manager Jovin were always very timely with their responses. Also I appreciated that she could tell me from the outset what kinds of hiccups/additional costs might crop up as the process went on (it was an old building), so we weren’t taken by surprise by any things that were outside of our scope of work. Having lived in the unit for nearly 3 months now I can see also that the quality of tiling/carpentry etc is also better than the firm we engaged on our last apartment so I’m very pleased with that. She was super detail-oriented and always was on top of changes to the quote, so I never had any problems with our quotation being inaccurate/outdated. In fact sometimes I would forget myself what I had chosen (luckily Jovin could always tell me!)