Elizabeth hay designs

A Singapore flat by Elizabeth Hay

Lauryn Ishak

During last summer’s lockdown, as palm-rustling breezes swept her home office in Singapore, Amy Long had pause to reflect. After a successful career in the energy industry, darting between its global headquarters, she decided that it was time to trade her corporate life for creativity. ‘Covid made me focus on what is important – doing what you love versus work that needs doing,’ she says. ‘I wanted to find a job that would reconcile the commercial and artistic sides of my personality.’ For this lifelong lover of architecture and decoration, the answer became obvious: a career in interior design beckoned.

A few weeks later, she landed an apprenticeship with one of Singapore’s leading interior designers, Elizabeth Hay. Now swatches, not spreadsheets, are her milieu. The pair first met when Amy commissioned Elizabeth, who trained in the UK under the influential designer Veere Grenney, to create a bespoke dining table for her previous home. Drawn by Elizabeth’s distinctive style – in which ebullient layers of pattern and texture are underpinned by hawk-eyed precision – Amy asked Elizabeth to redesign the family apartment, which she and her husband bought in 2018. The project proved to be a masterclass in interior design – and resourcefulness.

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In a city fixated by modernity, the apartment, which the couple share with their two daughters, has vintage appeal. The 28-storey block, with its distant forest views, was built in 1985. ‘By Singaporean standards it is old, which is what we prefer. Compared with new buildings, it has high ceil-ings and the floorplan is sensible,’ explains Amy, who says properties like this rarely linger on the market. ‘I was on a business trip when my husband texted me a photo of the place. I immediately said, “Let’s do it.” ’

Some elements of the decoration, a palimpsest of owners past, were less appealing. False ceilings obscured the lofty, elegant proportions. Wooden floors stretched from end to end of the apartment in a sea of lurid orange wood stain and the walls were clad in stone, creating what Amy describes as a ‘Nineties Balinese effect’.

Faced with the scale of the interior (4,100 square feet on one floor), it would have been very easy to default to polite neutrals. But designer and client shared a different vision. ‘We wanted it to look like a jewel box, where every room feels like a discovery. Amy has some great art and furniture – she has lived all over the world. The design had to reflect those cosmopolitan influences,’ says Elizabeth, who moved from Britain to Singapore in 2013.

In place of straight lines, whimsical Moghul arches draw your gaze to rooms with walls wrapped in seagrass or block prints. Chintz mingles happily with grass matting, and a faux tented ceiling brings Raj-style romance to Amy’s study. There is no glare of the flatscreen to detract from the look of the family room. Instead, a candy-striped sofa illuminated by glowing sconces was chosen as the ideal spot for bedtime stories. It all adds to the atmosphere: inviting, cultured, non-prescriptive.

The jumping-off point for the sitting room was the scenic wallpaper, ‘Early Views of India’ by de Gournay – all sway-ing elephants and temples – scaled up with the addition of billowing clouds to fit the space. ‘It’s immersive and trans-portive. We don’t have a television, so the girls love making up stories about the characters in the wallpaper,’ explains Amy. Elizabeth drew on its palette – lapis blue, terracotta and marigold – to knit the open-plan spaces together like the weft of a tapestry. At night, when the lights of the chandelier seem to sparkle like stars against the navy beams, the win-dowless dining room becomes a moonlit chamber. ‘It feels soaring and intimate at the same time,’ says Elizabeth.

The project was also an education in making-do. ‘There’s so much construction and waste in Singapore,’ says Amy. ‘A lot of the decoration here was in good condition, so I wanted to reuse as much as possible.’ A slab of blue quartz brings dazzle to a built-in desk in her study, and formerly bland built-in wardrobes were reinvented with geometric patterned wallpaper on the doors and brass knobs. The family’s existing furniture has taken on a new lease of life, too: a pair of mid-century chairs was reupholstered with a deep weave in the sitting room; and a contemporary wooden bedside table was stripped back to mellower tones.

Designer Elizabeth Hay Transforms an English Cottage for Her Family of Five

Jonathan Bond

When her family became a party of five, Singapore-based interior designer Elizabeth Hay of Elizabeth Hay Design knew she’d eventually need a home base when visiting relatives in her native UK. Her 6,000-square-foot, 16^th-century thatched cottage in Devon, equipped with a guest annex and six bedrooms, was just the place—but she needed to reclaim it.

“We had been renting out the house for a while to full-time tenants, so I decided to redecorate the interiors of the cottage to make it more of a cozy home for the family,” says Hay. “Being a quintessential Devon cottage, it was already full of charm but quite neutral in terms of color.”

To embrace the “quirky” nature of the cottage, Hay introduced layers of warm color and lots of patterns (think soft fabrics from brands like Decors Barbares, Rosa Bernal, and Claremont). She mixed old and new with items sourced from across the globe to create what she describes as an eclectic, lived-in feeling.

"I knew it all so well, and it felt like home, yet I hadn’t seen it before."

“I am a big collector and am always on the lookout for interesting objects and furniture, which I snap up whenever I see them in auction in order to use in my projects and in my own home,” explains Hay. Take, for example, the bookshelves and cow painting in the sitting room, along with nearly all of the side tables and accent chairs throughout the cottage. All were picked up at a bargain (the bookshelves clocked in at about $65!) in auctions.

Jonathan Bond

Painting existing woodwork in playful shades—as in the powder room—helped transform spaces simply, as did wallpaper in the bedrooms.

“Walking in for the first time with it all set up having designed it from afar was so surreal,” says Hay. “It was the strangest feeling, as I knew it all so well, and it felt like home, yet I hadn’t seen it before.”

Living Room

Pictured above.

Hay used a Pierre Frey chintz fabric on the sofa and paired it with pillows from Guy Goodfellow Collection. The dual-function ottoman/coffee table features Nicole Fabre Designs upholstery. Coziness abounds thanks to expert pattern play. The bookshelves are painted Edward Bulmer Aquatic.

Jonathan Bond

Jonathan Bond

Dining Room

Jonathan Bond

A floral arrangement by Rambling Rose enhances the English cottage aesthetic. Hay used Little Greene’s White Lead paint on the walls, beams, and ceilings, and a rich Edward Bulmer Invisible Green hue in the kitchen.

Jonathan Bond

Primary Bedroom

Jonathan Bond

“We used a lot of wallpapers in the bedrooms to make them feel cozy and add color and pattern without making any structural changes,” says Hay. Here, she installed Aleta Pise wallpaper. The bench is hand painted by Hay’s mother. Hay found the 18^th-century chest of drawers at auction.

Jonathan Bond

Bedroom

Jonathan Bond

Hay designed the wicker headboards in this sweet guest bedroom. The bed linens are from Pushpanjali.

Jonathan Bond

Bedroom

Jonathan Bond

A Pierre Frey Fleurs de Mai wallpaper pairs well with a gingham quilt in Ian Mankin’s Suffolk pattern.

Bathroom

Jonathan Bond

Hay’s mother hand stenciled the floor to add a standout design layer to this bathroom.

Bedroom

Jonathan Bond

Yellow-painted bobbin four poster beds—designed by Hay—contrast perfectly with deep green Edward Bulmer walls and mustard bedding. The lamp is a vase Hay had wired for lighting.

Bathroom

Jonathan Bond

An arrangement of plates inspired by designer Veere Grenney’s dining room in Tangier is artfully arranged in the annex bathroom.

Q & A

House Beautiful: What was the scope of the project?

Elizabeth Hay: Just paint, furnishings and some carpentry and making good. We overlaid the tiles in some of the bathrooms.

HB: What’s one of your favorite elements?

EH: In one of the bathrooms, my mother hand stenciled the existing wooden floor to add some interest, which totally transformed the space.

HB: Any challenges along the way?

EH: This project was done during the peak of Covid. I worked on it remotely from Singapore with my mother—who luckily lives 20 minutes down the road—project managing it for me. I couldn’t even be there for the installation or the photoshoot due to Covid travel restrictions and was constantly on video calls.

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