Who needs a playground when you can have a slide in your own HDB flat? This family of 5 did just that for their maisonette.
13 JULY 2023|BY JOSIAH NEO
One of the luxuries of owning an executive maisonette is the sheer amount of space you get. From rock walls to a Harry Potter-inspired library, the additional square footage means that homeowners can put in whatever they fancy. For one family of 5, this meant making their new home a fun one too, and they opted for a feature that sparked our inner child: a slide.
The parents wanted to ensure that their 3 growing children would remember their home as a fun place to be. Their interior designer, Valerie Toh of Jesigns Interior Design, proposed a slide to complement the maisonette’s stairs for a whimsical and amusing touch. It also helped that the slide could easily fit an adult too, so the parents could also relive their playground memories.
Designing a slide in an HDB flat
In case you were wondering, no, the stairs were not replaced entirely by a slide. Although the 1,572sqft executive maisonette had lots of room to spare, the slide was only installed on the lower portion of the L-shaped stairs as putting in a full-height slide would’ve taken up too much space.
Valerie also shared with Uchify that designing and building the slide was a nerve-wracking, yet fulfilling and exhilarating task.
The slide isn’t just your ordinary plastic playground slide either. It has been intricately designed to match the Scandinavian aesthetic of the rest of the home – which we’ll show later below. The shell of the slide is made from wood, and it has been given an elevated look with LED lights running down the length of both sides of the handle.
The side of the slide has been given the fluted panel treatment, which is par for the course when it comes to all-things-Scandi. Subtle curves also help reduce the harshness of the slide’s straight lines.
According to the interior designers, the estimated cost of a slide like this would range from $10-$20K, depending on the complexity, design, and other requirements.
Arches & curves dominate the house
The main design elements that Valerie used throughout the executive maisonette were arches and curves.
One place where it was prominently featured is at the entrance of the kitchen. Rather than a regular-degular archway, a corner arch was constructed to frame the steel-blue kitchen cabinets. The mosaic pattern on the floor has also been given the curved treatment, blending into the vinyl floor in an S-shaped design.
Scandinavian HDB flat with a slide
Over the course of 11 weeks, Valerie and her team of contractors transformed this spacious executive maisonette into a Scandinavian paradise for a Singaporean family of 5. But it isn’t your cookie-cutter resale flat, especially since a slide was built so going downstairs – or down slide – for dinnertime will always be an adventure.