She presides over her clients’ homes, turning their visions into reality. But interior designer Cherin Tan, who is creative director at LAANK, takes a ‘no design’ approach when designing her own home.
She enjoys cooking, gardening and doing pottery, while her husband, Jason Tong, managing director at LAANK, likes music and reading. “But we both love having friends and family around, and having our own personal space”, she shares.
But when it comes to her own home – a 2,000 sq ft walk-up penthouse in Jalan Besar – she throws the design book out the window. Instead, hers is a “no design approach”, where “the look is the result of just piecing together different personalities within a physical space”, says Cherin.
“Since I design for a living, I immediately saw the potential of the space. We made an offer within 10 minutes of seeing it – that was how convinced I was”, she says.
“We were particularly attracted to how the split levels would allow me to design something out of the box and have different pockets of space for multiple uses,” she adds. Even though the penthouse was built in the 1960s and in fairly good condition, Cherin chose to gut it and rebuild.