Designs

Owning a terrace house in Singapore is great for Singaporean families. You’ve got your own land title, multiple floors, and an outdoor space that you can personalise. The front terrace, the back garden, and sometimes a roof terrace. Most people who buy a terrace house in Singapore do so precisely for these spaces. Then they spend most of their renovation budget on the interior and treat the outdoor areas as an afterthought. That’s a mistake worth fixing. A well-designed terrace house in Singapore is one where the indoor and outdoor spaces talk to each other, where the roof terrace is genuinely usable year-round, where the front terrace makes an impression rather than collecting dust, and feels completely different to live in. This guide will help you get there. What Makes Terrace House Design Different in Singapore A terrace house is spread across two or three storeys, plus sometimes a basement or attic. This creates design challenges that don’t usually come with condos or bungalows.  Light is one of the biggest ones. Natural light enters from the front and back only. The rest gets blocked entirely. This leaves the middle of the house completely dark.  A few older homes have a compartmentalised layout where rooms are stacked behind each other, and each has one small window. Which, as a result, also affects the ventilation of the home. In Singapore’s humidity, proper ventilation and natural lighting are exceptionally important.   Simple Terrace House Design Principles That Solve the Big Problems Open the Ground Floor Completely The most impactful single change in any terrace house renovation is opening the ground floor into one connected living, dining, and kitchen space. Ideally, you remove the walls between these zones and keep only what’s structural — and the house transforms.  This allows natural light and air to move more freely throughout the space.  For a simple terrace house design that works in Singapore’s climate, a dry kitchen opening to the dining area, with a wet kitchen tucked behind a glass partition or pocket door to contain cooking smells, handles both the open feel and the practical reality of local cooking.  French Chic Style @ Ashwood Bring Light Down Through the Centre The middle of a terrace house is where light dies. The solutions that actually work are These aren’t expensive interventions relative to the total renovation budget, and they change the character of the whole house. Staircases in Singapore terrace house design deserve more attention than they usually get.  A staircase positioned centrally rather than pushed to one side allows light from a roof or upper-level skylight to fall all the way down to the ground floor. It also improves circulation. Here is what a long chandelier looked like in Resort Living @ Park Villas Rise Design for Vertical Flow, Not Just Floor by Floor The best terrace house designs in Singapore think vertically, with public spaces on the ground floor, private bedrooms on the upper floors, with a clear logic to how you move between them. Double-volume ceilings in the living area connect the ground and first floors visually, making the house feel significantly more spacious than its plot footprint suggests.  Front Terrace Design: The First Impression That’s Usually Wasted The front terrace of a Singapore terrace house is the first thing anyone sees, and it’s consistently the most neglected part of the renovation. Homeowners spend months agonising over kitchen tiles and wardrobe finishes, and then leave the front terrace as bare concrete with a gate. Front terrace house design doesn’t need to be complicated. A few things make an immediate difference:  Roof Terrace Design: Turning the Top Floor Into a Real Room A roof terrace in Singapore has one fundamental challenge: it’s exposed. Full sun from mid-morning. Rain with no warning. Wind that increases significantly once you’re above the surrounding roof lines. Ignore these realities in the roof terrace design, and you end up with a space that looks good in photos, but nobody actually uses. The roof terrace designs that get used have three things in common.  Terrace roof design also needs to account for the weight loading. Planters, furniture, and decking all add load to the structure. If you’re planning to renovate your roof any time soon, it is best that you consult an engineer. For families in areas like Marine Terrace or the landed estates of Serangoon Gardens, a roof terrace is the outdoor space that justifies the entire property purchase. Coastal Living @ Meng Suan Outdoor Terrace Design: Connecting Inside to Outside at Ground Level The back garden and ground-level outdoor space in a Singapore terrace house is where indoor-outdoor living actually happens daily. The outdoor terrace at ground level is where the family eats breakfast on weekends, where the kids play after school, and where you sit at night when the temperature drops. Outdoor terrace design at this level should prioritise two things:  You can use large-format sliding or folding glass doors that fully retract.  Composite decking handles humidity and UV without warping or requiring annual treatment the way real timber does. Porcelain tiles with a slip-resistant finish work on flat surfaces.  Terrace House Interior Design Modern Tropical The style that makes the most sense for Singapore’s climate and a terrace house’s connection to outdoor space. Large openings, natural ventilation prioritised in the layout, greenery integrated at every level with internal courtyards, roof planters, and ground-level gardens.  The design uses natural materials like timber, stone, and rattan. The palette is warm and earthy. It photographs beautifully, but more importantly, it works both aesthetically and environmentally.  Coastal Living @ Meng Suan Modern Minimalist Works particularly well in terrace houses because the architectural constraints of a narrow plot benefit from restraint.  The design uses  This design style offers practicality rather than just decoration. In Singapore terrace house interior design, it pairs well with double-volume ceilings and full-height glazing. Contemporary with Industrial Touches Popular in older terrace houses where house structures had genuine character, exposed brickwork, timber roof structures, and original floor

A bungalow gives you space that most Singapore homeowners never get. The question is what to do with it and how to design it in a way that every part is used, not just the parts that photograph easily. Owning a bungalow in Singapore puts you in a great space. The land title is yours. The garden is yours. There’s no shared lobby, no MCST, no neighbour directly above you. You get the full package and with it, a renovation project that’s fundamentally different from anything you’d face in an HDB flat or condo. More space doesn’t make design easier. In fact, in some ways, it makes it harder. A bungalow has to work across multiple zones — ground floor living, upper floor bedrooms, basement entertainment, outdoor garden, maybe a pool.  This guide covers what actually makes bungalow house design work in Singapore. What Makes Bungalow Design Different in Singapore Singapore bungalows come in a few categories worth understanding before you start designing.  Standard bungalows sit on a minimum plot of 400 sqm.  Good Class Bungalows — the most prestigious residential category in Singapore, require a minimum plot of 1,400 sqm and are restricted to designated Good Class Bungalow Areas.  Regardless of which category you’re in, bungalow interior design in Singapore shares some consistent challenges. The plots are larger, but Singapore’s climate doesn’t care. The humidity, heat, and tropical downpours affect a bungalow just as aggressively as a flat.  Outdoor spaces need materials and design choices that survive year-round tropical conditions. While indoor spaces need cross-ventilation strategies that work, not just windows placed for aesthetics. Getting the zoning right across floors is as important as the design of any individual room. The Best Bungalow House Design Styles for Singapore Modern Bungalow House Design The most requested style in Singapore bungalow renovations right now. Modern bungalow house design combines clean architectural lines, large glazing, and a restrained material palette — concrete, stone, timber, glass. Here are a few design choices that you can go for: What makes modern design work specifically in Singapore’s climate is the emphasis on controlled light. Large openings let light in but also let heat in. The best modern bungalow house designs in Singapore use deep overhangs, louvred screens, and strategic tree placement to shade the glazing without blocking the view.  French Chic Style @ Ashwood Modern Tropical Bungalow Design Singapore sits just north of the equator. The architecture that was developed here across a century of tropical building — generous overhangs, raised floors, cross-ventilation through the house section, indoor-outdoor connection at every level- exists for good reasons.  Modern tropical bungalow design takes those principles and applies them with contemporary materials and aesthetics. Natural materials throughout: timber cladding, stone floors, rattan furniture, and planted walls. Large openings that can be fully opened in the evening when temperatures drop and closed against afternoon rain. Courtyards that draw light and air through the centre of the house.  A garden that’s designed as an extension of the living space rather than a separate zone you visit occasionally.  This is the best design for bungalow living in Singapore for homeowners who want to actually engage with the climate rather than just air-condition against it. Resort Living @ Park Villas Rise Simple Bungalow House Design Not every bungalow renovation needs to be architecturally dramatic. Some of the best-lived-in bungalows in Singapore are the ones that made clear, simple decisions and executed them consistently — a neutral palette throughout, good quality flooring running consistently across all ground floor spaces, built-in joinery that provides storage without cluttering every wall, and a garden that’s low maintenance but always looks considered. Design details like a bold feature ceiling, an unusual material combination, and a very specific colour palette can feel good at the start. But feel dated within five years. A simpler foundation with personality expressed through furniture, lighting, and soft furnishings gives you the ability to update the feel of the house without structural work. Small Bungalow House Design A smaller bungalow plot — around 400 to 600 sqm — needs the same design thinking as any compact home: every decision has to be deliberate. In a small bungalow house design, the temptation to chase every amenity (gym, home theatre, wine room, wet and dry kitchen, guest suite) usually results in a house where nothing has enough space to breathe. The smarter approach is deciding which two or three things matter most to how you actually live — entertaining, a serious home office, space for the children to have their own territory — and designing those spaces generously, then treating the rest as supporting infrastructure. A small bungalow house design with floor plan thinking built into the brief from the start produces better outcomes than one that tries to fit everything in during the carpentry phase. Bungalow Interior Design Zone by Zone Ground Floor: Where the Whole House is Judged The ground floor of a Singapore bungalow typically holds the living and dining areas, the kitchen, and often a guest room or helper’s room. It’s also the floor that connects to the garden and pool — the indoor-outdoor relationship that defines how good the bungalow feels to live in. Open-plan ground floors work exceptionally well in bungalows because you have the space to do it properly. A kitchen that fully connects to a dining area and then to a living room, with sliding glass panels at the rear that open the whole floor to the garden — that layout makes a bungalow feel genuinely different from any apartment. Consistent stone or large-format tile flooring that runs from interior to exterior without a threshold reinforces the connection. The wet and dry kitchen split is worth getting right. Singapore families cook seriously. An open dry kitchen for daily quick meals and a closed or semi-closed wet kitchen for heavy cooking behind it — this layout keeps the dining and living areas presentable when guests arrive without sacrificing the practical kitchen space your household actually needs. French