Moulded wave panelling covers the television wall, sprayed the same warm white as the plaster beside it so the ripples register as shadow rather than as a second colour. From the sofa it is the first thing the eye lands on and the last thing to change when the lamps come on. The wall belongs to a 3,000 sq ft flat in Basabo, Dhaka, finished in the modern classical language the rest of the apartment follows. Warm white joinery, brushed gold metalwork, marble tile underfoot, very little else competing.
This is one long volume rather than a square room. It starts at the lobby door, carries along the television wall and stops only at the dining table, and protecting that single sightline decided the furniture plan before anything was chosen. Low sofa backs, a slim console, nothing tall anywhere along the run. The room is the second stop on the 3,000 sq ft Basabo apartment project, and it is the one that sets the palette everything after it has to agree with.
The Wave Panel Wall and Its Sconces
The panels are moulded board, primed flat and sprayed after the ceiling was closed so no dust settled into a wet finish. The wave runs horizontally across a wall of roughly four metres, and the brass sconces on either side sit at eye height with their apertures aimed up and down instead of out. After dark the light rakes across the moulding and the relief looks twice as deep as it measures. At midday it flattens almost to nothing, which is the whole reason for using shadow instead of pigment.
Sconce centres were fixed on the drawing before panel widths were cut, because good living room design in Dhaka lives or dies on that order of operations. Reverse it and a fitting lands on a crest instead of a trough, and every seat in the room can see the error. The screen is recessed into the panel field rather than hung over it, so the dark rectangle sits level with the crests when it is switched off.
The Floating Console Under the Screen
Beneath the screen a white console spans the panelled recess with nothing touching the floor, carried on steel brackets fixed into the blockwork rather than on legs. Drawers are push to open, so no handle interrupts the front face, and they swallow remotes, cables and the router. A conduit inside the wall drops the television feed straight down into the cabinet, so not one lead is visible against the panelling. The IPS and the voltage stabiliser sit in the left hand section with the back panel cut away for airflow, which matters in a city where the mains fails several times a week and nobody wants to look at the box that covers for it.
The Arched Lobby Niche and Its Folding Doors
Guests meet the lobby before they meet the room. A tall arched recess takes its light from a strip buried in the upper reveal, so the curve glows while the source itself stays hidden from every standing position. A slim white console sits under it for keys, post and whatever comes through the door. The arch head is a true radius struck from one centre rather than a flattened curve assembled from segments, and the plaster returns into the reveal with no bead line showing at the junction.
Frosted glass folding doors shut the lobby off when the family wants the front of the flat quiet, and they fold flat against the return wall the rest of the time. Frosted rather than solid was a daylight decision. The lobby has no window of its own, and solid leaves would have left it dark from noon onwards. The leaves hang from a top track with no floor channel, so the marble tile carries through from the entrance without a threshold line.
The Beige Three Piece Set and the Cream Curtains
The seating group is three beige pieces with shallow backs and firm cushions, kept low so the view through to the dining end survives. Cream curtains hang off a recessed ceiling track rather than a visible pole, so the fabric appears to come out of the slab and the wall reads at full height. A gold tripod lamp fills the corner the ceiling fittings cannot reach, and cushions plus a single throw carry all the pattern in the group. The drops are lined and interlined to the same specification as the brown curtains in the luxury guest bedroom design in Basabo, because unlined fabric in this climate fades along the fold line inside two summers. The upholstery is a tight weave that sheds damp rather than holding it, which is a humidity decision more than a taste one.
The Forest Mural Niche and the Cascade Chandelier
A second arched niche sits beside the television wall holding a forest mural in muted greens, printed and lined so the arch reads as a framed picture rather than wallpaper turning a corner. Further along the run, a composition of geometric gold mirrors sits over a white sideboard, and a crystal cascade chandelier falls at the point where the floor changes use. That chandelier is doing the job a partition wall would normally be asked to do. Stand at the lobby and the view carries past the panelling and the floral mural all the way to the table, where the luxury dining room design in Basabo picks up the same white and the same brass without a threshold in between.
The Joinery Shop Behind the Panels
Nothing fixed in this room was bought in. Panelling, console, niche linings and sideboard were cut, assembled and sprayed by our own joinery team, which is the only reason the sconce centres line up with the moulding as exactly as they do. Carcasses are marine grade ply instead of particle board, because board that swells once in Dhaka never comes back flat. Fronts were sprayed in a booth and left to cure before they were carried up in the lift. The same crew and the same white produced the wardrobe fronts in the luxury master bedroom design in Basabo a fortnight later.
Clients who want to see that workshop discipline applied at other sizes and budgets usually start with our home interior design in Dhaka work and then come back to the detail. Panelling of this kind takes about three weeks from approved drawing to installed wall, and most of that is spraying and curing rather than carpentry. It is the slowest item in the room and the one worth waiting for, since a wall this size sprayed inside an occupied flat never comes back as clean.
Tell us which wall you want the room built around. Call us at 01633-033033 or book a free consultation today.
