Bright and white is the governing idea of this room, and it is a harder starting point than it sounds. Colour is the usual way a Dhaka drawing room earns its character, and taking colour off the table leaves texture and light to carry a floor this wide on their own. Everything built here answers that one condition. Three separate wall treatments in the same white, a chandelier chosen for the way it catches relief, and a single papered elevation are what a white room needs before it stops looking unfinished.
A second condition came from how the plan has to work rather than from how it should look. This end of the apartment carries formal entertaining and ordinary Friday afternoon television, and no single room does both jobs unless it can change size. So the living end was fitted with a glazed sliding partition. Slid open, this room and the dining space read as one long formal floor. Closed, it is a family room with three sofas and a screen.
Bright and White, With Nothing Flat About It
The main television elevation is a moulded three dimensional diamond panel in white, with a floating console running below it and no visible fixing anywhere on the face. Diamond relief does something a horizontal groove cannot in a room shaped like this one. The floor is wide and the ceiling is standard apartment height, and a diagonal pattern lifts the eye where a horizontal one spreads it sideways. The crystal chandelier hangs clear of the panel rather than centred on it, so its facets pick up the relief at a dozen angles and the fitting reads bigger than its actual drop. Nearly every project we take on under living room design in Dhaka begins at this wall, because it is the one elevation every member of the family looks at daily.
A second television elevation, at the corridor end, is fluted white panelling with its own floating console and a lit open display shelf column beside it. Fluting and diamond relief in one apartment can easily fight each other. Both are sprayed the same white and lit at the same colour temperature, so they behave like two settings of a single idea rather than two ideas. The angled view shows how far that was pushed. The backlit niche shelving, the curved panel doors that close off the corridor, and even the side by side refrigerator are all held in one continuous plane.
Opening and Closing the Room on Demand
That glazed sliding partition is the most used piece of hardware in the flat. It runs on a top track with no floor channel, so nothing catches underfoot and the floor finish runs straight through underneath. There is a practical argument for it beyond flexibility. Cooking here is done on a gas hob with heavy spice, and a lounge left open to the dining table all evening ends up carrying the smell in its upholstery. The 2,000 sq ft Bashundhara R/A Block-M apartment project is planned around a central corridor with this room at one end, and two panels of glass are the difference between a sofa that smells of Friday lunch and one that does not.
With the panels drawn back, the sightline runs the length of the plan and this room borrows the modern dining room design in Bashundhara R/A Block-M as an extension of itself. That is the argument for glass over a solid pocket door, and it is the more expensive of the two options once the track and the ironmongery are counted. Handles were kept slim and brushed so the frames stay thin against the white behind them.
The One Wall That Was Allowed to Break the Rule
One wall in this room is decoration rather than architecture, and it is the only one doing that job. It carries a feather mural wallpaper, with gold hexagon mirrors scattered across it, hung irregularly instead of on a grid, because a grid would have argued with the drift of the pattern behind it. Three grey fabric sofas face this wall in a U, which quietly makes it the talking end of the room and leaves the screen to the other end. The paper stops square at the panel edge rather than turning the corner, so the surface reads as framed. Those same hexagons turn up again in the modern parents bedroom design in Bashundhara R/A Block-M, which stitches the far corners of the flat together.
An Entry That Behaves Like a Room
An entrance you can stand in was a requirement here, not a metre of tile between the front door and the sofas. Meeting it takes corridor width, which in an apartment always comes off something else, and it is a trade you make once and have to be certain about. What sits there now is a gold ring chandelier, a lit display niche, a swivel chair and a group of real plants. The niche lighting is specified warm and at an output that keeps those plants alive, since a cool bright niche flatters ceramics and slowly kills anything growing. Ask most people about interior design service in Bashundhara and the entry is the last item on their list.
A Bench at the End of the Corridor
At the far end the corridor stops in an arched alcove, papered in a small floral and fitted with a cushioned bench between two brass lantern sconces. Storage sits under the seat cushion, which is where the shoes actually go. A corridor this long has to finish on something, and the ordinary finish is a services cupboard door at the end of a long walk. This corner is also the only place in the apartment where pattern, brass and colour were allowed to appear together.
The Usual Version of This Room, and Why It Fails
Done the ordinary way, a room this size gets one feature wall in dark veneer, a matching sofa set pushed to the perimeter and a false ceiling ringed with downlights. It photographs adequately on day one and then it stops working. The veneer fixes the room to a single colour temperature for its whole life, the perimeter layout leaves a useless rectangle of floor in the middle, and downlights on a flat ceiling give you glare on the television and shadow everywhere else. Splitting the work across three white treatments costs more in joinery and buys a room that can be relit and reupholstered without starting again. The modern master bedroom design in Bashundhara R/A Block-M takes the opposite line and holds almost no pattern at all, on the argument that a flat this bright needs one room that asks nothing of you.
Thinking about an all white scheme and worried it will end up feeling cold? Call us at 01633-033033 or book a free consultation today.
