Home Tour: $30,000 Old-school Singaporean retro 3-room HDB BTO in Tiong Bahru

Home to a couple in their 30s, who love the vintage and industrial style, this 3-room BTO apartment exudes lots of character and warmth that immediately transports visitors to a different era. Walking through their front door feels like stepping into a carefully curated timeline of design influences, where each piece tells its own story. The homeowners’ affinity for retro charm is evident in every carefully considered detail, from floor to ceiling and every space in between.

Designed by Studio Super Safari, the home is filled with lots of colours, textures and interesting furniture and accessories, which the couple has amassed over the years of dedicated collecting and thoughtful acquisition. The design studio worked closely with the homeowners to honor their distinctive aesthetic while ensuring the space remained functional for modern HDB living. Rather than imposing a predetermined design scheme, the studio embraced the couple’s eclectic collection, creating a framework that allows each vintage treasure to shine against a backdrop of industrial elements.

Broken concrete floor with tiles

The concrete screed floor was combined with tiles (even broken ones!) to lend a raw and unique look that immediately signals this isn’t your typical HDB interior. This unexpected flooring choice creates zones within the open layout while maintaining visual flow—a creative solution that addresses the spatial constraints of 3-room HDB apartments while adding character that mass-market renovation packages simply cannot replicate. As afternoon light streams through carefully positioned windows, these textural differences create subtle shadow plays that transform the space throughout the day.

Vintage ventilation blocks

Ventilation blocks were added to incorporate a touch of the vintage style from the living room to the adjacent bedroom, allowing light and air to flow between spaces while maintaining a sense of separation. This architectural element, reminiscent of Singapore’s mid-century buildings that characterize old Tiong Bahru, creates fascinating geometric shadows at different times of day while enhancing cross-ventilation—a thoughtful nod to sustainable living within the constraints of BTO apartment design.

Vintage furniture from Singapore

Some of the vintage furniture in the home include the dining set and sofa, each with their own acquisition tales that the couple eagerly shares with visitors. The dining table—a solid teak piece from the 1960s—was discovered in an old shop house being cleared for redevelopment, while the sofa required three months of patient restoration by a craftsman in Joo Chiat. These aren’t merely functional items but characters in the ongoing narrative of their home, bearing witness to everyday moments and special occasions alike.

Vintage window grill

This vintage window grill has been repurposed to display knick-knacks and collectibles like retro phones, transforming what was once a utilitarian security feature into a showcase for treasured memories. Hanging prominently in their living area, it serves as both conversation starter and personal museum—each item displayed represents a moment, a memory, or an adventure shared by the couple during their decade together. This creative repurposing exemplifies their approach to BTO renovation: seeing possibilities where others might see limitations.

3-room BTO with no doors

Many of the room doors are replaced with screens instead, to offer a fun design combined with visual connectivity that challenges traditional notions of HDB apartment layouts. These architectural interventions allow the couple to maintain distinct spaces while preserving the sense of openness that makes their modest three-room flat feel unexpectedly spacious. The screens create thresholds rather than barriers, allowing conversations to flow as freely as the light and air that circulate through their Tiong Bahru home.

Adding colour to HDB corridor

The screens also add vibrant colours into the corridor, transforming a typically overlooked transitional space into a gallery of hues that shift with changing light conditions. What was once a purely functional passageway now serves as a mood-lifting experience each time they move between rooms. This attention to spaces often ignored in standard HDB renovations reveals the couple’s holistic approach to making every square foot of their BTO apartment meaningful.

Statement home decor pieces

An ornate mirror combined with an oriental-style basin anchors the look in the bathroom, creating a space that feels more like a boutique hotel than a standard HDB toilet. These statement pieces transform daily routines into small moments of luxury, proving that even the most utilitarian spaces in a three-room BTO can become expressions of personal style. The juxtaposition of ornate details against utilitarian HDB surfaces creates a tension that defines much of the home’s aesthetic approach.

BTO storage room

One of the bedrooms has also been converted to a space for storage and wardrobe area, challenging conventional ideas about room usage in Singapore’s public housing. Rather than forcing their lifestyle into predetermined spaces, they’ve reimagined the standard BTO layout to serve their specific needs. This room transformation represents their prioritization of quality living experience over adherence to typical HDB apartment arrangements—a bold choice that has significantly enhanced their daily life in Tiong Bahru.

Vintage home decor collection

Here, the homeowners display their favourite decor accessories, creating a dressing room that doubles as a personal gallery. Mornings begin with inspiration as they prepare for the day surrounded by treasured objects—vintage cameras collected from flea markets around Southeast Asia, hand-painted ceramics from road trips to Malaysian craft villages, and framed concert tickets that mark significant moments in their relationship. This room perhaps best represents how their BTO apartment has become a three-dimensional autobiography.

Spot fun custom painted blinds in every room too. These are made-to-order from a Malaysian artist whose whimsical designs add unexpected moments of delight throughout the home. Each blind features motifs that reference the couple’s shared interests—vintage motorcycles in the living room, botanical illustrations in the bedroom, and abstract interpretations of Tiong Bahru’s architectural elements in their study nook. These practical items become art pieces that contribute to the home’s distinctive character.

Vintage HDB lighting

The homeowners sourced all the lighting fixtures on their own, to match the unique look in the home, spending weekends hunting through specialty shops in Balestier and online marketplaces for just the right pieces. From rewired industrial pendants salvaged from an old factory to handcrafted paper lamps purchased directly from an artisan’s workshop, each lighting element adds to the layered narrative of their space. As evening falls over Tiong Bahru, these thoughtfully selected fixtures transform the apartment’s atmosphere, casting warm pools of light that highlight their favorite corners.

They spent approximately $30,000 in renovation, an investment that yielded a completely personalized three-room HDB that defies categorization within typical BTO renovation templates. This budget—modest by many Singapore renovation standards—was stretched through creative sourcing, DIY efforts, and a clear vision that prioritized character over conventional luxury. The result is a home in Tiong Bahru that feels infinitely more personal than spaces costing many times more to create.

As night settles over the historic rooflines of Tiong Bahru, this 3-room BTO apartment glows with a warmth that comes not just from its carefully selected vintage lamps, but from the stories embedded in every corner. It stands as proof that even within the standardized framework of Singapore’s public housing, there exists infinite potential for personal expression—especially when homeowners are brave enough to color outside the lines of conventional BTO renovation expectations.