Boutique Hotel

The boutique hotel trend is a hit now.

Boutique hotel is all about unique, nice, chic and affordable. So how to give the hotel a unique character but not spending too much on interior? Get the walls done. Doing walls for boutique hotel is great fun. First I get to design a theme for them, then I get to tailor the walls to match with the room’s interior and make it into a whole package thing. Normally clients would ask me to come out with a theme for them. I think that was the best part. Till now I have reserved 2 very special themes that have never been done before in any hotel and hopefully can find an interested client to make it happen. I normally don’t repeat my designs from one client to another. Cause I want every one of them to be unique.

The 5 elements Hotel, Jalan Sultan, Kuala Lumpur.

I did the walls for the 100 rooms’ hotel with a team of 3.Myself, my uncle Paul and 1 hands-on worker Andrew. We finished 80 rooms in 2 months (same hand over time as the renovations) and alone, I custom made them a few special rooms in the ‘Honeymoon Floor’ with the theme of “Oriental-9 Happiness”.

The reason I clarified the 3 of us did the hotel is not because I tot it’s something great(it’s actually nothing great that I have such a small team,I only form teams when there is a major project with short time line.) It’s because I found out one designer claim that he did the hotel with his team members and almost advertise our work as his portfolio in some interior magazine. Yeah, typical.hmm…actually, I dun mind what he claimed, since I never get the chance to advertise my work in any ways and I’m not any big names, things like this happen. It’s really normal over here in Malaysia. This is like a hobby of mine, so long as I’m happy giving my best, I dun really bother much on the problems.

The 5 Elements hotel project was a success. The owner is such good sport and is willing to try unorthodox ideas and has given me a lot of help making my work very convenient. We manage to give the hotel owners exactly what they requested and everything was done exactly as planned.Here are some of the pictures.

The Butterfly Room

The Crane Room

I love doing the crane room A LOT!  The bed is soft and white, the cranes look soft, the color is subtle, overall, everything is looking really comfy!

The Goldfish Room

I made both their tails flow gracefully around the wall, one goes up to the ceiling abit and the other wraps around the edge which links to the toilet door. To bring out the softness of the tail and the whole gigantic feeling to it.
This is abit tricky because it's Green and Red (which normally dun go together). So I need to be very careful to make sure each layer dries properly before applying the next layer so that the color won't blend together into a messy brown. Try blending wet red paint with green, u'll know what I mean.

I love painting the bubbles too! Made the mural looked 'floaty'.

The Lovebirds Room

There's alot of spraying work for this room to create that evening sunset effect.I wanted to make the sun look as if it's glowing. A little bit like how I did the Butterfly Room.

The Panda Room

Pandas are not easy to paint. They are tricky! Seriously! First, if they are not fat enough, they dun look like pandas. If I made them sit too straight without that little hunch back pose, also they dun look like pandas.As for that 2 black eye patches, if it's too big, they look funny! like sun shades. If it's too small, they'll look like Polar bear. So, getting everything in the right proportion is the key.

When I was designing this pose, I laughed. But it was so cute I just cant NOT painting it this way.
Okey if you wanna ask me :" why paint pandas" It's actually one of the animals that symbolize Great Prosperity in chinese culture. Afterall they just eat and sleep and that's about it.. No work, ALL play. So I made Pandas one of the  "Oriental -9 Happiness"

The Phoenix Room

Guess which is the male and which is the female?
If you guessed the red one is the male, you are correct. I dun have a proper camera to take the whole mural. Actually the female's tail is very long. It's like a ribbon that goes around the room. And the male's tail flows continuously to the other side of the wall and stops at the bed headboard.

The Peony Room

I love the Peony Room. Loved doing it and LOVED the outcome.

It's alot air-brushing to create the gradient of pink. I also used Red aerosol spray to make the petals glossy. Becareful when you use aerosol spray, cause it's alcohol base, if there's a mistake, there's no way to undo it. So you need to carefully construct exactly where you wanna spray them. However the effects are nice. It makes the middle of the flower glossy like there's water on the petal.

Here's the close up.

The Water Room

I worked this out together with Architect Arnold. He designed the room and placement of the glass tiles and I spray the toning and did the water mural. He is a really creative architect, besides this, we also worked together on a restaurant mural which you can see from "Boutique Retail" page.

The Green Crawler Room

The Standard Rooms-

Jungle SLumber

Sweet Seta

Oriental Bloom

Fantasy Bark

Dimming light

Natural light