Interior designer at Miranda Hill

Every plan here names its rooms. It can't tell you what the extra ones are for. Miranda Hill stands on a wooded rise in North Kiara, off Jalan Dutamas Raya. It's the second phase here for BRDB, the group behind Bangsar Shopping Centre: two freehold towers, of 37 and 35 storeys, with 552 homes between them. Sizes run from a 943 sq ft two-bedroom to penthouses of 3,584 sq ft. The larger the plan, the more rooms wait for a purpose.

For 80 sq ft more, Tower 1's 2+1 has a study by the foyer. Tower 2's two-bedroom has a small utility cupboard instead, for the mop, the spare bulbs, the recycling: everything a home needs and nobody needs to see. So for the smallest homes, the tower you choose decides the plan.

From the 3+1 up, the cooking splits between a dry kitchen and a wet one, and a helper's room joins the plan. The penthouses go furthest, with five bedrooms and an extra room, as many rooms as a family house. In between, two homes on a typical floor are 4+2s, with four bedrooms and a study: a guest can stay the week without anyone giving up a desk.

From BRDB's plans for each type, and its key plans.

BRDB set Miranda Hill into the natural fall of the ground, about 40 metres above the road, and kept a stretch of the original woodland. Two tall towers hold every home, so some 57% of the site can stay green. From inside, that makes two kinds of window: those that look into leaves, and those that look out across North Kiara. Your floor, and which side of the tower you're on, decide which you have. On a floor of eight homes, the one across the landing may see a different morning. So we check what yours looks on to before choosing a curtain or turning the sofa.

Facing the woodland, daylight comes through the leaves, softened and faintly green. It flatters warm whites and oak, while a blue-grey can turn chilly. Colours taken from bark and stone sit happily beside it. In a bedroom on this side, you wake to trees rather than to sun.

On a lower floor, the treetops may fill the glass. Keep everything along that wall low, and the green stays in the room all day. Higher up, the view may clear the trees altogether. After dark, the woodland side turns black. A lamp or two near the glass keeps the night from pressing in.

Facing the city, think of the evening first. Lamps on dimmers, so the room can grow quiet as the lights come on outside. And a lined curtain in each bedroom, to close on North Kiara at bedtime.

The sofa follows the view. Facing the trees, it can look straight out. Towards the city, it may turn to the room instead, and save the view for when you look up.

Trees or city, the window has the first say in every room, and everything else takes its place around it.

In the larger Miranda Hill plans, a room or two has no job yet: a study, a helper's room, and in some 4+2s a suite of its own. We settle who each one is for before any finish.

If the study is by the foyer. In the 2+1, it's the room you pass each time you leave or come home, so it suits what you carry: the laptop bag, the gym kit. A desk for work, where the television can't be heard. Or fit it out as one walk-in wardrobe for the whole home.

If you sew. A craft that's slow to clear away is happiest behind a door. A long table under good light, the machine left out mid-seam, the threads on a board by the window. Shut the door at night, and the work is waiting in the morning.

If a helper joins the household. The 3+1 and the 4+2 both have a helper's room, with a bathroom in the 4+2. At launch, every room but this one was specified with air-conditioning. So its cooling is planned alongside every other room's, whoever ends up sleeping there.

If there's no live-in help. The 4+2 pairs its study with the helper's quarters and a bathroom, so the two can be drawn together. The study is for work: a chair you can sit in all day, the files within reach, and a door that stays closed from Friday evening to Monday. The helper's room becomes the store for whatever isn't needed this year, and its bathroom serves the study.

If bedroom 3 has its own entrance. Then it's the dual-key suite, and it has its own answer in the questions above.

Each of these rooms can be many things. It only needs to be one.

In the 3+1 and the 4+2, two kitchens raise one question before any other: which of them cooks?

Most households send the frying and the heavy pots to the wet kitchen, where a spill on the tiles bothers nobody. The dry kitchen then takes the gentler jobs: a breakfast bar, a pantry with every jar in sight, or a coffee corner. Who cooks, and what, settles it. Where a helper does the cooking, the wet kitchen is planned around their reach and their routine.

Both kitchens are sold with their cabinets, so we'd rather adapt than replace. If the finish isn't quite yours, a new worktop can change how the whole kitchen feels, while every cabinet stays. Pale stone by the hob, perhaps, and a timber ledge at the breakfast end, warm under your elbows.

The two-bedrooms cook in one open kitchen, with a yard of their own, so a single counter does the work of two rooms. We'd give it a hot end and a calm one: the hob and the chopping board at one, breakfast at the other, the sink between them. From the sofa, it's the calm end you see.

In the one three-bedroom without a helper's room, kitchen and dining meet at an island. We'd give its far side a raised edge, so from the table nobody sees the pans by the sink. On the seating side, a brass rail at foot height, for breakfasts that stretch into mid-morning.

Once the cooking has its place, the cupboards arrange themselves around it.

Left bare, a balcony slowly fills with whatever has no place indoors. Planned for the weather, it's a room you'll use.

Every home at Miranda Hill comes with a balcony. One 3+1 plan and one 4+2 add a second, off the main bedroom. And some homes, low in the towers, are garden units. Three kinds of outdoor space, then, and no two are furnished alike.

The main balcony is the one for company. A small table, chairs that live outdoors, the cushions kept in a basket just inside, and a battery lamp that comes in with them. Underfoot, a rug made for outdoors, taken in when the clouds build. A late dinner for two out there, once the heat has gone out of the day.

The bedroom balcony is quieter. In the 3+1, it's the whole difference between two plans: 37 sq ft, and a door from the bedroom to the open air. One armchair, a small table and a blind suit it better than a dining set. A first cup of tea there in a dressing gown, before the day asks anything of you. In a full 4+2, it may be the one corner nobody else claims.

Garden units ask the most: there's more ground to furnish, and more of it open to the rain. They sit on level 3 of Tower 1 and level 1 of Tower 2, and face the open lawn or the facilities. Where yours looks onto the facilities, planting along the edge does a wall's job, and the evening stays your own. Pots too heavy for a storm to shift, and lights that glow low rather than reach across the grass.

From BRDB's plans, and The Edge's October 2022 report on the site.

BRDB's handover list has cabinets in each kitchen, a fridge, a hob under its own hood, the air-conditioning, built-in hot water, and a washer with a separate dryer. So the home is cool and the water hot when you first walk in. What works stays, and your spending starts where the list stops.

It stops short of what you'd choose yourself, from the beds to the bedside lamps. Wardrobes come first, because the list leaves them out. Each is drawn to how you dress: upright slots for the handbags, shelves for what's folded, a shallow tray for the watches.

The list is quiet, too, on the flooring, the bathroom fittings and the gas piping. Your sale agreement can say more, and we read it before planning a bathroom or a cooker. If you cook on a flame, we find out where the gas runs first.

Verdana, BRDB's first phase, has stood next door since 2014, with 298 homes. It shows how a BRDB building on this rise wears, and it's worth a look before you choose finishes. Notice which surfaces still look good after years of rain and footsteps.

Bringing a dog? A pet-friendly garden is planned for the estate, and your rooms can be ready for one too. Floors, rugs and sofa fabrics that take claws and hair, and a corner near the yard for the bowls and a towel for muddy paws. Whether pets may live in the homes is for the building's rules, once the management forms.

Keep: the cooling, the cabinets and every appliance on the list, while each works well. Adapt: any room still without a job, the suite included. Add: the wardrobes, then a seat for each balcony, and the rest room by room. Check: the floors and the bathroom fittings, which the handover list doesn't name.

From BRDB's published handover list and The Edge, October 2022. What's fitted in yours is set out in your sale agreement.

Before handover, a home here is known on paper, not yet in daylight. That's enough to begin. Who sleeps where, what each spare room becomes, where the long sofa stands: each can be settled from the plans. Only the paint waits, to be chosen in each room's own daylight.

BRDB expects to complete Miranda Hill in September 2027. We plan to that date, and leave the furniture orders room to move. If the date shifts, only the deliveries shift with it. Starting six months ahead leaves time for drawings, contractors' prices and the slow-to-arrive pieces: a sofa made for the room, a table in solid timber, curtains in a fabric from abroad.

On handover, we measure the rooms one by one and try everything that came fitted: the hob lit, the fridge cold, the dryer turning. Each fault is written down and sent to BRDB. Fixing it is their job, and it should be done before your contractors begin.

With the drawings priced, we measure every quote against the budget we drew up together, and show you where the prices part ways.

When your keys come, they open onto a home already planned, down to where each lamp stands.

Completion as given in BRDB's advertising notice. The Edge's October 2022 report gave the first quarter of 2028.

Alix Residences, also off Jalan Dutamas Raya, was completed in 2025, so its owners have a couple of years' head start on you. Papyrus North Kiara shares this North Kiara side of Dutamas, on Jalan Dutamas Dahlia, and every plan there starts at four bedrooms. Agile Mont Kiara, eleven towers finished in 2019, is off Jalan Duta Kiara. And TuJu Residences, off Jalan Kuching in Segambut, is planned around smaller homes, from 710 sq ft.