Interior designer at Pinnacle Ara Damansara

In a home of about 620 sq ft, every decision shows. A wardrobe a little too deep blocks a door; a dining table in the wrong place turns the living room into a corridor. Most homes at Pinnacle Ara Damansara are 1+1s or dual-key two-bedrooms, so the design here gives every small room one clear job.

Pinnacle Homes is building 1,225 leasehold serviced apartments here, in two blocks whose building plan MBPJ approved, and the developer's notice gives December 2027 for completion. Block A holds 895 homes: the 1+1s, the three-bedrooms and a single 3+1 type. Every one of Block B's 330 homes is a dual-key two-bedroom.

On the developer's key plan, a typical Block A floor holds 30 homes, most of them 1+1s: eleven Type A, three A1 and eight A2, with five Type B, two Type C and a single Type D. Block B's key plan shows nine homes a floor: six Type G, and one each of E, F and H. Key plans show a typical floor and can change. But they tell you how many neighbours share your corridor and your lifts, and how busy those lifts may be in handover month. Bring your sale plan, and we'll find your home on the key plan together.

In a Pinnacle home, every room needs an answer to one question: who is it for? A guest, a desk, a tenant or a grown-up child. The answer sets the wardrobes, the locks and how hard-wearing each room must be. Pinnacle's plans are tightly drawn, so the thinking is worth doing before the keys, while every change is still a line on a drawing.

If the study must earn its keep. In the 622 and 638 sq ft 1+1s, the developer's plan draws the study with a double bed in it, beside the second bathroom. As a guest room, it wants a bed with drawers, a slim wardrobe and a lamp a visitor can reach from the pillow. As an office, a wall-hung desk, proper task light and quiet for calls. As a tenant's room, both, and a lock. We plan yours for the job it will really do.

If three bedrooms are for three different lives. Type B lines its kitchen along the yard wall and gives one bedroom its own bathroom. That room is the natural main bedroom, and the other two share the second bathroom. Type C sets its bedrooms at three corners, so each feels a little apart. A teenager, or a desk that needs quiet, is glad of the distance. Type D, one to a typical Block A floor, adds a utility room by the dining area and twin bathrooms between bedrooms 1 and 2. The utility room can be a pantry, a store or a helper's room, and with twin bathrooms, mornings don't queue.

If you want a small home to feel calm. One colour of light in every room and a single floor finish throughout let a small home read as one larger space. Curtains hung from ceiling to floor do the same for the windows. A few pieces of furniture at the right size do more than many at the wrong one. In the single living-and-dining room, that might be a sofa, an armchair and a dining table at the edge of the rug, each piece earning its place.

For what arrives semi-furnished. The developer sells these homes semi-furnished but hasn't published what that includes, so the schedule in your sale agreement is the list. The bathrooms will be new, and we leave them be. The design picks up where the handover stops.

Every published plan runs the kitchen in one line beside the dining, open to the living room, with a yard behind it for the washer. In the 1+1s the yard sits by the front door, and a slim cabinet there keeps the detergent and the ironing board out of sight. Types A and A1 put the air-conditioner ledge off the balcony, so the yard stays clear for the washer and a drying rack. In an A2, the ledge shares the yard, so we plan a drying rack that folds away.

If you cook after a long commute, the smell of frying reaches the sofa in seconds. So the hood, its ducting and a solid door to the yard come before any cabinet fronts. If you'd like to close the kitchen off, a glass partition or a sliding screen does it better than a solid wall, because the living room keeps its light. With the ducted hood and the yard door, a screen keeps most of the cooking smell in the kitchen. The management approves any partition first, and we ask before we draw it. So a kitchen renovation here is less about more cabinets than about air: where the smoke goes, and how the light still reaches the sofa.

In Type D, the long counter faces the dining, so supper can be passed straight across. In Type B, the kitchen lines the yard wall, so the washer and the hob are a door apart, and that solid door matters most. After handover, we open the cabinets the developer fitted and note what's worth keeping, so nothing sound is torn out.

Every Block B home is a dual-key two-bedroom of 585 to 731 sq ft. Each bedroom has a bathroom of its own, and bedroom 1 sits behind its own door, beside the main entrance. Type G is the commonest, six of the nine on the key plan. Type F adds a long balcony and a strip of yard: room for two chairs and the evening air, with the washing out of sight. Type H runs its kitchen along a side wall, and its angled bathroom in the corner asks for a vanity drawn to fit.

So the first question is who holds the second key, and the answer depends on who you expect there in five years. Let that half, give it to someone in the family, or keep both for yourself. A tenant's half gets a lock of its own, somewhere for a kettle and a small fridge, and tougher finishes. With a bathroom already beside each bedroom, that corner is all it needs to stand on its own. For family, the connecting door stays open, and can be closed later. For a grandparent, a room by the front door means fewer steps from the lift, and a door of their own. If it stays yours, the second half can be a study with its own door, or a guest room nobody has to walk through. Whichever it becomes, we plan the lock, and the quiet between the two, to suit.

The developer's expected completion is December 2027, and the brief and first layouts can take shape well before then. Until the keys come, we work from your sale plans and the developer's key plan: every wall, door and window on the sale plan is a line we can work from. Measuring waits for access to the unit. Once the keys are in, report your defects to the developer first, and the contractors can usually begin soon after.

The sales permit took effect on 29 November 2023, and the homes were launched that December. All 1,225 homes will be handed over in one window. Contractors, service-lift bookings and furniture deliveries are hardest to get in the weeks just after. So we start about five or six months ahead: drawings finished, quotes in, and the furniture with long lead times ordered to arrive once the defects are logged.

When a whole development hands over at once, timing is most of the work. Rooms and fee are written down first. Then come the layout, the lighting and the finishes, with the study and any second key given a clear purpose, and the contractors all price the same drawing set. We walk through each quote with you.

The developer's facilities plan puts the management office on Block A's level 11, but its renovation rules, deposit, hours and lift booking are not yet written. We ask for them at handover, before anyone quotes. Then the service lift is booked through the management, the trades follow in order, and we inspect each stage against the drawings. The styling comes at the very end. Keeping that calendar is our job, so handover week stays calm.

Bring your block and type to the first call. Tell us whether you'll live there or let it, and who will use the study or the second key. Your sale plan is enough to begin. The semi-furnished schedule shows what you won't need to buy, since anything supplied that you keep lowers what you spend.

Our fee is counted room by room: the 1+1's study counts as one, the new bathrooms stay off the list, and the 3+1's utility room is left as built. It doesn't follow the contractor's bill, so solid oak instead of laminate for a built-in study desk changes their figure, not ours.

If the train is how you'll leave each morning, give the first metre inside the door a shelf for keys and pass, a hook for the umbrella and room for the day's bag. The developer is building a covered link bridge to Subang station on the Shah Alam Line, which it marketed as SS7. The station opened on 29 June 2026, and the bridge is due with the building. Its map also shows the Ara Damansara and Lembah Subang stations of the Kelana Jaya Line beside the site.

Block A's level 11 holds the pools, an indoor gym, a hall, a reading room, a KTV room and a hot pot area, with a rooftop garden above. Block B has a gym, a sauna and an indoor jacuzzi on level 1. With a reading room and a hall downstairs, the study needn't host the birthday party, and can stay a working room or a guest room. With a gym a lift ride away, no bedroom gives up its floor to a treadmill.

A hook for wet towels by the yard door keeps the bathroom floor dry after a swim on level 11. The rooftop garden takes the Sunday coffee outdoors, and in Block B, the sauna and jacuzzi are a short ride down at the end of a long week. The hot pot area and the KTV room take the loudest evenings out of the home, so the living room can stay a quiet one.

At Pinnacle Ara Damansara the plans repeat along every corridor, so what makes your home different is who lives in it. On one floor, a 1+1 might be a couple's first home, the study set up for two laptops. Two chairs tuck under the desk, and the light comes from the side. Next door, the same plan might be let to someone who takes the Shah Alam Line to work and needs a good bed, a desk and somewhere to drop a bag. Two homes can share a plan and nothing else. And if a home is let today and lived in later, we draw it so the change costs little. We start from the person who lives there, and what they need inside the front door. So tell us who your Pinnacle rooms are for.

Keep: two new bathrooms in most homes, three in the 3+1, left as built. Adapt: a guest bed, a desk or a tenant's room in the study; locks and sound for the dual key. Add: wardrobes, a shoe cabinet and lighting, wherever the semi-furnished handover stops. Check: the schedule in your sale agreement, line by line, before anything is bought.

Taken from the developer's published plans. The semi-furnished schedule in your sale agreement is what we check against.

The blocks aren't finished, so no Pinnacle home has been renovated yet. Around Ara Damansara, we've written about TRiARA Residences, Myara Park and AraGreens Residences, and about designing in Ara Damansara as a whole. Each starts where this one does: with the plan, and then the people who'll live in it. If yours is a 1+1, a dual key or a three-bedroom elsewhere in Ara Damansara, the same first questions apply: who each room is for, and what it must hold.