Interior designer at Skyline Embassy

Skyline Embassy, also known as Residensi Skyline Duta Ampang, is TSLAW Land's development on Jalan Ampang, along Embassy Row. There are six floor plans, from 521 to 976 sq ft.

Its three towers, Aurum, Brion and Calista, hold 1,296 serviced apartments on freehold land: 864 in Aurum and Brion, the first phase, and 432 in Calista. The project was first launched as Agile Embassy Garden.

At these sizes, the letter on your plan says nearly everything: how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, and how far the rooms stretch along the glass. So the first two questions are simple. Which tower, and which letter?

Each home also has an accessory parcel of about 30 sq ft. Add it in, and the six plans run from 551 to 1,005 sq ft.

On a typical floor, each tower holds eight homes around one lift lobby: two Type A, two Type B and two twin-key Type C, with the two larger homes on the corners. Type F, the only three-bedroom, takes a corner of Aurum and one of Brion. Calista has no F, so its homes stop at 822 sq ft.

Most types also come mirrored, so your kitchen may sit on the left where the sample plan shows it on the right. Our drawings follow yours, not the sample, down to the side the door swings.

The shared rooms sit at two heights. Level 9 is for every day: a deck between the towers with the Embassy Infinity Pool, lawns, a gym and lounges for when the guest list grows. Level 65 is for the occasion: a sky pool and lounge across the tops of Aurum and Brion, joined by a bridge. Calista has a rooftop of its own, on Level 63A. Ampang Park LRT station is about 350 m from the towers.

From TSLAW Land's brochure, floor plans and approved advertising notice; the first name from EdgeProp, October 2019. Your sale plan shows your own home.

Lay the six plans side by side and one line repeats. Every home is about seven and a half metres deep. Living room and bedrooms stand in a row along the glass, each with its own window. The kitchen, bathrooms and entrance sit towards the back, by the corridor.

It's a kind way to plan a small home. Daylight reaches every room you sit or sleep in, and almost nothing is lost to a passage. What changes from plan to plan is the width: 6.5 m across a Type A, 13 m across a Type F.

So the plan starts at the window and works back. The sofa faces the glass, its back to the dining table. The table goes in the middle, close enough to the hob for a pot carried straight across. In a bedroom, the desk goes at the window end, so daylight falls on the notebook rather than the screen.

In a Type A, the living room, the table and the kitchen share one side of the home. A two-seater facing a screen on the wall, a drop-leaf table for two that opens to four, and a console where a sideboard would crowd the way.

Most kitchens here sit at the back and open onto the dining table. Far from the windows, the counter wants its own light, set beneath the upper cupboards. A tall cupboard by the entrance hides the vacuum, a mop and the bag of bags.

The other plans bring their own questions. In a Type B, two bedrooms share one bathroom, so it wants a drawer for each of you, and hooks enough for two towels apiece. In a Type D, one bathroom sits inside the main bedroom, so the second is for the other bedroom and anyone visiting. In a Type F, the wardrobes line your path to the bathroom, a dressing room in all but name. Add a bench, and a mirror long enough to check your shoes, and getting ready happens away from the bed.

A Type D also gives its kitchen one long stretch of counter against the back wall. Kettle, rice cooker and bread board can all stay out, with room left to chop.

Two plans here have a room that isn't quite a bedroom. In the Type A 1+1, it sits beside the front door, next to the bathroom. In the Type E 2+1, it's tucked at the back between the two bathrooms. The plans call both utility rooms, and E's a study too.

None of the six plans draws a balcony or a yard, and that settles a good deal. Where a ledge is drawn outside the window, it's for the air-conditioning, not for a chair. So the washing lives indoors, and in a 1+1 the extra room is where it belongs.

A washer-dryer under a counter, where the plumbing allows. A rail for shirts straight from the drum. An ironing board on a hook behind the door. With the door closed, the laundry is out of sight, and cooking has the kitchen to itself.

In a Type A, the living side and the bedroom side already have a job each. Give the +1 the washing, and neither has to make room for a drying rack.

Type E is rarer: one on each floor of Aurum, on the north-east corner, where the outlook turns from the hills to Ampang. Its extra room has a single bed drawn in, with a bathroom through each wall. It suits a child moving out of the cot and into a room of their own. The floor comes in laminate, so a soft rug and a low lamp are all it takes to feel finished.

In the other plans, the washing machine joins the kitchen, and a washer-dryer is worth the space. When the sun is out, a slim rack opens by the window, and folds away before anyone visits.

Type C is the twin-key: 809 sq ft, two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and two on every floor of each tower. Step into its foyer and there are two more doors. One leads to the living room, the kitchen, bedroom two and the bathroom beside it. The other leads to the main suite: bedroom, bathroom, and a small counter with a sink.

So the same home can live two ways. Most days, it's one home with both doors left open. On others, it closes into two, one side up early and the other up late.

We design both sides to belong to one home. The same door handles, the same lamps, one colour carried from the foyer into each side. Then each side gets what it needs on its own. At the suite's counter, a kettle, a compact fridge and room for two mugs and a tin of tea, with a shelf over it for the cups. In the main kitchen, everything else.

Storage splits the same way. The suite keeps its own wardrobe and a drawer for the tea things. The main side keeps the cleaning cupboard and the big shop.

Sound is the detail you notice after a fortnight. A solid door between the two, sealed at its edges, keeps one side's late film from the other side's sleep. Rugs in both bedrooms soften footsteps on the laminate. With lamps on their own switches, the suite can wake early and leave the living room dark.

If your household changes, the home follows. Close the second door, and the suite becomes a guest room, bathroom included. Open it, and it's simply the main bedroom again.

Skyline Embassy is sold partly furnished. Before a single piece is chosen, we go through your sale agreement's list with you, so nothing is doubled, and nothing missing is found only on moving day.

The surfaces are known already. Underfoot, tile carries from the entrance into the kitchen, and the bedrooms have laminate, or tile in some homes. Bathroom walls are tiled all the way up. The kitchen walls are painted, with a splashback where the plan has one.

Every bathroom has a basin, a WC and a hand spray beside it. So the changes there are small: a cabinet behind the mirror, a hook for a robe, a ledge by the shower for the shampoo, and a warmer bulb over the basin.

Overhead, the ceilings are smooth plaster, with a plasterboard pelmet at the windows in some rooms. It's a small thing that does a lot. The pelmet hides the curtain track, so a curtain can hang from the ceiling line to the floor, and the window looks taller for it.

What's new at handover can stay: the tiles, the laminate, the bathrooms. The money is better spent on what you'll touch. Curtains for the pelmet. A rug where bare feet meet the tile. A wardrobe, a dining table or a sofa, wherever your agreement leaves a gap.

The air-conditioning points are fixed too, and where they fall decides where the bed and the sofa can't go. So they go on the drawings before any furniture.

There's no published ceiling height. We measure it first, then plan any tall cupboard. A wardrobe drawn to the ceiling only keeps the room calm if it truly reaches.

From TSLAW Land's brochure specification. Your sale agreement settles any difference.

The towers look four ways: north to the Titiwangsa hills, east over Ampang, south towards the Royal Selangor Golf Club, and west to the city. With every room on the glass, the outlook is part of every room. Your stack decides which is yours, so we look from your own windows first.

Facing the hills, the light stays even through the day, and a little cool. Warm things sit well against it: honey-coloured oak, an ochre throw, a clay-red cushion on a pale sofa.

Facing the golf course, the window brings its own green. Keep the room quiet around it: stone, linen and one dark timber, with the colour left to the trees.

Facing east, the home is brightest at breakfast, so the table and a reading chair take the window, and by lunch the sun has gone round.

Facing the city, the late sun is strong, and the night never quite goes dark. So the bedroom lining matters at midnight as much as at four, and the living room can take deeper colours that hold their own after sunset.

Pictures take their cue the same way. Next to a window full of green, something graphic holds its own. Facing the city at night, a mirror catches the lamps and doubles them.

Fabrics are judged at your own window, never under a showroom's lights. Outside the glass, the picture is already set. Inside, everything can be chosen to answer it.

Most of the design can be decided long before the keys. Which plan is yours, what the +1 or the twin-key's suite will be for, and which pieces suit the width of each room: each can be settled from the developer's drawings. A first conversation a few months ahead leaves time to spare.

Collecting the keys comes before any delivery. We walk round with you, or for you, and every defect goes to TSLAW Land in writing. A window that sticks in its track, a chipped tile: mended first, neither becomes a question of who did what.

A partly furnished home needs one more check: that every piece on the agreement's list has arrived, and arrived whole. Where the twin-key will be lived as two, its second door gets the same test as the front one: the lock, the seal, the soft close.

Then the management. Nothing is published yet on its renovation or delivery rules, so we ask for them before anything is booked. In a home that arrives partly furnished, much of the work may be curtains, lights and furniture, with little to build.

Where there is building to do, our contractors quote it, and we hold every quote to the budget we set together. The deliveries come a room at a time, and the last of the packaging leaves with the van.

Closest to Skyline Embassy is Embassyview, also on Jalan Ampang. In the embassy streets of Ampang Hilir, we've written about Gallery U-Thant and Rimbun @ Embassy Row too. Ampang, the district around all three, has its own page as well.