MANILA, Philippines—After years of sharing a cramped condo unit in Makati with a good friend, interior designer and educator Jie Pambid felt excited as he made the big move to his new, roomier apartment sometime last year.

Apart from the extra space the new unit offered (from his 77-sq m condo unit, Pambid moved to a 119-sq m apartment), Pambid—who teaches art history and museum design, among other subjects, at the Philippine School of Interior Design—relished the fact that he now has the entire place in another part of Makati all to himself.

Although his new home looks a bit dark and narrow at first blush, the two-story unit turns out to be homey and spacious. It even comes with a powder room, loft-cum-office and a second bedroom, which he turned into a den spruced up with framed ancient Egyptian-inspired artworks rendered on papyrus sheets.

Most are gifts from old students, he says. Apart from its salmon walls, the area stands out from the rest of the unit due to the presence of a bar and mahjong table. Pambid and his sisters used to spend endless hours of bonding time here during weekends.

“Now that they’ve migrated to the US with their respective families, I’m on the lookout for new mahjong players. Perhaps you’d like to join me,” he says with a chuckle.

Neutral tones

Save for the salmon walls in the den, the rest of the Asian-themed abode has an achromatic color scheme. In plain English, Pambid limited the interiors to neutral tones such as gray, white, beige and earth.

“I think my preference for neutrals comes with age,” he says. “Whatever the outcome is, it should result into something you would want to come home to at the end of each day.”

He did make some concessions, though, by allowing splashes of orange and chartreuse in the living room as seen in a number of throw pillows and a lone throw. The flavor is decidedly more Southeast Asian than Chinese.

Framed Balinese prints, a set of copper pots on the glass-topped coffee table and an area rug made of bamboo slats underneath are mere icing on the cake to the first floor’s ultimate focal point: a sprawling mural mimicking the ancient gray stones and carved fretwork that make up Cambodia’s Angkor Wat.

Pambid commissioned muralist Alfred Galvez, a fellow educator at PSID, to design and execute the decorative faux finish, which lends the entire area a quaint spa feel.

Noteworthy

The concrete floor, to a lesser degree, echoes the look of the rustic gray walls. The painted wall design is also repeated on a number of doors and kitchen cabinets as mere trompe l’oeils or as actual fretworks adorning the spiral staircase leading to the second floor.

This particular staircase, by the way, inspired Pambid to design a built-in dining table that’s noteworthy for its length, width and height. He had to settle for a narrow eight-seater since the dining area didn’t have enough room for a typical round or square table.

“It was simply a matter of removing the staircase, which was impossible, or building a narrow table beside it to accommodate my guests,” says Pambid, whose seafood curry pasta is a hit among friends.

After playing with contrast by making the table higher than the adjacent tiled countertop, he then went about designing cushioned seats “with the height of bar stools and the dimension of dining room chairs.”

Galvez’s equally arresting mural upstairs, this time featuring gray silhouettes of tropical plants, decorates the wall by the steps leading to the loft, which Pambid has turned into his office.

Again, the entire color scheme, from the furniture to the bedcover and pillowcases, is a play on earth tones. A number of accent pieces such as lacquered vases from Vietnam, a limestone wall accent from China and the bedroom’s wooden floor itself follow the same hues.

More homey

Several Balinese dolls provide the bedroom with hints of color, while a pair of deer figurines covered in gold leaf instantly brightens a corner. Prints, again in neutral shades, are confined mainly on the bedspread.

“Since the unit was a former office, I had to refurbish the place and remove all those modular cabinets to make it look more homey,” says Pambid. “Part of my work involved removing pink vinyl tiles on the second floor.”

To his surprise, hidden beneath all those tacky tiles were beautiful wood planks. Like a miner who struck gold, he lost no time having his find polished and stained.

Not only is going neutral a practical move, it also ties in with Pambid’s current thrust of exploring and promoting more sustainable designs.

“Cleverly combining your residential space with your office space is a move toward sustainability,” he says. “On a more practical note, by limiting your color scheme to neutrals, you don’t have to buy more linen and curtains than what’s necessary because almost every piece works with each other.”

Practical ways

As an adviser to PSID’s graduating class, Pambid will have his hands full teaching aspiring interior designers practical yet striking ways to come up with environment-friendly displays.

This year’s class will mount its graduation exhibit dubbed as “E.A.R.T.H (Environmental Applications, Research and Trends in Habitat) Designs,” from Oct. 4 to 31, at the Athena Building in Libis, Quezon City.

Mounted in cooperation with the World Wildlife Fund and Eastwood City, “E.A.R.T.H. Designs” celebrates PSID’s 41st anniversary with an exhibit addressing environmental concerns in 21 interior spaces that hope to strike a chord in today’s global scene.

“Climate change is a global concern, translating its major influence on contemporary design and current trends,” says Pambid. “The exhibit will focus on creative approaches to sustainable interior design as showcased in four different habitat settings: High Rise Haven, The Blissful Burbs, Sea Sanctuaries and Peaceful Peaks.”

The lack of color need not automatically mean dull and boring interiors. In Pambid’s world, going green also means going gray.