Step through the front door of this Hong Kong home and the welcome begins before you’ve fully crossed the threshold. The door itself is dressed in an olive green wallcovering from the art studio collection of Cally Chan’s brand, Coltex Furnishing. Aptly named “Brush Stroke”, its surface is alive with organic texture. “It offers a gentle welcome,” Chan explains. “Guests can feel its organic texture before they even step fully inside.” It’s a fitting introduction to a house where nothing is merely decorative, and everything has been touched, considered, and loved.
For Chan, the co-founder and creative director of Coltex Furnishing, home is not a showroom but a living thing. “Every element within these walls is shaped around our family’s joy,” she says. “Curated not for show, but for how we actually live — thoughtful layers of texture, art and objects that carry our shared history. Above all, this is a nurturing space: somewhere my husband Jacky and I, alongside our boys Jayden and Jacob, can recharge, connect and simply be ourselves.”
Curved Baxter Piaf sofa layered with Coltex Furnishing cushions — Calico, Ethereal Shadows, Bohemia Chic and Velvety Water Mark In Cross — sits atop a bespoke Coltex Furnishing rug
Family is woven into the very fabric of the house — quite literally. Ten years ago, Chan and her partner Jacky Hung founded Coltex Furnishing, and every textile in the home, from the sheer curtains to the cushions and upholstery, comes from their own brand. “Our fabrics are European-made, fully developed in-house out of our Hong Kong studio,” Chan explains.
The living room curtain, one of their most distinctive custom pieces, is crafted in jacquard weave and draws inspiration from traditional tapestry verdure and pastoral scenes. “We intentionally used a restrained, limited colour palette to replicate the aged, painterly quality of antique tapestries, preserving a soft, timeless forest atmosphere throughout the living space.”
An Apparatus Median light hangs above a quietly styled corner of the home
The bespoke Gold Calacatta dining table and Fluid chairs in Coltex Furnishing's Water Mark collection are set against a Callidus Guild PERMIA-IRIDI mother-of-pearl wall, accented by Cally Chan's sculpted centrepiece vase and a collaborative iridescent mosaic artwork with Janet Cheung
The couple’s vision was clear from the beginning. “Our vision was to weave organic curves and natural materials through every corner of the house,” Chan says. “Much like our paintings and handcrafted ceramics, we wanted a home that feels alive: creative, textured, and layered with memories Jacky and I have built as a family.” Partnering with interior designer Sai Sai, they built a home free of harsh edges — soft organic forms everywhere, from the curved rear wall in the living area to the organic-shaped metal door hardware. “Life feels too short to live surrounded by pieces you do not genuinely love,” Chan says.
Some of the home’s most beloved features arrived by chance. What was meant to be a fabric curtain wall behind the living room sofa became something far more unexpected: a sculpted timber wall that evokes soft, draped fabric through solid wood. Another began with a simple question from Jacky — how might they use their large stock of sheer textiles? “His question sparked the idea of laminating sheer fabric within glass. It turned out beautifully.” The technique has since travelled far beyond these walls, rolled out across many of the brand’s international projects.
Cally Chan stands between two of her own paintings, Work of the Heart and Shade of Green
A Curve of Care work chair by Cally Chan, upholstered in Coltex Furnishing's Pastoral collection, sits beneath a Coltex Furnishing Moonlit Blossom Tapestry curtain beside a lacquer artwork with 3D mother-of-pearl inlay by Master Li
A shell-shaped plant pot sculpted by Cally Chan sits atop her bespoke Natural Flutes side table
Not everything here was made by the family, but the pieces that were carry the deepest meaning. Handmade art and ceramics created by the four of them fill the house. “To live with pieces we have made together fills our days with love and a profound sense of belonging.” One white, almost melted-looking ceramic vase in Chan’s bedroom first came to her in a dream. It cracked during its making, so she and her ceramics teacher mended it. “To me, its imperfection is its true beauty. AI can effortlessly generate flawless shapes, yet handmade creation embraces human mistakes — and that is exactly where the magic of craft resides.”
A number of the home’s most personal works trace back to Beijing, which has become something of a second creative home for Chan. It began with a master artisan there, introduced by her mother — a specialist in lacquer restoration who has worked on pieces for the Summer Palace and the National Museum of China, his craft tracing back to Qing dynasty techniques of gilded gold and mother-of-pearl inlay. “As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to deeply appreciate objects made to endure across time, pieces that carry heritage and quiet weight,” she says — an appreciation that has since inspired a new venture, Aterior, reimagining traditional Chinese crafts through a modern lens. The city has also become a place she and her mother return to together. A work called Chinese Bellflower was born from one such trip; this past summer, the two studied primal colour painting under her mother’s master — “such a fascinating experience learning traditional techniques rooted in the ancient murals of the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang,” she reminisces. “Above all, this piece is precious because it holds the memories of creating art alongside my mother.”
The bed features a Callidus Guild Tessera headboard in Caviar + Bone, dressed with Coltex Furnishing's Aerial Mosaic cushion and Ethereal Stratum throw over Frette bedding
A tender painted portrait of Cally Chan’s two sons encapsulates the love woven through their everyday life at home
If the house has a beating heart, it is the dining room — Chan’s favourite space, and the keeper of the family’s most precious moments. She designed the dining chairs from her own hand-drawn sketches, their velvet upholstery shifting from pale grey-green to soft blue as daylight moves across it. Overhead hangs Apparatus’s Cloud chandelier of frosted-glass spheres. “Looking up feels like gazing at still, floating bubbles hanging from the ceiling.” It was here that the family gathered when their second son Jacob was born. “The whole house hummed with soft laughter and warm conversation, brimming with pure, overwhelming joy.”
That memory captures precisely what home has come to mean to Cally — though it wasn’t always this way. “Ten years ago, I was endlessly drawn to travel, always eager to explore new places rather than settle down at home,” she admits. Building this house and raising her children here alongside Jacky shifted her perspective entirely. “I’ve come to cherish those quiet, everyday memories we build together as a family. It taught me that there truly is no place quite like home.”
That lesson now shapes how she thinks about the spaces she creates for others, too. Ask her what it takes for one to stay true to the people inside it, and her answer is disarmingly simple. “Surround yourself with pieces that feel gentle to live with,” she says — “objects that rest easy on the eye and invite you to slow down.” The rest, she has learned, cannot be borrowed from a trend or lifted from someone else’s rooms. “A home that is true to its inhabitants cannot be copied,” she says. It takes shape slowly instead — layer by layer, memory by memory, until the walls hold not just beautiful things, but a life.
Photography: Natalie Dunn
Editor
Kaitlyn Lai
