“Intentional, botanical and personal.” These three words, carefully chosen by Lelian Chew to describe her Singapore home, The BougainVilla, reveal themselves in every corner of her sanctuary. Chew is the Founder of The Atelier & Co Holdings (The Floral Atelier, The Wedding Atelier, and The Atelier & Co.), a luxury experience company specialising in events, private celebrations, floral design, and bespoke programming, serving ultra-high-net-worth individuals and the world’s most prestigious luxury maisons and financial institutions. As a planner and a designer, she has created a home that breathes in tandem with its surroundings, a rare achievement in a city where architecture often battles nature rather than embracing it.
The story of The BougainVilla actually began with exhaustion, the kind that came from orchestrating grand-scale events across continents and designing experiences that take “an enormous amount of creative and social energy.” Chew needed more than four walls and a roof; she needed an “emotional destination at the end of a long day: a sanctuary that contains and heals me.”
This search for respite shaped every design decision within her home. Throughout the entire house, crisp white walls finished with subtle wainscoting create what Chew describes as “less like structure and more like a canvas for life.” She says, “The walls hold; everything in front of them speaks—from furniture to floral installations from my studio.”
Outside, the home’s namesake bougainvillaea—planted by Chew’s own hands—now cascades across the entire exterior. The choice was deliberate, born from years of working with florals. “Years of handling flowers taught me to work with an environment rather than against it. Rather than force delicate foreign species to battle Singapore’s intense tropical climate, I planted bougainvillaea plants, which belong here.” The white blooms and vines have matured into something more than decoration; they’ve become, in her words, “a living part of the architecture.”
This integration of the botanical extends far beyond aesthetics. For Chew, flowers are never merely decorative elements but living presences that fundamentally alter a space’s emotional register. “People tend to forget that they are living things, and filling a space with life creates an energy that is entirely different from filling it with static objects,” she explains. “Unlike a piece of artwork or furniture, flowers introduce a beautiful, breathing dynamism to an interior.”
In her home, this dynamism manifests in subtle, everyday moments. “A scent shifting as I walk into a room, a stem that’s opened overnight, the way they catch a different light in the morning than at night.” It’s this quality of constant, gentle transformation that, she says, “slows me down and makes me pay attention to the small moments.”
The heart of The BougainVilla beats strongest in the kitchen and dining room, spaces that she describes as “undoubtedly the pulse of the home.” Here, Chew, who orchestrates celebrations for international luxury houses and Olympic champions alike, returns to the most familiar act of hospitality: cooking for those she loves. “I enjoy handling every detail personally — from the early morning market runs and the simple rhythm of chopping, to the cooking, the dressing of the table, and the flow of the evening.”
An annual tradition within the home has taken on legendary status among her circle: Chew’s famous hairy crab dinner. For just ten guests, Chew spends two full days preparing an eight-course menu. “I’ve always found that the best connections require an intimate setting. Curating the table is a science — bringing together friends from entirely different worlds to see how their personalities might converge.”
This dinner, which comes from the heart, speaks to the power of thoughtful hospitality. “From my dining table, I’ve seen two strangers become a couple, while two others sparked a conversation that evolved into a new business venture.” These moments, she believes, prove that “the conversations that matter happen around a dinner table.”
The stories embedded in The BougainVilla extend beyond the events it hosts to the objects it houses. Nothing here was collected all at once; instead, pieces have been “gathered slowly over time, almost without a fixed intention.” Each item carries memory—travels, gifts, collaborations with artisans and brands. Perhaps the most cherished of these stories hides in plain sight. In the powder room, wallpaper hand-drawn by Chew’s team covers the walls, “a rare, vibrant pop of colour in a house that is otherwise serene and monochromatic.” Look closely, and the illustrations reveal hidden details telling the story of Chew and her husband’s decades together. “I love that it feels like a discovery, like stepping into Narnia the moment the powder room door is opened.”
The BougainVilla stands as more than a residence; it represents what Chew calls “the quiet, steady foundation that allows everything else to flourish.” While her work creates experiences for others, her home is where she becomes “not a director of experiences, but a recipient of them.”
Here, in this breathing space where bougainvillaea vines frame white walls and vibrant blooms mark the passage of time, Chew has created not just a home, but proof that true luxury lies in the careful curation of what matters most.
Editor
Kaitlyn Lai
