I once rejected a very bright white paper stock. Nothing was wrong with its quality: its white point was wrong for the work, and passages that read warm and quiet on the intended paper went cold and grey against it. I think of that whenever a print is chosen under a showroom light and then hung in a Singapore condo, where cool-white downlights and a glass wall of equatorial daylight can do much the same thing to it from the outside.
Fiurdelin is a botanical illustration studio on Lake Como, Italy, that draws plants, fungi, and insects from specimens and sells the work as fine-art prints and digital plates. This guide, on botanical.art, the Fiurdelin studio website, is written for the two people who furnish most of Singapore’s let homes: the condo owner preparing a unit for a tenant, and the operator of a serviced residence or co-living building furnishing many units at once.
In short: a one-bedroom unit needs two or three pieces, and the living-room wall in the listing photographs matters most. Keep paper off west-facing walls and out of the air-conditioner’s outlet. For many units, use six to eight plates and a rotation rule, so neighbouring units never share an image. For a building, the studio quotes the finished prints or licenses the images for printing in Singapore.
| Key facts | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Fiurdelin, Lake Como, Italy |
| Catalogue | 53 published plates: plants, fungi and insects, each drawn from a specimen |
| Sizes | In sizes from small prints to over 150 cm (60 inches), by plate |
| Production | Made to order, 2 to 8 business days, then international transit. The delivery estimate for your address is confirmed before you order |
| Multiple units | A quoted order for one building; reproduction rights for several buildings or for local printing |
| Not published | A humidity rating, a fade rating, or a specification for the frames’ glass or acrylic |
What wall art suits a Singapore condo or serviced residence?
Fewer, larger pieces chosen for the walls a tenant actually looks at, in subjects that hold up under strong light. For a single unit that means two or three pieces; for a building it means a small family of plates and a rule for where each one goes.
The buyer here is different from most places the studio works. Private homes in Singapore cannot be let for less than three consecutive months, and HDB flats for less than six, so the let unit is furnished for a tenant who will live with the walls, not a guest who stays a weekend. Shorter stays belong to hotels and approved serviced apartments, which furnish at the scale of a building.
Both cases reward the same thing: a wall that looks considered in the listing photographs and still looks right in the eleventh month of a lease.
How many pieces does each unit need?
Two or three for a one-bedroom unit, one for a studio, four for a two-bedroom. Name the positions once and use the same names in every unit; that is what makes a building plannable.
| Position | Where | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| P1 | The living-room wall behind the sofa | It appears in the listing photographs, and it is the wall a viewer sees first |
| P2 | Above the bed | The one clear wall in most bedrooms |
| P3 | The entry, facing the door | Seen at arm’s length, so it can be small |
| P4 | The second bedroom | Two-bedroom units only |
A studio unit takes P1 only, and it should be the largest print the wall comfortably holds. One large piece makes a studio look like a room with a plan; three small ones make it look like the owner ran out of wall.
One-bedroom plan, not to scale. Green bars mark the three positions.
What size works above a bed or a sofa?
Art between half and two-thirds of the width of the furniture below it. For a three-seat sofa of 200 cm that is 100 to 133 cm of art; for a queen bed of 152 cm, 76 to 101 cm; for a king of 183 cm, 92 to 122 cm.
The plates are upright, so the short side is the width that counts. A pair of 55 × 76 cm prints with an 8 cm gap spans 118 cm, which suits a three-seat sofa or a king bed. A pair of 43 × 61 cm spans 94 cm and suits a queen. Keep the pair inside the sofa’s arms, and hang the bottom of the frames 20 to 25 cm above the sofa back or the headboard.
Sizes are paper sizes, and each print carries a 2.5 cm (1 in) white border, so the image is 5 cm narrower and shorter than the paper. If a Singapore framer is making the frames, give them both figures.
Room by room: what goes on each wall?
P1, the listing wall
Fine-art print →
The listing wall earns the largest share of the budget because it does the most work: it is the first image a prospective tenant sees on a property portal, and in a building with many units it is the wall that decides whether the listings look alike.
A pair photographs better than a single piece on a long condo wall, because the camera’s wide lens shrinks a lone print into a postage stamp. Two pieces hold the width of the frame.
Choose the pair for the room’s light rather than the sofa’s fabric. The fabric will be replaced in a few years; the light from the windows will not.
P2, above the bed
Fine-art print →
The bedroom wants quieter subjects than the living room: green rather than colour, leaves rather than flowers. A tenant wakes up to this wall for months, and a quiet plate is the one they will still want to see.
The fern is the subject that loses most at small sizes, so this is where it belongs, at 43 × 61 cm or larger, where its divisions stay readable from the bed.
Anything within reach of a pillow should be framed in acrylic rather than glass. If the air-conditioner sits above the bed, hang the pair either side of it rather than underneath.
Lift lobbies and corridors
Fine-art print →
In a serviced residence the shared spaces follow a different rule from the units. One signature image may repeat on every floor’s lift lobby, because repetition in a corridor reads as identity, while repetition across units reads as mass production.
Pick a plate outside the units’ own family for this job, so the lobby and the apartments never compete. A single insect plate works well, because it reads as one object from across a lobby.
Corridors are also the one place where cleaning trolleys and luggage meet the art at hip height. Hang the bottom edge above that line, and choose acrylic.
How do twenty units stay related without looking identical?
With six to eight plates rather than one, and a rule for which plate goes on which wall. The rule is the deliverable, not the pictures.
With eight plates, labelled A to H, and three positions per unit, each unit takes the plate at its own place in the sequence for P1, the plate three places on for P2, and the plate five places on for P3. That arithmetic guarantees two things: no two neighbouring units share any plate, and every plate appears about equally across the building. Unit nine starts the cycle again, so a unit added next year matches without a new design decision.
A worked rotation map. The plate for P1 in the ninth unit is the same as in the first, so growth needs no new design.
Two further details keep the scheme honest. Put plates you would least mind replacing on the walls with the hardest conditions, and write the map down in the building’s maintenance file, so that a replacement six months from now goes on the right wall.
What survives the Singapore climate?
Paper art does best on an interior wall, out of direct sun, in a room where the air-conditioner or a dehumidifier runs for part of every day. We publish no humidity or fade rating for these prints, because we have not tested them for one.
Singapore’s humidity is high all year and swings daily, from above 90 per cent before dawn to around 60 per cent on a dry afternoon. The risk to paper is less the average than the swings, and two situations in a let unit make them worse: a vacant unit with the air-conditioning switched off between tenants, and a bedroom cooled hard at night, which chills the wall behind the frame while humid air reaches it by day.
In a let unit, four habits do most of the work:
- no prints on the wall the afternoon sun reaches through a west-facing window, which is the one condition certain to fade paper;
- a sealed backing, which a framer can fit, and small bumpers on the lower corners so air moves behind the frame;
- keeping paper out of the line of the air-conditioner’s outlet;
- for an operator, running dry mode in vacant units rather than leaving them closed and unconditioned.
For a let unit, treat a print on a difficult wall as one you may replace sooner. Any single piece can be reordered on its own, with no minimum.
Plan view, not to scale. The shaded area is afternoon sun through a west-facing window.
Which plates suit a Singapore interior?
Plates that belong to the tropics or to Asia, and that keep their colour under strong light. When I checked all 53 plates against four Italian places the studio designs schemes for, 22 fitted none of them, and they include most of the plates below. A plant that cannot stand for Lake Como can be exactly right for a condo on the equator.
The monstera is the obvious one, and for a reason. The National Parks Board’s Flora & Fauna Web lists it as native to southern Mexico and Central America, and notes that it is grown here both as a house plant and in landscaping. A tenant will have seen it growing on the way home, which is what makes it read as local rather than decorative.
The six below are a starting family for a Singapore building; with the hydrangea and the lemon added, they make the eight-plate rotation above.
The full set
Fifty-three plates to build a family from. Which eight would your building take?
Glass or acrylic in a let unit?
Acrylic, in most let units. It does not shatter and it weighs less, which matters most for anything within reach of a bed or at hip height in a corridor. It is a safety question before it is an appearance one.
Acrylic scratches more easily than glass, so a housekeeping team should clean it with a soft cloth and no ammonia-based cleaner. Put that line in the unit’s cleaning schedule, because most scratched frames are scratched by the person looking after them.
Prints can be ordered framed, or unframed for your own framer. The frames’ own glass or acrylic, weight and hanging hardware are not yet published as a confirmed specification, so for a piece going above a bed or into a corridor, ask before ordering and we will confirm it for that size.
What are the two ways to buy for multiple units?
A quoted order. For eight to forty finished pieces in one building, the studio prepares a room-by-room plan, quotes the whole order, and it is delivered in one window. You receive prints; the plan says which plate goes on which wall at what size.
Reproduction rights. Where units sit in more than one building, or where printing in Singapore makes more sense than shipping from outside Asia, the studio licenses named plates for the property or the portfolio and supplies the files and a print specification for your printer. A replacement then becomes a local reprint in days, not an international order, and new units inside the licensed building simply take the next row of the rotation map. Rights are priced per property or per portfolio band, never per room.
Which one fits depends on the unit count, the addresses, and whether you would rather receive prints or print locally. Tell us the shape of the portfolio and we will say which is cheaper.
For Singapore operators
A rotation map for your building, before anything is ordered.
Send the unit count, the unit types and the buildings they sit in. The studio replies with a plate family, a rotation map for every unit, and which of the two routes costs less for that portfolio.
Plan a property →How does ordering and delivery to Singapore work?
Each print is made to order by the studio’s print partner and shipped from its nearest production centre. There is no production in Asia, so orders travel internationally.
Production takes 2 to 8 business days, depending on the product, with international transit on top. We do not publish a delivery time for Singapore because we have not measured one; ask with your address and we will confirm an estimate before you order. For a multi-piece scheme, order well ahead of an opening or a tenancy start date, and do not plan against a single-print timeline.
Prices are per print, by size and format, on each plate’s own page. Local taxes and any duties or handling charges are not included in the displayed price and are applied at checkout where they apply. You pay the studio’s print partner directly, and the confirmation and receipt come from them, not from Fiurdelin. Damage in transit is covered by the print partner’s 30-day policy.
If you also furnish in Hong Kong, where the flats are smaller and the leases stricter about walls, the Hong Kong guide to apartments and small hotels covers the differences. For let property in general, the guide to art guests remember covers what hosts elsewhere have learned.
Questions operators ask about wall art in Singapore
Can we use the same image in every unit?
Not on the listing wall. Identical listing photographs make units look mass-produced side by side on a portal. Repeat one signature image in lift lobbies instead, and rotate the units.
How many plates does a forty-unit building need?
Still six to eight. The rotation rule scales without more images; more than eight gains little and makes replacements harder to track.
What happens when a tenant damages a print?
On the local-printing route, you reprint that one image from the supplied file within the licence term. On the quoted-order route, it is a new order for that one print at the published price, with no minimum.
Should the art stay when the unit is re-let?
Yes, if it is on the rotation map. The map is what keeps the building consistent across tenancies, so a piece should only move if the map moves with it.
Are these originals?
No. They are fine-art prints of hand-drawn digital illustrations, each drawn from a specimen and printed to order.
Which route fits your unit or your building?
Three setups cover most enquiries from Singapore, and each ends in a different place.
| Setup | Pieces | Typical sizes (paper) | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|---|
| A single condo unit for a tenant | 2 to 4 | A pair of 55 × 76 cm at P1, a pair of 43 × 61 cm at P2, one 29 × 41 cm at P3 | The plates, then each plate’s own page |
| A serviced residence or co-living building | 8 to 40 | Set by the rotation map | Plan a property: a quoted order |
| Several buildings, or printing in Singapore | Any | Set by the licence and the print specification | Plan a property: reproduction rights |
A single unit rarely needs more than the positions above. A building rarely needs more than eight plates. What it needs is the rule, written down once, so that every unit after the first is already decided.