The Illustration Arts Festival (IAF) runs in Singapore from 3 to 5 July and brings together some of the country’s most interesting visual artists, illustrators, and small-scale makers. For a long weekend, it makes the city feel genuinely creative. Then it ends, and most people walk back into homes that look exactly the same as they did before. The frustration is real: you’ve seen what’s possible, interesting, considered, locally made work, but translating that into an actual home upgrade is harder than buying something at a festival booth. This guide is for people who want to carry that momentum into something lasting, across a few different price points and approaches.
Why the Feeling Fades So Quickly
There’s a specific kind of inspiration that comes from walking through a festival like IAF. You see a printmaker’s booth, a ceramicist’s table, an illustrator selling limited runs of a piece you’d genuinely hang on a wall, and for a few hours your own home starts to look under-decorated by comparison. The problem is that this feeling rarely survives contact with a Monday. Work resumes, the weekend recedes, and the gap between “I should really do something about my living room” and actually doing it stays exactly as wide as it was before you went.
Part of the issue is scale. A festival booth sells you one object. A home refresh asks you to make dozens of decisions. From furniture, appliances, art, to layout. Without a framework, that’s overwhelming enough to postpone indefinitely. The way through isn’t to buy everything at once. It’s to borrow the mindset the festival puts on display and apply it selectively to the handful of purchases that will actually move the needle.
Buying things vs curating a space
The useful distinction here is between buying things and choosing them. Buying things is easy. The Singapore Retail Festival runs through most of July, and every furniture and homeware brand in the country will have a sale on at some point. The challenge is knowing what to buy rather than simply buying at a discount.
A considered home aesthetic is not defined by any particular style. It comes down to intentionality: pieces that were chosen rather than defaulted to. That could mean commissioning a print from a local illustrator, buying a sofa from a brand that’s thought about how it functions in a Singapore-sized apartment, or replacing a mass-market item with something that has a longer life and a more specific character. The IAF is a useful reference for what deliberate creative choices look like. You don’t need to buy from the festival to benefit from going.
One practical way to apply this: before buying anything, ask whether the piece is solving a problem you actually have, or whether it’s filling a gap you only noticed because you were standing next to something nicer at a festival. The first is a real upgrade. The second is usually a purchase you’ll regret by September.
Furniture worth investing in
Mrphy builds furniture for smaller-format living, which is a practical consideration in Singapore where most apartments are HDB flats or compact condos with limited floor space. The brand’s pieces are designed to do more with less, and the quality holds up over time. If you’re looking to upgrade a living room or bedroom piece you’ve been tolerating rather than enjoying, Mrphy is worth considering seriously.
Base Piece sits in a similar space, furniture with a considered design language that fits how Singapore residents actually live. The brand’s aesthetic leans clean and modern without being cold, a good choice for main room purchases where you want something that holds up visually across years rather than seasons. Both brands are worth visiting in person before buying. Furniture scale is hard to judge from a product photo, and what looks proportionate in a showroom often reads differently in a flat.
Bring home pieces with character
Just Anthony is one of Singapore’s best-known destinations for Chinese antique furniture and decorative accessories. From antique cabinets and screens to ceramic vessels, stone sculptures and hand-painted silk wall coverings, its collection offers homeowners a way to introduce craftsmanship, history and character into their spaces.
The IAF shines a spotlight on independent artists and makers, but that spirit of collecting distinctive work extends beyond the festival. Often, the difference between a home that feels personal and one that feels generic comes down to a few carefully chosen pieces rather than a complete makeover.
Appliances and lifestyle upgrades
Mayer covers the kitchen and appliance side of a home refresh. If you’ve been using the same appliances for several years and they’re functional but uninspiring, mid-year is a reasonable time to replace a specific item. Mayer’s range covers everything from espresso machines to kitchen electronics, and the design consistency means individual pieces work alongside each other rather than clashing.
The upgrade logic for appliances differs from art and furniture. A kitchen appliance used daily justifies a higher per-item spend because the frequency of use is there. A coffee machine or kitchen gadget from Mayer will pay back its cost in daily use in a way that a decorative item won’t. That’s worth keeping in mind when you’re allocating your July budget across different home categories.
Managing the spend across a home refresh
A considered home upgrade doesn’t need to happen all at once. Prioritising one or two significant pieces, then filling in smaller items over several months, is a more deliberate approach than buying everything during a single sale window. You’ll make better decisions when each purchase has a specific reason behind it.
If you’re thinking of buying furniture or appliances, Atome lets you split the cost into 3 interest-free payments. For a sofa from Mrphy or an appliance from Mayer, that’s a practical option for managing cash flow on a larger purchase without delaying the buy.
Earn Atome+ points on your home purchases and redeem them for vouchers at partnering brands. A furniture or appliance purchase in July can generate points that translate into savings elsewhere in August. Shop with Atome at participating home and lifestyle brands to make your upgrade go a little further.
