The wall you want to remove is probably holding the building up
An HOS flat renovation (居屋裝修) usually starts with the same wish, open up the plan, knock through to the living room, move the kitchen. It’s the right instinct in the wrong home. A large share of internal walls in Home Ownership Scheme flats are load-bearing, and the kitchen and bathroom are pinned in place by the building’s plumbing risers. The good news is that HOS flats reward a different kind of design, vertical, optical and precise, and because the plans repeat, that design can be planned well from the very first meeting. Here is what you can change, what you can’t, and where the money should go.
HOS flats come in standard, repeating plans
Home Ownership Scheme flats tend to share a handful of standard layouts, typically two or three bedrooms around a compact living-dining space. That predictability is a gift. Because the plan is known, storage, circulation and flow can be worked out from the first consultation, and design packages fit the flat instead of fighting it. It also means the lessons learned in one HOS unit transfer to the next: the same corners, the same tight kitchen, the same short hallway show up again and again, and a designer who knows the type arrives already knowing where the pressure points are.
Which walls you can actually touch
The dividing line is structural versus non-structural, and it is not a judgement call for a contractor to make on site. Structural walls cannot be removed, the fact that a wall sits inside your unit gives you no right to take it out, and in HOS flats a high proportion of internal walls are exactly this kind. Any structural alteration requires an Authorised Person (AP), a Registered Structural Engineer (RSE) and Buildings Department consent. The honest sequence is to confirm which walls are load-bearing at the site measure, before a single layout is drawn, so you never fall in love with a plan the building will refuse.
The kitchen and bathroom stay put
Wet areas are governed by the plumbing risers that serve the block, and in an HOS flat those risers fix where the kitchen and bathroom can be. Moving a wet area means relocating drainage and supply, a major wet-works cost in a private flat, and often flatly impossible in subsidised housing. Rather than fight this, the design effort goes inside the existing footprint: reconfiguring the kitchen for real storage and appliance sizes, improving bathroom ventilation and dry-wet separation, and choosing finishes that last. A kitchen that stays where it is can still be transformed.
Budget priority: storage → kitchen & bath → flooring & lighting
With walls fixed and wet areas fixed, the budget question answers itself. Storage comes first, built-in, made-to-measure joinery run floor-to-ceiling is where an HOS flat gains the most, turning awkward corners and dead height into usable capacity that loose furniture can never match. Kitchen and bathroom come next, because they are used hardest and date fastest. Flooring and lighting come third, a single unified floor across the public areas makes the flat read larger, and layered lighting in place of one central ceiling fitting adds depth for comparatively little outlay. Spend on the things that change daily life, not on the walls that won’t move.
Winning moves: borrow light with a glass partition
The best HOS design moves are vertical and optical. Where a partition happens to be non-structural, swapping it for a glass partition (玻璃間隔) lets an inner room borrow daylight from a window it doesn’t have, a bright, open feel without losing the separation. Floor-to-ceiling wardrobes read as architecture rather than furniture and keep surfaces clear. One continuous flooring material across living and dining stretches the eye. Layered lighting, ambient, task and accent, replaces the flat wash of a single ceiling light and makes a compact flat feel considered. None of these need a structural approval, and together they do more for how the flat lives than any wall you could have removed.
The management regime you’ll deal with first
Before any of this, there is paperwork. HOS estates run a management regime, working hours, debris removal, lift protection, refundable damage deposits, and the vetting of a renovation submission can take weeks. Building that lead time into the programme keeps the start date honest. It’s unglamorous, but a start delayed by a permit you didn’t apply for early enough is the most avoidable delay there is.
How Primeworks handles this
We identify the flat as HOS and confirm the structural walls at the site measure, before any layout is drawn, so the design you approve is one the building will actually permit, not one we have to walk back later. Because HOS plans repeat, we can plan storage and flow early and spend your budget where it counts: joinery, kitchen and bath, then finishes. Carrying design and build under one accountable team means the drawings and the site answer to the same people, with a transparent, staged payment schedule so what you pay always matches the work done.