Choosing interior finishes that survive a Dhaka summer

Humidity decides more about your finishes than the showroom sample ever will.

The short version

Interior finishes are chosen in an air-conditioned showroom and installed in a house that will spend six months a year at 85 percent humidity. A great deal of what fails in Bangladeshi interiors — swelling doors, peeling laminate, mould behind wardrobes, tiles that lift — fails for that reason alone. Here is what we specify, and why.

Floors

Porcelain tile is the default for good reason: it does not absorb water, it does not swell, and it is easy to keep clean. Ceramic is cheaper and fine for walls, but on a floor it wears and absorbs more. Natural stone — marble, granite — is beautiful and heavy; it needs a slab designed for it and sealing every few years, or it stains.

Wooden flooring in a Dhaka bedroom is a gamble. Engineered timber over a properly damp-proofed screed can work in an air-conditioned room. Solid timber, or any timber floor in a room that is not cooled, will move with the seasons. Vinyl plank is the honest alternative where the look of wood is wanted without the risk.

Walls

Emulsion paint is fine on a wall that is dry. The problem is the wall that is not — an external wall on the weather side, a wall behind a bathroom, a ground-floor wall with rising damp. Paint on those walls will bubble no matter what brand it is. Fix the water first: proper external rendering, a damp-proof course, ventilation in the bathroom. Then paint.

Where a wall will be wet — kitchen splashback, bathroom — tile it to the ceiling, not to five feet. The strip above five feet is where the mould grows.

Doors and joinery

This is where the most money is wasted. Particle-board and MDF furniture that looks perfect in the showroom takes on moisture at its edges, swells, and lets go of its laminate within a few monsoons. Plywood — marine grade for anything near water — is the minimum. Solid timber doors should be seasoned, and even then they will move a little between April and December; a good carpenter allows for it.

For wardrobes on an external wall, leave a gap behind them, or line the wall. A wardrobe pressed against a damp wall is a mould farm you cannot see.

Kitchens

The wet zone is the cabinet under the sink and the plinth at the floor. Specify these in a material that does not care about water — marine ply, or a solid surface — even if the rest of the kitchen is a cheaper board. Countertops in granite or engineered quartz last; laminate countertops do not.

Ceilings

False ceilings hide services and look tidy. Gypsum board is the usual choice; it is fine in a dry room and very bad in a damp one. Bathrooms get a moisture-resistant board or a PVC ceiling. And every false ceiling needs an access panel where the wiring and pipework run, or the first leak means cutting it open.

The habit that matters more than any product

Ventilate. A bathroom with an exhaust fan that runs, a kitchen with a hood that vents outside, a wardrobe with a gap behind it, a room that is opened up in the morning — these do more for the life of a finish than any upgrade in specification. We design the openings for this. The client has to use them.

What we do about it

Every finish we specify is chosen for the room it goes in, not the catalogue it came from. The schedule you get from us says, room by room, what goes on the floor, the walls and the ceiling, and why. If a client wants something we think will not last, we say so — and if they still want it, we install it in a way that gives it the best chance.