You know when a room is wrong.
Knowing what would make it right is harder.
I’m Nicolene, an interior designer in Johannesburg.
I read what you’re drawn to and work out what it means for a room you actually live in.
You’ve saved a thousand images. Not one of them tells you what to do with your living room.
Plenty of taste, no way to name the thread running through it.
So you keep collecting rooms you love and buying things that are nearly right, and the house stays a collection of good pieces that don’t quite agree with each other.
Once you can see the thread, choosing the sofa, the colour or the light that belongs gets much easier.
So does saying no to the one that almost fits.
START HERE
The Art of Niche
Short notes on interiors, culture and the things we make room for.
Like why a hotel bar changes the way you sit, why one house reads as collected and the next as decorated.
Always free.
COMING SOON
Dezyna Editions
Numbered, image-led essays on rooms, aesthetics and the way we live in houses.
Free, made to keep, and sent to the list first.
No. 01: what 80s luxury understood about glamour.
It’s being written now.
Join the list below and I’ll send it the day it’s published, along with the ones that follow.
WORK WITH ME DIRECTLY
When you want it for your own room
You can learn a great deal from someone else’s room.
Yours still has its own dimensions, light, budget, and the two pieces you already own and won’t part with.
Insight & Inspiration
$125
One clear direction for one room
A pre-session brief that does half the thinking before we start
A 60 minute online session focused entirely on your room
Written notes with the direction and what to do first
Two weeks of email clarification afterwards
Refined Design
$405
One room, fully designed
A 60 minute consultation, then a space plan solving layout and flow
A mood board carrying colour, materials, furniture and lighting
A specification and shopping schedule with purchase links
One rendered colour view, so you see the room before buying
A 45 minute presentation, then one round of refinements
Optional 3D visual, $125
Signature Spaces
POA
The whole home, planned room by room.
For larger, multi-room or more involved projects, residential or commercial.
I find the thread. Give me ten images you love and I’ll look for what connects them. After 27 years of designing spaces, that pattern is easier for me to see than for the person who’s been collecting them.
Listed professional senior interior designer with the Institute of Interior Design Professions.
Specialised in corporate interiors and space planning, mostly across South Africa, with projects in Australia and the UK.
Quoted as an interiors expert by the Daily Mail, Ideal Home, Stylist, Country Living and Woman & Home. Published in the Journal of Biophilic Design.