Vickie Nickolls was a trend analyzer for Lacoste when she finally renovated her own family home, the project she had been perfecting in her imagination for years. When it was done, she uploaded a photo of the new bathroom to Houzz, and it became one of the most-liked images on the platform. It even ran in a national paper. That bathroom was the starting gun. She left Lacoste, set up a consultancy called Interior Therapy with little more than a makeshift portfolio, and the commissions started rolling in anyway. A year in, she won a Best of Houzz Design award. Then she won it the next year, and the three after that.
The threads between fashion and interiors
The creative background went back further than fashion. “I trained as a window dresser,” she says, “and I never followed that path, but I still use the fundamentals: technical drawing, composition, choosing complementary colors.” Fashion gave her the rest. “So much of what I learned there I now use in my initial design process, how colors work together to build a cohesive scheme, the properties of materials.” Staying on top of each season’s trends had been her actual job; now she pulls those elements out and transfers them into a room. Even the branding side carried over. “At Lacoste I was heavily involved with how the brand was perceived. That knowledge helps me keep my own website and social platforms cohesive and on-brand.”
Making the dream real
The dream itself was oddly specific and long-held. “It has always, weirdly, been my dream to buy a house and decorate it exactly how I wanted.” Their first house got her stamp; the second, tackled on maternity leave, became a proper project she threw herself into. “I just knew it was something I wanted to do full time, or grow into a business.”
So she enrolled in an online course with the British Academy of Interior Design while on leave, and used her own house and her friends’ houses to build a portfolio. Once she had enough images, she set up the website and Instagram, “and the rest is history.” She got halfway through the course before real work arrived and she chose live clients over finishing it. “Part of me wishes I’d finished, but I learned so much from being on site.” She has picked up shorter, specialist courses ever since.
Vickie learned interiors on site, on her own home. The bathroom did the rest.
Color, and a name that fit
Inspiration, she says, hides everywhere. Magazines like Living Etc and Elle Decor, her shelves of books on color and lighting, but also travel, galleries, trade shows. “It might be the smallest detail, or a color combination you see on some other medium that transfers into a fabric or a paint.” Years of working closely with color have made her braver with bold choices and mixed patterns, though she is exacting about tone. “I ultimately believe you should choose colors you like and that make you happy, not just what’s trending. The color you choose for someone’s home has to work for them, and reflect them.”
The name took her the longest. It was going to be House of Nickolls, then Graceful Home, after her daughter Grace, until she looked up the meanings behind the word interior and found the idea of therapy. It stuck, because it is true to the work. “My clients trust me to create a happy, functional, and safe space, which can be amazing for their mindset. I do see it as a form of therapy.”
Interior Therapy is at interiortherapy.co.uk and @interior.therapy.
