Award-winning kitchen, bathroom, and interior design studio based in Hawke's Bay.
Whether you're holding plans for your dream home and don't want to get it wrong, or you reached into the pantry for one thing and ten things fell out and that was the final straw, the problem is the same.
Homes are still designed around how they look, or how efficiently they can be built, and you pay for it every day.
KITCHEN DESIGN —
BATHROOM DESIGN —
WARDROBE DESIGN —
LIVING ROOM JOINERY DESIGN —
LAUNDRY DESIGN —
SPATIAL PLANNING —
KITCHEN DESIGN — BATHROOM DESIGN — WARDROBE DESIGN — LIVING ROOM JOINERY DESIGN — LAUNDRY DESIGN — SPATIAL PLANNING —
Traditional interior design is letting you down.
The Reality
Stop blaming yourself for the daily chaos. You're not unorganised, you're not "Type B," and you're not letting anyone down. When a house lacks good design, keeping it tidy is an unwinnable battle that you’re losing daily. The result? You’re living in a space that feels cluttered, out of control, and nothing like you.
The Industry Gap
Traditional design splits your money in two and leaves you in the middle. Decorators do pretty finishes. Cabinet makers build boxes to fill a wall. Nobody marries how it looks with how it works, so you can spend five or six figures on a renovation or new build and still end up with a home that lets you down every single day.
The Fresh by Design Interior Way
I don't decorate rooms. I engineer them. My joinery-led process takes you from chaotic layout to buildable reality: a floor plan that works, selections that match your lifestyle and budget, and technical drawings your builder can price and build from without guessing. I carry the mental load, you keep the investment protected, and the home gets built the way your life needs it to work.
Meet Nichole
I've spent eleven years designing kitchens, bathrooms, and built-ins, including years inside a joinery company learning how homes are built.
I’ve won four awards, and have worked on international projects, but the thing I'm proudest of is what that training taught me: beautiful and functional aren't a trade-off. They're an order. Function gets decided at the floor plan, and everything beautiful gets built on top of it.
So I built my signature design process around it, it's called FLO:
Finalise the floor plan.
Lock in the services.
Overlay the finishes.Nothing gets chosen before the thing it depends on, and you're never guessing what happens next.
My goal is simple: clarity, confidence, and calm. From our first conversation through every day you spend in your home.
The difference is undeniable.
500 +
Spaces designed to lower the mental load and make your day-to-day easier.
11 +
Years protecting clients from expensive mid-build mistakes.
21+
Five-star reviews from couples and families who finally have a home that works.
4
National awards for spaces that are practical and beautiful.
Joinery-Led Design in Practice
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Beyond the Curve
A double award-winning transformation of a dark, cramped layout. Reimagining the floor plan created a highly functional statement space that finally matches the investment in the home.
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Gatsby's Kitchen
An award-winning kitchen engineered for effortless entertaining. Discover how reshaping the existing footprint turned a disjointed room into a guest-ready space without adding square metres.
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Drenched in Terracotta
A dark, south-facing room transformed into a vibrant family retreat. We resolved the awkward layout first, ensuring the terracotta finishes layered over a highly functional floor plan.
Design is 10% of your spend, but it protects the other 90%.
The biggest misconception is that skipping design saves money. It doesn’t. You pay for design either way.
Upfront, in a plan your builder can price and follow. Or by the hour, while tradies make it up on site and you find the mistakes after you've paid for them.
Design done first means the big decisions get made early, quotes come back accurate, and nobody's guessing on your money.
Our process is designed to be clear from the start.
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First call — 20 minutes
This call is to answer your questions and see if we’re the right match without any pressure.
This is a phone or video conversation. You’ll get an approximate price for the work involved, and clear next steps, so you can move forward in the right direction.
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Deep‑dive session.
If we’re a good fit and you accept the proposal, we book a longer deep‑dive session.
We go space by space, talk about what’s working and what you want to change, and I start looking at your plans to diagnose the real problems. This is where I get a feel for your personality, how you want the space to look and feel, and what we’re really trying to achieve.
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Concept floor plans.
Next, I create 1–3 different floor plan options for each space.
These concepts are about optimising the space you have (especially with new‑build homes getting smaller), creating proper storage, and setting up a design that will let the aesthetics shine.
For every layout, you’ll get a 3D visual so you can actually see what it will look like, and together we decide which direction to take — sometimes it’s one option, sometimes a mix of two.
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Feasibility check.
We then send the concept plans to the relevant subtrades — plumbers, electricians, tilers, and more — to make sure what we’re proposing is possible in practice. Bigger items like joinery and benchtops are priced as well, so we can check that we’re staying within the budget we’ve set.
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Technical documentation.
Once we’re happy with the direction, I prepare final plans and technical documentation.
Every subtrade gets exactly what they need: lighting plans, cabinetry design, mechanical requirements, dimensioned drawings — the full picture so there’s no confusion on site.
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Materials and colour selections.
We then choose alongside you, a Pinterest board, and a clear design direction, the final materials, fittings, and finishes that suit the budget, the space, and your goals.
Think colour palettes, mood boards, pulling samples, and putting it all together.
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Handover and Ongoing Support.
Everything is handed over to your builder or joiner, with ongoing support from me so you’re not left to bridge the gap between the plans and the finished home on your own.
Let's clear the overwhelm before we start.
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This is why we never expect you to visualise your kitchen from a 2D plan and a tiny tile sample.
You will see exact, photo-real 3D renders of your space before you commit to a single finish. We lock the layout first, then we layer the design, meaning the risk of a very expensive "I thought it would look different" is almost completely removed.
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When you get quotes without a locked design, builders have to guess your finishes—which means every quote is actually for a different kitchen.
By working with us first, you hand your trades a complete, builder-ready specification document. Because there is no guessing on site, the quotes you receive are accurate, comparable, and final.
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No. Right now, you are probably spending your evenings scrolling Pinterest, feeling overwhelmed by 400 different opinions.
We take over the mental load. We map the zones, solve the storage problems, and present you with clear, guided decisions in the exact right order. You get to enjoy the fun parts of the process without project-managing the chaos.
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Your design fee is not an extra cost—it is the insurance that protects the rest of your budget.
The most expensive mistakes happen when decisions are made out of order, or when trades have to improvise on site. We engineer the space so it actually works, and provide the technical documentation that keeps your build on time and out of the redo pile.
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A standard builder’s allowance usually covers the bare minimum: basic cupboards that do not account for how you actually cook or live.
When a joiner does "free" design, the cost is hidden in the build, and their job is manufacturing, not solving your morning routine. We engineer the joinery-first systems that actually lower your mental load, and hand your builder a locked specification so that allowance doesn't suddenly double.
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Ideally, before the slab is poured. If you wait until the builder asks you to pick your kitchen colours, it is already too late to fix a broken layout.
We start by analyzing your architectural plans to catch the hidden friction points, ensuring the walls, windows, and plumbing are in the exact right place from day one.
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Absolutely not. We actually need to see the reality of your daily life—the appliances taking up all the bench space, the corner cupboards that don't work, and the school bags dumped on the island.
You don't have a tidying problem; you have a layout problem. This is a completely judgment-free space, and our goal is to design the systems that fix it.
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You do not have to choose between a pretty space and a practical one.
We do not design fragile show homes; we design camera-ready spaces that are kid-proof and guest-ready. By creating dedicated zones for the school-run scramble and using durable, future-proof finishes, your home will look incredible while actually surviving your family's daily routines.
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Yes. We take the decision fatigue entirely off your plate. You do not need to know the technical answers, the right order to pick things, or how to explain your style to a tradesperson.
We guide you through plain-English options, make expert recommendations based on your habits, and give you the confidence to simply say "yes".
I know this feels like a massive leap.
I have navigated this process myself, and I have guided hundreds of clients through it too. Because you want every dollar of your renovation investment to pay off, getting clarity early is the most important thing you can do.
If you are tired of the chaos but unsure where to begin, let’s have a chat. Book a free, 20-minute discovery call, and together we will map out exactly what your next step should be.