The Empathic Interior Design of Nichola Haysey

The hallmark of a great interior designer isn’t just their ability to deliver beautiful design solutions. It’s also their ability to deliver flawless client service. Which is where Northampton based interior design firm, Haysey, has really flourished over the past few years. Thanks to the passion, dedication and character of owner and Head Designer Nichola Haysey, the company recently won a coveted Best of Houzz award for its customer service standards. We caught up with Nichola to ask her about her approach.

Congratulations on your 2021 Best of Houzz award for Service. You were among the top 3.5% of 2.5 million Houzz registered professionals. How does it feel?

Thank you! It’s very rewarding. You work hard and your ultimate goal is to make people happy and fulfil their vision of creating a beautiful space to enhance their lifestyle, their wellbeing and their homes.

When others notice this effort, it’s just great. It’s also lovely to be able to show people how very much client fulfilment and positivity means to you as a business.

What is it about your customer service that sets Haysey Design apart?

The key takeaways we think set us apart are good communication, plentiful information, organisation, trust, collaboration and, ultimately, planning.

With every project we have the privilege to work on, we start in a fully collaborative way with our customers right from the off, putting them in charge and guiding them through the process. 

Most customers, when they come to a Designer are not always familiar with how it will work, they often haven’t worked with a Designer before and worry deeply about the potential of escalated costs and losing control of a project or trusting someone they have only just met.

All of our clients know the estimated time a project is likely to take, the process that we need to go through and the work which will be involved before any works take place. They are also fully aware of anticipated costs and we work closely with them throughout the project to help them keep to a planned budget, large or small, sourcing products and making decor suggestions in line with their expectations whilst also working alongside our favourite tradespeople to make sure we come in on budget and on time.

We have a superb team of trades we work with, time and time again, who are efficient, kind, hardworking and conscientious which also makes a huge difference to the customer service experience. Often customers end up taking their numbers and using them for future works around their home.

The other big part of our service is that we also always try to educate our customers as the journey ensues, giving them design and styling tips and tricks which are practical, sustainable and which we find most customers love learning about and, subsequently, incorporate knowing the small or sometimes huge decisions they can make to help our environment whilst still achieving their goals. 

You come from a legal background. What was your route into commercial interior design and how did you grow the business?

As a child, I used to rearrange my room at the weekend and loved how it could make me feel better through the teenage years. I loved colour and drawing, particularly graphics. My favourite project at school as a young girl was designing the interiors of a bus for Greenpeace!

I studied law at college and university and fell into property law which I really enjoyed. Then later on company and commercial law too. After having my children, I thought it best to pursue a new career that I could juggle and one which would keep me going despite being a busy Mum.

I studied a course in Interior Design at the British College while on maternity leave, then did some work for friends and family members, testing out my skills and spent a lot of time visiting suppliers, exhibitions, reading everything I could. This led to more courses and hands-on experience. In 2017 demand from friends and contacts seemed to be increasingly insatiable and so began Haysey Designs.

Credit: Lisa Wildgoose

Your work runs the gamut of period styles. You don’t appear to be tied to any specific stylistic tropes and seem to treat every project as unique. What’s your process and how do you decide what style a particular home is going to follow?

(Laughs) Well, we certainly prefer the period style projects. They are absolutely our favourite ones to design.

Having said that, we love challenging projects, awkward spaces... Clients who come to us a little lost and need some guidance because that is just what design is: problem solving.

When we complete a project and see the joy and the boost it gives to our clients, it is definitely why we do what we do.  As a result, we take on a wide range of projects but, you’re right, there is a process and some really important things to consider before we can even put pen to paper to make it a successful design.

As well as design ability, part of the skillset of a Designer has to be listening, understanding and empathy. It’s really important to know your client as much as you can; understand their needs; tune in to their style; immerse yourself in it with as much research and thought as possible until you can design as they would.

The starting point for the clients in our design process is a meeting; a chance for us all to get to know each other and decipher a detailed brief. This has two advantages: to ensure the client likes us and feels we can all work together happily moving forward and to make sure we all know exactly what we are hoping to achieve. 

We like to have a good understanding of a client’s personality, so we invite them to share with us [things like:] their hobbies; their way of living; their loves and hates about other people's homes or places they’ve been to; their travel history; and we look for little details in the home that crop up again and again giving you a little nudge as to their real character [such as] echoes of particular colours you see recurring in rooms which, to them, can be quite subconscious; noticing the colours they wear after one or two meetings as there is usually a commonality; their humour.

We always like to give our clients homework at this stage, getting them to share with us images of colours, clothing, rooms they have seen, patterns, fabrics - anything that shouts to them and really makes them sit up. We also review the age of the home or business building and the exterior and interior architecture, essentially the fabric of the building in which we will be designing. We then set about brainstorming a way to fuse everything together in an appeasing way. 

This, then, leads to the creation of a mood board – a visual idea of where we think our clients wish to be in terms of style and the mood of the room or rooms they want to redesign. It's a simple document but it creates the basis of our design work, the platform from which the project really evolves, so to us it is really important to get it just right.

You have an uncanny knack for mixing vintage and contemporary pieces as if they were made to go together. Do you have a storeroom full of found objects that wait around for the perfect project or do you antique hunt for specific projects? How do you plan for those kinds of finds?

Why, thank you. We do have a few bits and pieces in storage but primarily, no.

That’s our favourite thing to do, hunting for the right piece to finish a room and when you find it is so rewarding because dressing a room really finishes a space. But honestly, we just know when we see things. Once we are fully focused and immersed into a design for a client, you just have an instinct as to what it needs.

You know the vision that you are trying to create for your customer and it is merely a case of searching for the things until you find them. We factor in time for hunting, if we don't already know once works have commenced. We also make sure we do the research and get into the zone of this as the design phase commences so we know likely places to look for the things we need at the right price points.

There’s been a big return to traditional craftsmanship in interior design in recent years. What do you think is driving this and how has it impacted on your own work?

That’s true. As designers we are seeing it all the time now. It’s primarily awareness, from the general public and the commercial sector, of what is accessible and affordable to them.

The evolving mindset of homeowners and businesses to re-use, recycle or upcycle and purchase products and furnishings with a long lifecycle (hand-crafted, hand finished or painted, locally sourced or restored) are all playing their part.

Homes and workplaces that really do what is needed has become such a focus since the beginning of Covid19, it has been re-centred as a safe and highly important space. People are more detail orientated as a result and quick fix furnishings and products don’t have quite as large a place as they once did in the markets.

The focus on nurturing small and local businesses, reducing carbon footprints are all allowing carpenters and tradesmen to refine their skills and there is a big increase in fitted and bespoke furnishings which people are finding more accessible and are willing to consider in their renovations. 

This is wonderful from a business point of view as we are getting more opportunity to work with the skilled trades and really design like we were meant to.

Design is quintessentially problem solving and we have increasingly found we are able to do this with more freedom than ever before.  With this new sustainable mindset, clients are more willing to allow us to create completely bespoke solutions to solve these problems whilst enhancing the beauty of their homes and businesses.

The realisation that long lasting products like stone and solid surfaces – moulded, shaped, templated by skilled tradespeople – in bathrooms and kitchens, utility rooms, workrooms, en suites, etc... sustainable timbers made to measure to fit their spaces seamlessly, VOC free small batch mixed paints or mixed on site to colour preferences, hand-painted kitchens by a talented painter, are all details worth the investment. 

How have you adapted to digital design in the Covid era?

We have certainly upped our CGI skills during this time to help clients envisage and visualise their spaces more easily.  

We have fully embraced the use of Zoom and we now have a wonderful company on board who carry out a 3D scan of the spaces we are working with, so that we, and the trades too, can work and quote where necessary as remotely as possible. 

Even the seamstress can measure the window and drops from afar with just a final measure to confirm before the making and fitting can take place. It has certainly streamlined some of the processes we go through, made things more time efficient and certainly the scans and some of the Zoom meetings we have are processes to hang on to and incorporate moving forward.

What’s the most challenging room to design in a given home, generally?

The kitchen.

Kitchen designers are worth their salt, they really are. This is always a really hard-working space and a lot is asked of it. There are design decisions to make but limitations always exist and even the best design cannot take place if the functionality doesn’t come together. The costs can escalate so quickly, too, due to the hidden works that have to take place so this is a space that requires the utmost care, consideration, planning and thought. 

And what’s your favourite room to design, in general?

It has to be the bathroom. You can have so much fun with this room. There are so many things you can do, so many options and choices to incorporate. So many lovely design ideas out there to inspire and excite. It is another hardworking room but one you can really go all-out with. You can create almost anything in this space and it doesn’t have to be dictated by the rest of your home. If ever there is a space to break the flow, this is it. A private space, so it can be a sanctuary all of your own.

Find out more about Haysey Designs on Houzz.