Interior Design Background
Growing up in Colorado, Nicolette had hands-on experience in building two homes from scratch. Her parents saw nothing wrong with a four-year-old helping to install shingles on the roof, with a twelve-year-old laying flagstone and stapling up insulation, or with a sixteen-year-old running planks through a dado saw and nailing up siding! She learned sewing and upholstery crafts from her mother and was taught woodworking and basic home repair skills by her father.
During her grade school years, one of Nicolette's favorite hobbies was moving the furniture in a bedroom that she shared with her brother Gene. The goal of this exercise -- an early exploration of what architects and designers call "space planning" -- was to create a space that walled out her pesky younger brother.
Nicolette's first career was in advertising and PR. She worked as a graphic designer and writer for several national ad agencies, and then for environmental, health and educational nonprofits. But she always retained an interest in building and interior design.
Nicolette's interior design philosophy was informed not just by her formal education, but also by what she learned in "the school of hard knocks."
(She survived the remodeling shown at left; the contractor quit the business.) Nicolette's devotion to ergonomic and universal design principles was influenced by her work for environmental and health nonprofits, by direct experience with disability and by the process of remodeling multiple flats in San Francisco, where space is at a premium.
Because all good home design should result in comfort and delight (at least after the shocks that come with remodeling), Nicolette has called her interior design consulting business "Comfort and Joy Design". The shell logo she uses represents a chambered nautilus. As described in a poem by the same name, the nautilus adds a new chamber to his shell each year as he outgrows the old one, building a shining, irridescent home in the process.
from the German institution that married modern technology with the Arts and Craft Movement to create modern, human-centered design and the mid-century modern style.
Nicolette holds that among the functions of homes are the need to be sustainable in both a human and an environmental sense. Accordingly, she is a certified green building professional, trained by the California nonprofit Build It Green. She is also skilled in applying the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and multiply experienced in designing for various physical challenges. She earned a BA in journalism from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and more than 50 units of continuing education in interior design and sustainability studies from the University of California at Berkeley's San Francisco campus.