Calm, Character and Absolute Symmetry: Harriet Nicholls’ Naked Kitchen

When interior designer Harriet Nicholls created a new kitchen for her own family home, she turned to Naked Kitchens to help bring together symmetry, soft colour, clever planning and a beautifully live...

It is always interesting to see what an interior designer chooses for a client. But it is even more revealing to see what they choose for themselves.

For her own family kitchen, recently featured in Homes & Gardens, London-based interior designer Harriet Nicholls worked with Naked’s Laura Ratcliffe to create a space that feels calm, elegant and highly resolved – but also truly practical for family life. Having collaborated with Naked on several previous projects, Harriet already had a strong working relationship with Laura and the team: a lovely vote of confidence when a professional designer is planning the kitchen at the heart of her own home.

About Harriet Nicholls

Harriet Nicholls is a London-based interior designer whose work is highly bespoke, carefully planned and closely attuned to the individual needs of each client. Her interiors are elegant without feeling formal, relaxed without feeling casual, and shaped by a strong sense of proportion, colour and texture.

Harriet grew up in an artistic home – her mother Maryanne Nicholls is an artist and ceramicist – and developed a lasting appreciation for interiors and architecture. She went on to study History of Art at Bristol University, before training in Interior Design at Parsons, The New School in New York.

After gaining experience in both large and small interior design practices, Harriet founded Harriet Nicholls Interior Design in 2018, creating spaces that work beautifully in the long term, feel sensitive to their surroundings, and give their owners somewhere they can feel genuinely proud to call home.

Designing her own family kitchen

Although this kitchen was for Harriet’s own home, she approached it in much the same way she would a client project.

“I started with how we wanted the space to function as a family,” says Harriet, “and then layered in the aesthetic considerations – but with the added dynamic of being my own harshest critic!”

That balance between beauty and use sits at the heart of the finished kitchen: polished and composed, but designed for the ebb and flow of family life.

Laura, the Naked Kitchens designer on the project, says Harriet came to the process with “a sophisticated, clear vision”: absolute symmetry.

The calm of symmetry

The kitchen sits within a new extension, which gave Harriet a rare opportunity to begin with a clean architectural canvas.

“Symmetry brings an immediate sense of calm and order,” she says, “which I think is especially important in a kitchen where there’s naturally so much visual activity. In this room, which was a brand new extension, I had carte blanche, and so it lent itself beautifully to a symmetrical arrangement.”

The cabinetry on both walls is designed as a mirror image, creating a strong sense of balance and visual calm. But, as with all good kitchens, the simplicity of the finished effect conceals a great deal of practical problem-solving.

Laura’s task was to preserve Harriet’s precise, well-considered aesthetic while making the room work for everyday use. That meant discreetly housing the boiler and appliances without breaking the sight lines, and ensuring the symmetry never came at the expense of function.

The room feels effortless because of the care that’s been taken over the complicated parts.

Making order work for family life

Of course, kitchens are rarely perfectly orderly spaces in real life. For Harriet, the key was to create a room that could support noise, movement, conversation and toast crumbs without losing its sense of calm.

“There’s no point creating something visually resolved if it doesn’t work properly for everyday life,” she says. “A lot of thought went into concealed storage and ensuring everything had its place, so the room can function efficiently even when life is chaotic. Good design should support the rhythm of daily life rather than fight against it.”

The layout is carefully zoned around cooking, socialising and everyday routines. A dedicated breakfast station includes two additional undercounter fridges: one for entertaining and drinks, the other for morning essentials such as juices and fresh fruit. This keeps household traffic away from the main cooking area, where food storage, utensils and spices can stay close to hand.

“When designing a kitchen, I always walk through in my mind the process of unloading the dishwasher, and what that will look like on a daily basis for the client,” Harriet says. “It’s such a mundane daily task, it needs to be as painless and straightforward as possible – but without compromising the look!”

And in her own kitchen?

“I’m most pleased with the functionality,” she says. “Unloading my dishwasher is a complete joy! And it’s just a great room to have friends in – lots of time is spent standing around the island chatting.”

That may be the best possible measure of a successful family kitchen: the daily tasks feel easier, and people naturally want to gather there.

A palette designed for calm

The kitchen’s palette is calm and cohesive, with the soft greens, pale blues and warm neutrals that are characteristic of Harriet’s interiors.

“Colour is hugely important to atmosphere,” she says. “I tend to gravitate towards tones that feel soft, natural and slightly muted because they create depth without shouting for attention.”

“In this kitchen, the palette was chosen to feel gentle and grounding,” she says, “with enough tonal variation to create interest while still feeling cohesive and restful.”

The darker island adds weight and definition.

“That was always part of the thinking,” says Harriet. “The room is very light and airy, which is wonderful, but it needed something to anchor it visually. The darker island gives the space weight and contrast, helping to define it as the heart of the room. It adds depth and prevents the palette from feeling too delicate or one-note.”

Laura also carried the island colour into the interiors of the glass wall units, adding contrast and a small note of playfulness within the wider scheme.

Collected, not decorated

One of the loveliest things about the finished kitchen is that it does not feel like a showroom. The ingredients are refined – painted cabinetry, marble, mixed metals, considered colour – but the effect is personal rather than overly polished.

“I find the most successful interiors never feel too perfect or overly staged,” Harriet says. “I’m always trying to create spaces that feel collected rather than decorated – rooms with warmth, personality and a sense of history, even when they’re newly finished.”

That sense of being “collected” comes through in the layering of materials and finishes. The kitchen combines painted Shaker cabinetry, marble, brass, stainless steel and wrought iron, giving the space an established, individual character.

“It’s important – but sometimes difficult – to exercise restraint and not overdo it,” she says. “Just because you’ve seen lots of different sources of inspiration in magazines or online, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for you. I return to the word ‘suitability’ a lot when I need to keep myself in check.”

A designer’s kitchen, made for life

Harriet’s kitchen is a wonderful example of what happens when a designer’s personal vision meets genuinely bespoke kitchen-making. Harriet brought the clarity, confidence and design eye; Laura and the Naked team helped translate that into a kitchen that is symmetrical and calm but still full of personality – with the practical technical details resolved behind the scenes.

It is a kitchen with absolute symmetry, but it is not a kitchen for a perfectly still life. It is a kitchen for family mornings, friends around the island, beautifully painless dishwasher unloading, and all the ordinary daily rituals that make a room feel like home.

See more of Harriet’s work at www.harrietnicholls.com and on Instagram @hn.interiordesign

Photography by Amy Harvey @amyharveyphoto