Meet Nicholas Kaiko, founder of Kaiko Design Interiors

ABOUT

Led by Nicholas Kaiko, Kaiko Design Interiors is a Sydney studio known for colour-led interiors, meticulous documentation and fixed-fee pricing, built on the belief that a well-designed home can genuinely change the way you experience everyday life.

Nic's career began in some of the most demanding design environments there are. Before founding Kaiko Design Interiors he spent years on luxury hotel projects, bespoke retail fit-outs and high-end residential commissions across Australia and internationally, where the standard of detail is non-negotiable, budgets are scrutinised at every level and the guest or resident experience is the measure of everything. Much of that time was spent on site, which is where the studio's working knowledge of how buildings actually go together comes from. The rigour, the documentation and the attention to how a space performs, not just how it photographs, all come directly from that period of his career.

The studio's work has been published in Vogue Living, Living Etc, Belle, Australian House and Garden and Better Homes and Gardens. See our press features for more.

In establishing Kaiko Design Interiors, Nic set out to bring that same level of design thinking to homeowners undertaking substantial renovations and new builds, many of them tired of the vague, hourly-rate model that makes so many renovations stressful and unpredictable. The studio's fixed-fee structure, staged approach and meticulous documentation are not administrative details. They are the design service. Every kitchen, bathroom, joinery item and finish is drawn and scheduled in full before tender so builders can price the work accurately, and that is what allows clients to make confident decisions, trust the process and arrive at a finished home without the anxiety that usually accompanies a major renovation.

Nic believes strongly in experiential design: the idea that the true measure of an interior is not how it looks in photos but how it makes you feel walking into a room at the end of the day. Every project is approached with that question at its centre, how will the person who lives here experience this space, and every decision, from the colour palette to the handle height, is made in service of that answer.

Design impacts our lives in ways that we can not only see and touch but also the way we feel, I truly believe that good design can change lives.

OUR APPROACH

At Kaiko Design Interiors, we describe our design philosophy as dynamic eclecticism. It is a phrase that needs a little explaining, because it is not a style and it is not a mood board aesthetic.

Dynamic eclecticism is the discipline of knowing which design rules to follow and which to break in service of the client. It means combining a nineteenth century campaign chair with a contemporary limestone bench and making both look inevitable. It means a palette that draws from the architecture of the building, the quality of the light and the personality of the person who will live there, not from whatever is trending in interior design media this year.

The foundation of our approach is the conviction that the most successful interiors are deeply personal. They express something true about the people who commissioned them. They feel layered rather than styled, collected rather than purchased, considered rather than decorated.

This is why we work closely with each client throughout the entire design process. We ask a lot of questions. We look at the way you currently live. We listen to what you say about the spaces you love and why, and equally what you say about the spaces that have never quite felt right. From that, we build something that could only ever be yours.

Nicholas Kaiko designs every project personally and the studio documents every project in house. You are not passed to a junior designer. You work with Nic.

Learn more about our process here.