Nicholas Hertneck thought he was moving to the Coachella Valley to enjoy an early retirement.
Instead, he is enjoying a thriving interior design business.
“I’m 63 years old and I am doing more work than I’ve done in my entire life,” he told Desert Magazine.
He and his partner, Lawrence Lazzaro, lived in Beverly Hills for a decade.
“We got tired of the traffic and the crowds, so we moved to the desert to retire,” Hertneck said. “Then we decided to open an art gallery. The art gallery morphed into a beautiful showroom. All during this time, I was still doing design projects because I have 35 years of clients behind me. All of a sudden with the showroom, we have a whole new batch of clients coming in.”
Their company, Nicholas Lawrence Design, has clients across the United States. The showroom, Modern Hacienda, is in Palm Desert.
“We design homes from stem to stern,” Hertneck said. “Most of our homes are very high end. Our average home value that we work on is about $3 million. Our clients tend to be CEOs of companies and owners of companies.”
For the typical client, this is their third or fourth home, Hertneck said. They spend two to three months in the desert in the winter. They typically like indoor-outdoor design and large swimming pools.
“In a lot of our designs, we have been incorporating pocket doors and glass walls, so we can open up interior rooms directly to the outside with no visible barriers,” said Hertneck, who has a degree in architecture. “We have a lot of pools with swimming lanes and tanning decks. It’s all about relaxing outside under cover, dining outside at night with heat – adding fire elements and water elements to the landscape. And having spaces for families so everybody has their own private space.”
Many clients have adult children and grandchildren who visit the desert homes.
“The rooms are set up so that they can leave things behind and not worry about being in someone else’s way,” Hertneck said. “We put all kinds of data ports in convenient locations so kids can hang out and plug in but be part of the family still.”
It’s a busy but rewarding life, even if not exactly as planned.
“I’m very happy,” Hertneck said. “I’ve got four designers working for me who are in their late-20s, early 30s. All have degrees, all are very skilled. I feel like I am sort of the professor emeritus here at the office.”
