Usher’s Designer Nicole Fuller Shares the Secrets Behind His Art Collection

Before launching her namesake interiors firm, Nicole Fuller was working as a model when she first met Usher at the Greenwich Hotel 17 years ago. Their friendship grew into a professional relationship three years later when the designer officially launched her studio and the musician hired her to upgrade the furniture in his Atlanta bachelor pad. The pair have since collaborated on five homes, including Usher’s current house in Atlanta, a Georgian-style estate that appears on AD’s September 2026 cover. “I did not design one thing in that house because it was just pretty, or because it went with a color palette,” explains Fuller. “Every single material, stone, and texture, was chosen because we talked about it together, and it has a story,” she said. To achieve each detail, Fuller leaned on her art and design world connections, including tapping several local artists to bring the project together over roughly four years. Here, she provides details about some of the most personal spaces in the house. The cross in the study In one of the most sentimental odes in the home, the pair encased dried flowers from Usher’s grandmother Tina’s funeral into a cross-shaped windowed display. Fuller worked with local contractor Mike Hammersmith to transform the home’s original brick wall into an insulated, backlit memorial. “Once we came up with the proper scale and placement, he filled in the wall around the outside and the inside. Then, we framed out the cross with our suede upholstery panels and created this really beautiful reveal detail where you can see the light shine through at night,” explains Fuller. The multiple murals The designer hired Atlanta-based decorative painter Morgan Boszilkov to execute four murals in Usher’s home, including a three-foot Transformer in their son Sire’s room; foliage, vines, and birds inspired by Chinoiserie in the wine vestibule; an expanded version of the singer’s chin tattoo in the pool room; and a playful ceiling mural inspired by daughter Sovereign’s own drawings of ice cream cones, rainbows, and butterflies. “It was really special and I felt so honored to be part of the family’s support of Sovereign’s imagination and creativity,” says Boszilkov of the ceiling mural. A former designer of eco-friendly wedding dresses, Boszilkov worked on Usher’s home over the course of several weeks. “I would walk in and just feel like I was in this creative zone of collaboration, craftsmanship, and inspiration,” she says. “When I left each day, I kind of hoped I’d absorbed some of that energy.” The heads in the barber shop Usher recognized a kinship between his music and the installations of acclaimed contemporary artist Lauren Halsey, whose immersive works bridging sculpture and architecture celebrate Black cultural expressions. For his home’s barbershop, Usher and Fuller commissioned a custom artwork from Halsey depicting a series of heads–including Usher’s–displaying various intricate haircuts. “I was honored to create a one-of-a-kind commission for Usher,” says Halsey, who showed a series of similar “protruded engravings,” as she calls them, of gypsum on wood at a solo exhibition at Gagosian in 2025, which referenced the cosmological carvings of ancient Egypt and Mesoamerican civilizations while celebrating everyday life in South Central Los Angeles. “As a longtime fan of his music, it means so much that he wanted one of my pieces in his home. This barbershop-inspired engraving was an incredible remix to bring to life.” The stuffed animal creations Fuller worked with Usher’s wife, Jennifer Goicoechea Raymond, to design a wall installation and a chair made with stuffed animals from Sovereign and Sire’s personal collection. The wall art, which leads to the kids’ playroom, was created by stitching and hot gluing more than 250 plushies together. “It was such a great way to bring what they loved and keep it alive while they're still young,” says Fuller. Inspiration for the chair came from similar designs by the Campana Brothers. Outside of her collaborations with Usher, Fuller, whose firm has offices in New York, LA, London and, soon, Palm Beach, is currently designing a private member’s club in New York, renovating an old Victorian-style home for the musician Questlove, and curating an Ojai property for choreographer and director Fatima Robinson. “I always say my clients are my muse,” says Fuller. “I like to storytell with them and I like to tap into who they are, their heartbeat, bringing them, their life and their family into the space.”