Colour Personified /
The busy and vibrant world of Alex Fulton
As an award-winning interior designer, and the Creative Director at Alex Fulton Design, every element of Alex Fulton’s business and life pops with bold vibrance and statement patterns that exude joy and happiness.
Aself-described ‘rebel with a colour wheel’, Alex Fulton’s work is a burst of effervescent sunshine. Originally trained as a nurse, and after completing a science degree, her life-long love of colour and a deep longing to let her creative light shine led to a dramatic career pivot that saw Alex leave the corporate world to start her own business as a designer, a move that she cites as integral to her mental health and overall wellbeing. ‘You don’t understand change until the transformation happens,’ Alex says. ‘I was incredibly sad and depressed and that went on for quite a few years.
‘The lowest point was when my husband got cancer. It really rocked everything. It rocked the foundations. I hit rock bottom and then I had to claw my way out. I mean, I’ve never been happier than I am right now. And I think that is because of all of that. You do make your own life, it’s not chance.’
Leaving the corporate career that she felt so stifled by, Alex set out to learn the interior design business from the ground up. ‘I was self-taught,’ she says. ‘I didn’t have three years to train. I had little babies, I had no time for that. So I had to pick up the phone and work it out myself.’
Driven by passion, and armed with a solid work ethic and a strong natural talent, Alex was prepared to learn whatever she could, from whomever she could. ‘When I first started my business, I had to teach myself accounting – we didn’t have Xero then. I would teach myself everything. I taught myself Photoshop, I taught myself how to use the camera. I think I realised that I was a “doer”. There was a lot of help from my community.
‘Getting a community is really important. Social media has been amazing. My best design friends are ones I have met online – now they’re real-life support crew for me. That’s really important, and finding people that are better at things than you are and swapping services. I think you can’t do anything on your own.’
Hard work paid off, and Alex’s career flourished. She was the finalist in the Dulux Colour Awards two years running, landing the role of brand ambassador for Dulux, and is currently collaborating with Gem Visa as their new interior design ambassador. Alex also guest judged on the home renovation show The Block, and has written for various home design publications, becoming sought after as not only an interior designer, but as a creative director styling for magazines and photoshoots. She has also been a public speaker at various events and has run interior design classes,
and creates bold canvas art and murals, holding a successful exhibition in Christchurch earlier this year.
In 2012 Alex also added the AFD store to her repertoire, in which she creates style edits that are completely redesigned every six weeks, which helps to satisfy her creative urges. ‘It’s my kind of platform to be able to be creative and stay creative because without it I am not a happy person, and that is the bottom line,’ she says.
Although her social media feed exudes bright cheerfulness like all of her work, Alex is careful to let people know she has low days, just like everyone else. ‘I have bad days and I have sad days and I have days where I want to wear black but I don’t. You know, there are days where I will not get out of my gym gear; we all have those days. It’s what makes us human.’
Alex has grappled with depression in the past, and struggled at school with dyslexia in what was an unsupportive education system, before realising later in life that embracing her creative side was the key for her to live a happier life. ‘I guess a lot of my business came about because I thought, what am I good at? What are my strengths? I don’t
Leaving the corporate career that she felt so stifled by, Alex set out to learn the interior design business from the ground up.
think I would’ve got through what I got through without knowing those and appreciating those.
‘I still have my little piece of paper with my top five strengths to remind me that, you know, these things are how I can function best as a human.’ Alex believes we have the answers to our own happiness already within us. ‘You’ve got to bring it in and find those answers within yourself,’ she says. ‘As corny as that sounds, I think we do have all the answers. We do have that inside us. The beauty of age is that you can, you know, hear those things that you can’t hear when you’re young because you’re too busy listening to other things.’
Alex lived with her husband and two daughters in Sumner for eight years, before moving to Marlborough after the Christchurch earthquakes, and only returned to Christchurch in 2018.
While in Marlborough, in the midst of launching the AFD store, Alex took what she felt was a necessary step for her wellbeing and work, and gave up alcohol. The catalyst for this shift and a revaluation of her priorities was the tragic loss of Alex’s 12-year-old god-daughter, Abi Hone, along with Abi’s friend Ella Summerfield and Ella’s mother Sally in 2014.
The tragedy shook the close-knit Sumner community, and Alex looked for a way to create something in memory of her god-daughter that would be positive at such a dark time. She created ‘Abi’s dots’, colourful circular stickers as a celebration of Abi’s life. ‘She loved coming and seeing my shop and being involved with projects I was doing, and she loved colour,’
Alex says. ‘And so, I thought, what’s her favourite colour?
All the colours of the dots are her favourite colours.’The hash tag #abisdots is now an Instagram movement, with people photographing Abi’s dots on everything from cars to buildings. The dots can be purchased from the AFD store,
Alex believes we have the answers to our own happiness already within us. ‘You’ve got to bring it in and find those answers within yourself,’ she says.
with proceeds going to the ‘Make a Wish Foundation’.
Five years on, Alex still does not drink. ‘It affected how I was as a person, it affected how I coped with things. It affected my creativity. It affected so many things. It chips away at you as a person. I think that my growth in the last five years wouldn’t have happened if I’d been drinking.’
Alex now lives back in Sumner with her daughters Violet and Isla, husband Jeff, two dogs Fred and Daisy and a vintage Volkswagen Beetle named Frida, painting the world in colour and spreading joy wherever she can.