Interior designer Naomi Cleaver is brimming with enthusiasm. She has recently moved, with the two men in her life – husband Oliver and their adorable fox terrier Larry – into a stunning 1960s modernist home perched on a hill overlooking the Blackdown Hills in East Devon.

She is excited for several reasons. First, she and Oliver (a retired advertising executive) have moved into the architect-designed property following a two-year spell abroad, where they took time out from the rat-race to live on the little-known paradise island of Nevis, in the Caribbean. And, says Naomi with a sigh, despite Nevis being so hot and so beautiful, it is really good to be home.

Second, as an established interior designer famous for numerous TV shows (e.g. Grand Designs Live and Trade Secrets (with Kevin McCloud); Honey, I Ruined the House and Other People's Houses, all on Channel 4) and for doing various national newspaper columns in the past (e.g. The Daily Telegraph), the couple's new home represents, for Naomi, a fresh challenge – a new project guaranteed to get her creative juices flowing and her professional pulse racing.

And Naomi is enjoying establishing her new work studio at the house, which is near Honiton – not far away from another property guru, Location, Location, Location's Kirstie Allsopp, who lives nearby.

So, all in all, life is looking good. And despite the odd disaster with the building renovations (builders, eh?), Naomi is busily creating the perfect home for herself and Oliver, in which they plan to spend many happy years.

"The previous owners were very inspired by Scandinavian architecture," says Naomi as she shows me round the property (where a rather splendid, teak wooden bath in one of the fabulous new bathrooms immediately takes my eye). "We bought it from them in May last year and moved in about month ago. There's still a lot to do, but we wanted to move in as soon as we could, having only recently returned from the West Indies. We reckon it will take us another three or four months to finish."

Set in 32 acres, the house has very distinctive architecture and is in an amazing spot. On a clear day the couple can enjoy views of Dartmoor and Exmoor and, in the summer, huge hot air balloons hang on the horizon. A stream of small planes and gliders fly overhead.

The house was built in 1968 by a Dr Gilson and his artist wife, and was cutting edge for its time. For instance, it is insulated with a product originally developed by NASA to insulate spacecraft, and also features Scandinavian timber, under-floor heating and solar panels.

Did she and Oliver fall in love with it straight away? "We thought it was interesting," she says, "but it hadn't been lived in for four years… initially we weren't sure. We kept our cool and looked at other places. We saw lots of the usual vicarages and farmhouses, but then we just thought... actually, do you know what? It's perfect."

The house isn't huge, but what blew them away was its clever positioning on the hillside to make the most of the wonderful views. "It's stimulating and inspiring – the perfect place to live and to work," she says, happily.

The renovations, it has to be said, have not been entirely stress-free. There was, for instance, the saga of the Ruined Parquet Floor… when some roofers "decided to cover the roof they had just stripped with the equivalent of a plastic shopping bag", allowing wind and rain to gust in.

Luckily, Ian Trowsdale, of Devon Wood Floors, came to the rescue. "Ian has done an unbelievable job of sorting through the sections we managed to salvage from different parts of the house, re-laying them and then giving them a transformational polish," Naomi says.

Indeed, meeting local craftspeople has been one of the highlights of coming to Devon, and Naomi hopes to meet many more, working with them not only on her own project but also on projects for new clients, including hoteliers and restaurateurs.

She and her husband are also planning to try their hand at being developers. Their first project will be a small parcel of land on their own property, where they intend to transform two tumbledown old barns into sustainable and affordable homes.

And, as if all this wasn't enough, Naomi is also planning a series of one-day design courses and clinics, to be held in village halls across Britain. A gala launch will be held on Saturday October 15 at Combe House Hotel, the Elizabethan manor house at Gittisham, near Honiton.

"Designing your own home can feel like an overwhelming challenge, especially when there are so many choices and every decision you make costs money," Naomi says. "I want to show people how to create a home that is individual without making expensive mistakes."

Naomi met Oliver 18 years ago, and the couple have been married for nearly 16 years. Now retired, Oliver, 55, was born in Cheshire, and has a first class degree in English from Pembroke College, Oxford. He was a major player in the advertising world, most recently as media director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Kimberly-Clark, spending millions of pounds a year on behalf of clients like Andrex, Kleenex and Huggies.

"Oliver's not planning to set up any kind of consultancy here in Devon, but he will be a very active partner in what we hope will be my house/home building business down here, Naomi Cleaver Homes," Naomi says.

Naomi herself was brought up in Bournemouth, although her family originally came from the Westcountry. "My grandparents were dairy farmers in Wiltshire, and my great uncle was the stationmaster at Abbotsbury station, in Dorset, many years ago. I spent lots of holidays there," she says.

Her father, David Jackson, was a pilot in the Army Air Corps; her mother, Christine, was his second wife (of four). "My father had lots of different jobs, including flying freight around the world and working for the Saudi royal family. But they split up when I was nine years old and I was brought up by my mother, in Bournemouth," she says.

At 17, Naomi left home to go to London. "Basically, my parents threw me out. Why? Well, I'm the eldest, and it was a second marriage… I don't think the children from a previous marriage are necessarily welcome in the household of a second marriage… They wanted me to go and live with my father, but that just wasn't possible. Once my parents split up I barely saw my father; I certainly didn't see him after the divorce… so I took myself off to London.

"I took rubbish jobs, including being an extra in pop videos. However, through doing those I got interested in set design, and eventually I decided to do a course in interior design at Willesden College, in north London."

And that was how it all began. From there, Naomi went to work for a major British design firm, Fitch, where, among other things, she designed the store signage for Liberty of London. She then went on to study at Kingston University.

Her parents, by the way, had not considered design to be a "proper" subject for study. "They thought art was a complete and utter waste of time," she says. "What's the point of doing art? they'd say. It won't get you a job." Today Naomi delights in giving talks to young people, encouraging them to study design. She passionately believes in it as a career for young people.

After Kingston she established the echo design agency, a kind of "dating agency" that matched up architecture and design practices to individuals and organisations.

And it was while running echo that Naomi began presenting TV shows, which then inspired her to open her own design studio, replacing the echo design agency with her own eponymous design practice.

Meanwhile, she'd met and married Oliver, whom she'd originally known in London but then met again years later in the States, after his divorce. They married at Chelsea Register Office and lived in London. Both were very successful in their own fields – so what led them to quit the rat-race in 2008 and head for the Caribbean?

Naomi had already bought a four-bedroom 1950s plantation-style house on Nevis as an investment, had renovated it and put in a swimming pool. It provided the perfect spot for the couple to take stock of their lives. They stayed for two years.

"Oliver had retired and I really felt I just wanted to get away and slow things down," Naomi says. "It also helped me to draw a line under what I really wanted to do… I mean, am I a TV presenter, or am I a designer? Because I believe that, if you want to be a popular TV presenter you cannot be a high-spec designer as well. The two are mutually exclusive."

It also gave Naomi time to come to terms with having several miscarriages. "I'm 43 now," she says, "so I kind of think it is too late... but it was important for me, for both of us, to draw a line under all of that, because it's cumulative, it does get very upsetting and I'm still in a way not yet through that period…"

While on Nevis Naomi also wrote her beautifully presented new book, The Joy of Home. Let's hope that, in Devon, she has finally found just that...