For some years Lucienne taught alongside Robin at Beckenham School of Art, but as soon as the war was over she set out to establish herself as a freelance designer. Because of government restrictions on manufacturing during the early post-war years, her earliest designs were for printed dress fabrics, produced by firms such as Stevenson & Sons. Marks & Spencer and Horrockses were also among her early clients.

During the late 1940s Lucienne began to gravitate towards her preferred field of furnishing fabrics, which offered more creative scope as a designer. Alastair Morton, director of the forward-looking Edinburgh Weavers, gave Lucienne her first big break in this field by commissioning two screen-printed fabrics. These designs caught the eye of Anthony Heal, one of the directors at Heal & Son, who invited her to create a pattern in a similar vein for Heal’s Wholesale and Export (later known as Heal Fabrics) in 1950, the start of a long and fruitful relationship.