How to Discover Your Decorating Style

Tear out several pages from home/design magazines that show rooms you like. Study the similarities among those rooms, and you can probably conclude that your decorating style fits mostly into one category. Following are some tips for identifying your niche.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Design Magazines

1. Look at whether those rooms have practically no accessories. Then you're a minimalist; many minimalists also are high-tech in style (reveling in objects that look man-made and industrial in nature, especially plastics and metal) or modern (enjoying streamlined furniture whose hardware, legs, drawers and so on have little or no detailing).

2. Note that slightly battered furnishings, perhaps with peeling paint and slipcovers, land you in the category of country. Accessories include handmade objects, often primitive, that have a somewhat worn look.

3. Check whether the room revels in furnishings such as le Corbusier's and Eames' well-known chairs; a squarish, no-frills sofa; and end tables or a coffee table in the stripped-down Parsons style. Your style is Midcentury Modern.

4. Examine the decor for carved floral-motif backs on sofas and upholstered chairs, roses (the color and the flower), heavy ornamentation (tassels, fringe), velvet upholstery and tchotchkes everywhere. Your style is Victorian.

5. Study the curves on the chairs' legs. Those with high, wide curves and tap feet will be Chippendale, a type of traditional originating-in-England furniture often executed in mahogany; those with daintier proportions and slim ankles that taper almost to a point are traditional French styles often painted white and gold or stained in a nut-brown tone called fruitwood.

6. Look for stained-glass lampshades, gridded glass doors on cabinetry, hand-hammered metal on hardware, and oak furniture with a rectangular form. Your style harkens back to Arts and Crafts and Mission.

7. See if your magazine-page rooms combine several styles - perhaps a Mission-style recliner is in the same room as a slipcovered plain-Jane sofa and a coffee table with a stone top resting on a wrought-iron base. You're probably eclectic.

Tips & Warnings

• The above instructions relate to many of today's most popular decorating styles. There are many, many others - from country French and English to Louis XV, Russian Empire and Art Deco. If you didn't find your niche, visit the library to get a better handle on your style.

on 11/22/2005 Black light/glow-in-the-dark highlighter markers, paints & posters that only "react" in black light are a lot of fun (available at Spencers or Wal-Mart). You can draw or make splatters on your walls and ceiling. Mom and the landlord will never know.