Wednesday, 11 February 2009

What's your design style?

Modern? Traditional? Shabby Chic? Boho? You may already have a pretty good idea, but why not have it confirmed by the experts -- or an online quiz? Besides, you may end up surprising yourself and uncovering your untapped love of all things French country (or not...).

Via decorology, I stumbled upon Sproost, a great new online design tool (the brainchild of an interior designer, computer programmer, ex-Google guy and a businessman) that helps you figure out your style through a short quiz that asks you to rate various rooms pulled from famous shelter magazines. Not only does the quiz itself include shots of some absolutely gorgeous interiors, but the website itself is well designed and user-friendly. I turned out to be a fairly even split between "Hollywood Couture", "Modern Elegance" and "Vintage Modern" and based on Sproost's descriptions of the same (and the accompanying pictures, shown below), I think they hit the proverbial nail on the head.



These styles seem like a contemporary mish-mash of Hollywood Regency, Midcentury Modern and traditional -- and I think that's a pretty good distillation of where my taste is right now. Dave volunteered to take the test last night, too, and...well, it's a wonder we managed to buy a single piece of furniture. Behold Dave's "log cabin meets Tuscan meets 17th century French cottage" style:


From Collages

Since Dave doesn't read shelter magazines or design blogs or flip through big box catalogues, his results probably reflect preferences completely unaffected by popular designers, the newest trends or any desire to achieve a specific "look". It's just...Dave. And I think it reflects his love of the mountains (and the great outdoors generally), wine and things that look like they have a history. So in that sense, I'm not really surprised. Should we ever have enough money to buy our dream vacation home in Banff, I'll let him take the lead on decorating. Until then, the one comfort I take in his results is that perhaps this means he'll go antiquing with me now that he's discovered his preference for so-called "French eclectic".

Once the folks at Sproost have assigned you a style, the next step is to throw together a virtual mood board showing you some examples of furniture and accessories available for purchase online that exemplify your style blend. From there, you can customize one of their mood boards or even start from scratch and create you own with a selection of furniture and accessories pre-selected to match your preferences that you can further refine based on your budget. Once you've found the room of your dreams (or budget), Sproost sends you straight to the online source. While playing on their website, I found some great furniture pieces at stores I never would've considered or didn't know existed, so this is also a great way to explore design sources you wouldn't normally be exposed to.

If you get around to taking the quiz yourself, leave me a comment and let me know what your design style is. I'd love to get a feel for what everyone's are.

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