What is Your Design Style?

This is a sponsored post for Porter Davis.

I can pretty much pinpoint the moment I realised I’d grown out of my decorating style. It was November last year, and I’d found myself obsessed with the Living With Kids house tours on the Design Mom blog. One in particular caught my eye – and suddenly I wondered if I was due for a change.

What was my style back then? Well… it’s hard to describe. Think Victorian era, think Rococo influences, think the interior of Buckingham Palace. Queen Anne furniture, crown moulding, antique globes, leather-bound books, gilded everything.

E-lab-o-rate.

My nemesis was chrome and glass. I loathed glass bricks with the fire of a thousand suns. Still do.

And yet – here I was eyeing off boxy sofas, modern tables, black accents. Current fashions. Not a velvet drape to be seen.

I filed this amazingly light, modern-yet-feminine house away in my mind (and on Pinterest) and thought no more about it.

Until I found this house. This crazy-cool house stood out among the sea of mid-century modern houses that had flooded the internet (or at least the blogs I was reading). I could do this kitchen. I could be slightly off-centre. I’ve never liked a curated house so much before or since.

I looked around my old, undecorated (unless you count toddler paraphernalia and dried Weet-Bix), small, uninspiring abode and felt slightly claustrophobic.

Where was the house that showed my personality? Oprah said your home should rise up to greet you, and my house was running screaming in the opposite direction. Everything in the house was vintage and while that was my jam for a long time, I could see I’d finally outgrown it.

Except my antique books, you can pry those from my cold, dead hands.

When I started searching for houses to move to in Melbourne, I looked at brand-new townhouses, where the laundry wasn’t growing science experiments, a clean bench would actually look clean, and the bathroom would shine.

And then I spotted this little number and my heart skipped a beat. No white walls, no mod cons, no chrome taps. Just wallpaper, chandeliers, plush pink carpet and a peach-and-gold spa. Everything I would have dreamed about six months before, and not a white wall to be seen.

And while I love it, and my nanna furniture fit right in, I need white walls so I can do this.

My style has changed, and I’m so surprised. I thought it would never evolve.

I was invited to take the Porter Davis World of Style Quiz to help me narrow down what my new design type would be. You can bet I was dumbfounded to see my style was Classic.

Say what?!

Didn’t I just move on from that? My answers mostly revolved around choosing images that looked like this:

But when I was at the World of Style showroom for our blogger briefing, I had a look through their “Classic” collections. It began to make sense.

I could see I clearly didn’t fit the other three categories of Resort, Contemporary, and Designer. I love a good Hamptons kitchen, and there were plenty of Classic elements that would work for me. Plus, my favourite homewares colour is eleven shades of brown, so it kind of actually made perfect sense.

I wouldn’t say no to that getup.

During the blogger briefing, we heard from the very passionate Porter Davis senior designer Catherine Valente, who told us the story of the World of Style showroom and how hard they had worked to make visiting the store a full experience, not just a place to choose a tap.

When I mentioned I was surprised my quiz results were Classic, she took one look at me and talked about incorporating New York decorating influences. She hadn’t asked me a single thing, but totally nailed that the Manhattan/New York style was where I was headed.

Yep.

We took look around the showroom, sipping coffee from the in-house café, drooling over walk-in pantries, thoroughly impressed by the way options were presented. No colour gradient cardboard paint choices for you – they have a handmade wall of actual paintbrushes dipped in the actual paint available.

Clever, non?

Want carpet? No need to heave those giant rug samples around! Come check out a thoroughly modern way of choosing where to put your feet.

And if, like me, you’re going for big, bold, and out-of-the-ordinary, check out this envy-inducing city-at-night living room backdrop. I WANT.

You can keep up with World of Style on their Facebook page, where they post daily doses of inspiration and modern designer tips.

And if you’re looking for a homewares display like no other, head to the World of Style showroom (it’s the largest in Australia!) and pick some stuff that is the ultimate expression of who you are. World of Style is located at 410 City Road, Southbank, Vic. Tell them I said hi and go lovingly stroke that city backdrop for me.

But I want to know – what’s your design choice? Has it ever evolved? Take the quiz and come back to tell me where you ended up. Beachy Resort? Arty Designer? Were you as surprised as me with your answer?

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