What is Your Style?

Since I haven't found much time to actually complete any new house projects lately, I decided to take a few style quizzes that I found while reading through a favorite blog of mine, Young House Love.  This particular post contains a few tips to help "pin down your style" included several online style quizzes.

The first site I tried (check it out here) gave interesting results:
50% Cottage Chic
50% Hollywood Couture

The Cottage Chic style, I related to the idea of mixing modern art and hip treasures - the old and new together.  I felt this was so accurate of my house right now!  In my living room, I have a blue Ikea couch with old album covers (all from thrift stores) as framed art above it. 

I also liked the "color" description from the results:
Your true inspiration (whether you know it or not) is the sea... the colors found at your favorite beach: white and light beige of the sand, a variety of blues for the ocean and sky, and greens and pale grays of the sea glass... but the key is white! Your space should feel light and airy and give off the mood one has when at the beach: laid back! The key with Cottage Chic is balance; in one corner there could be a rustic wood table that looks like it could have been found rather than made, but it is offset with a modern vase while another corner is adorned with a modern Lucite piece.

I thought this was also very true of my style.  My bedrooms (at my parent's house, my apartments and even here) have always been sort of "beachy".  I've decorated with hula skirts, hibiscus flowers, coconuts, sea shells, any anything the reminded me of the beach.  With the bedroom in my house, I decided not to go with the white walls and the obvious beach theme like I have in the past, but there is still a very laid back, "beachy" feel to it and the white has really come in in different ways.

I found the Hollywood Couture to be somewhat accurate as well.  This style description included contrasting elements as well, plus a lot of loud, stand out decorative items - lots of shiny, lots of silver, and lots of mirrored aspects.  Of course I immediately thought of my mirror update - with all three of those characteristics!

A second quiz at Home Goods (check it out here) also gave some interesting feed back. This site labeled my style as : Bohemian Casual

Again, my style result described mixing old and new items - in this case mixing comfy/welcoming pieces that allow for seating and a surfaces to put a book or drink with  eye-catching decorations like interesting work or pieces from my travels.  I found this description very interesting as I have been thinking along those very lines lately.  Recently I added a floating shelf from Ikea to the wall behind my couch to allow for a place for drinks and magazines.

And I also have been wanting to hang pictures and momentous from my trips to Europe in small frames along the upstairs hallway.  I hope to tackle this project this summer after retuning from Italy & Greece!

I also completely agreed with two other parts of the results.  First, it suggested that organization was my biggest design challenge and this is so true.  I feel like I've never fully unpacked and organized myself in this house, which is causing a lot of clutter.  I'm working on adding some storage and getting rid of unused items now and hope to really dig in this spring and summer.   Second, the results suggest that a serene bedroom leads to a happier me - which is also very true.  As crazy as it sounds, I noticed a difference in my mood after updated my bedroom.  Here is what it looked like before:

I had always had white wall before, but decided to go with a darker blue and it made the room noticeably darker - but much more conducive to sleeping!  I also updated a thrift store table for a night stand and got a new chair from Ikea.  These little tweaks really made the room more welcoming and me and totally changed my mood.

Overall, I was impressed that these online quizzes could pinpoint my style pretty accurately.  Although, the fact that all the result styles claimed I had miss matched tastes isn't going to help me in making decorating decisions, it is accurate and is already obvious in my house so far in the decorating process.  If you have time and try one of the quizzes, let me know how accurate they are for you and your decorating style!