Are you a curator, a sympathiser or a conscientious objector? Take our Interiors Editor's quiz to discover your design DNA

In a world of ever-proliferating design choices, it can be helpful to understand your design aesthetic. Are you a curator who carefully edits every last detail? A sympathiser who stops at nothing to preserve the authenticity of a house? A dramatist who loves the theatricality of pattern and colour? Or do you not care, as long as a room feels comfortable and pleasingly familiar? Take the Country Life quiz to find the answer.

The questions

If you were to buy a chair, what would be the most important element to you?

a) It’s made by an obscure designer whose name you struggle to pronounce

b) It has a beautiful silhouette that beautifully complements the rest of the room

c) It’s the same age as your house The fact that it’s uncomfortable is a minor detail. You’re a slave to authenticity

d) It’s sufficiently commodious to watch a whole series of Yellowstone in one sitting and upholstered in a fabric dark enough to hide a multitude of sins, from red wine to melted Maltesers

When choosing paintings, you are most likely to buy the following:

a) Pieces by artists that you tracked down after an exhaustive trawl of galleries and auction houses

b) Something larger than life, in a style and colour that suits the rest of the room

c) The correct period, genre and provenance are of paramount importance

d) Buy? You already have enough unhung hand-me-downs and junk-shop finds to fill the National Gallery

What best describes your kitchen?

a) A carefully considered space where anything aesthetically pleasing is put on display and anything depressingly functional is hidden from view

b) Your cabinetry is in a bold colour (you are considering a deep aubergine next) and you are forever rearranging the vibrant mix of cheery patterned china on the dresser

c) Culinary chiaroscuro; it’s like a half-lit kitchen in a Renaissance painting

d) Think Keith Floyd meets Tracey Emin

What best describes your bathroom?

a) It’s a Japanese-inspired shrine to the ritual of bathing that is devoid of clutter, with everything from your potions and unguents to brushes and tweezers discreetly stored in carefully concealed fitted cabinetry. You loved this space until a former friend (now relegated to a frenemy) complained that it had ‘abattoir vibes’

b) It might be a bathroom, but it could also pass for a sitting room, with prints on the wall, a rug and (for some unfathomable reason) a small armchair and occasional table

c) It’s a celebration of Victorian plumbing with a roll-top bath, putty-coloured paint, metro tiles, brass taps and lots of tongue-and-groove panelling that you feel is most sympathetic to the spirit of your house

d) The last owners left a lovely, deep-pile carpet in a fetching apricot hue (dating from about 1985), and you have rather learned to love it

When choosing a floor, you are most likely to opt for one of the following:

a) Something recessive and pared back, such as pale parquet, poured concrete or oak boards

b) A large patterned rug that coordinates with the rest of the scheme

c) You’d ideally like to restore the original floor. However, if it’s beyond redemption, you’ll find reclaimed timber or stone that looks as if it’s been in situ for centuries

d) A nice deep-pile, wall-to-wall carpet is just the ticket

How do you feel about photographs?

a) You would consider black-and-white art photography, ideally still lifes

b) If you have children, you’d consider professionally shot, large-scale photographs displayed and lit, gallery-style, in your kitchen

c) The only photographs you possess are in your passport, on your driving licence and in treasured ‘before and after’ shots of your restoration project

d) There are few horizontal surfaces in your house not populated with framed pictures of family, friends, weddings, graduations and the dearly departed

Where do you buy your paint?

a) Anywhere that sells an almost infinite range of whites

b) Where don’t you buy your paint? You have an extensive sample library and, at last count, half a dozen boxes of paint charts

c) You only use lime wash

d) There are usually some unfinished cans in your garage that will do

The answers

Mostly 'a' answers: curator

Your home isn’t merely a place to live, it’s also a gallery space for showing off your oh-so-carefully chosen collections. Your focus is on quality rather than quantity; perhaps studio pottery, some modern British paintings and even a collection of jelly moulds or woven baskets artfully arranged in your kitchen.

You hunt far and wide, from art fairs to galleries, deepening your knowledge as you fine tune your collections, adding here and subtracting there. Displays are installed with minute precision and your interiors are designed to serve as a foil to the distinctive character of what you have amassed on your travels: white walls, recessed lighting (including some directional spots), clean-lined, Modernist furniture, mostly 20th-century classics by Eames, Saarinen and Jacobsen.

You have plenty of bespoke joinery and you see your picture hanger more often than your dentist.

Favourite design destinations The Design Museum; most cities in Scandinavia

Biggest design extravagance Your collections and Vitsœ shelving

Your aesthetic heroes Axel Vervoordt, Chester Jones and Edmund de Waal

Mostly 'B' answers: dramatist

Your home isn’t simply somewhere to live, it’s a stage on which you play the starring role and every element contributes to the theatricality of the spaces you’ve created.

You love ‘colour drenching’ (painting everything the same hue) in dark, moody shades and making bold statements with large-scale patterned fabrics and wallpaper, bold rugs and chequered floors.

You love pictorial wallpapers and larger-than-life pictures, as well as ‘gallery walls’ crowded with decorative daubs. You’re not afraid of over-scaled furniture, even in small spaces, and you don’t give a monkey’s about provenance as long as something fits in with your ever-evolving ‘vision’ for your house, the flames of which are fanned by whatever you last saw on Instagram.

Favourite design destinations Farrow & Ball, Colefax and Fowler, Anthropologie

Biggest design extravagances Fabrics, wallpapers, upholstery, glossy interior-design books

Your aesthetic heroes The late, great Roger Banks-Pye — and you also harbour a secret admiration for the sheer bravado of Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen

Mostly 'C' answers: sympathiser

Dolly Parton might have said that it costs a lot to look cheap, but you know exactly how expensive it is to keep your house looking old. Where you have had to make structural changes, you try to use reclaimed materials. What the rest of us call ‘a project’, you call an intervention — or ‘scholarly intervention’ when you use a revered restoration specialist.

However, the poor thermal efficiency, lack of natural light and vast sums of money seem a small price to pay for living in a house that is true to its historic roots. Besides, you find the chilly gloom so atmospheric and have re-discovered the joys of Thermolactyl clothing.

Huge amounts of research mean that you are very much in tune with the spirit of your house; trawling through censuses reveals past occupants whose lives have been lost in the mists of time, but with whom you now feel you have a very real connection.

You are fanatical about revealing and preserving what you call the ‘bones’ of the house, and the words ‘extension’, ‘roof light’ and ‘TV room’ make you shudder. Conversely, your carefully tended rooms, seen in flickering candlelight, are balm to your solar plexus.

Favourite design destinations Spitalfields; the Weald & Downland Living Museum, in West Sussex; Labour and Wait; your local salvage yard

Biggest design extravagances Antiques, restoration and planning applications

Your aesthetic heroes Dan Cruickshank, Maria Speake and Dennis Severs

Mostly 'D' answers: conscientious objector

You haven’t done much to your house since you moved in and you feel that it has evolved very pleasingly over the years, thanks to the things you’ve stumbled upon, gifts from friends and amazing bargains.

You are definitely of a more maximalist bent than minimalist, not least because it would mean having to discard too many cherished treasures. You love your creature comforts, in particular your favourite inherited armchair, which has moulded to your shape like a pair of handmade shoes (as it did to the curves of your ancestors). You know your favourite sofa has seen better days, but a throw always freshens it up.

Favourite design destination Dunelm

Biggest design extravagance Letting loose on Facebook Marketplace

Your aesthetic heroes Uncle Monty. His drawing room in Withnail and I is the happy place in your head

This feature originally appeared in the December 10/17, 2025, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.'