How to find your interior-design DNA

Complete our quiz to uncover the essence of your personal style, urges Giles Kime

- Giles Kime

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.

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.