15 Fun Ways to Discover Your Interior Design Style at Home
Finding your interior design style can feel like a daunting task, especially when you’re surrounded by so many beautiful options.
The good news is that you don’t need to hire a professional to figure out what makes your heart sing. With these fun and simple activities, you’ll uncover your personal style preferences while enjoying the process of home discovery.
1. Create a Pinterest Board Frenzy
Grab your device and start pinning anything that catches your eye without overthinking it. When you’ve collected about 50 pins, look for patterns in colors, textures, or furniture styles.
What elements keep showing up? Perhaps you’ve pinned mostly minimalist spaces or rooms bursting with color. Your unconscious preferences often reveal themselves in what you naturally gravitate toward.
2. Take a Style Quiz Adventure
Online quizzes can be surprisingly insightful! From Apartment Therapy to HGTV, numerous websites offer free interior design style assessments that ask about your preferences, lifestyle, and personality.
Instead of just taking one, try three different quizzes and compare the results. You might discover you’re consistently drawn to mid-century modern or farmhouse chic across multiple assessments.
3. Analyze Your Closet’s Color Palette
Your wardrobe holds secret clues about your design preferences! Open your closet and identify the dominant colors you wear most often.
If navy blue and gray dominate your clothing choices, you might prefer cooler, more subdued interiors. A closet full of vibrant patterns might indicate you’d love a more eclectic or maximalist home style.
4. Hotel Room Photography Session
Whenever you stay at a hotel that makes you feel instantly comfortable, snap some photos! Hotels invest heavily in creating specific design atmospheres that appeal to different personalities.
Which hotel rooms have you absolutely loved? Was it the boutique hotel with vintage touches or the sleek modern high-rise? Your travel preferences often align with your ideal home environment.
5. Magazine Tear-Out Challenge
Head to your local bookstore and purchase three different home magazines. Without thinking too hard, tear out every page featuring a room that makes you feel something positive.
Afterward, spread all your tear-outs on the floor and look for commonalities. Are you drawn to spaces with lots of plants? Rooms with statement lighting? The patterns will emerge when you see everything together.
6. House-Hunting Window Shopping
Even if you’re not in the market for a new home, browsing real estate listings can be illuminating. Visit open houses in your area or browse high-quality listings online.
Pay attention to which homes make you want to move in immediately versus which ones leave you cold. Notice specific features that excite you—whether it’s exposed brick walls or farmhouse kitchens.
7. Travel Memory Mapping
Have you ever visited a place that felt magical? Our travel experiences often influence our design preferences more than we realize.
Create a simple map highlighting destinations you’ve loved, then jot down specific elements from each place—perhaps the warm terracotta walls of Tuscany or Scandinavian simplicity. These nostalgic connections often reveal your authentic style preferences.
8. Childhood Home Reflection
What we loved (or didn’t love) about our childhood homes often shapes our adult preferences. Sketch a quick floor plan of your childhood home from memory.
Which spaces felt good to you? Was it the sunny kitchen with yellow walls or the cozy den with bookshelves? Sometimes we recreate positive elements from our past, while other times we deliberately choose the opposite.
9. Restaurant Atmosphere Analysis
Your favorite restaurants aren’t just about the food—they’re carefully designed environments! Next time you dine out, take photos of elements you love.
Is it the industrial lighting at that hip coffee shop? The cozy booth seating at your favorite bistro? Restaurants create deliberate atmospheres, and noting which ones you prefer can highlight your design leanings.
10. Three-Word Style Challenge
Sometimes simplicity cuts through confusion. Challenge yourself to describe your ideal home in exactly three words. Write down the first words that come to mind.
Whether you choose “cozy, bright, natural” or “dramatic, luxurious, bold,” these instinctive words can be powerful guides. They create boundaries that help filter through endless design options to find your true preferences.
11. Movie Set Inspiration Hunt
Movie directors and set designers create incredibly detailed environments that tell visual stories. Watch your favorite films with the sound off, focusing purely on the settings.
Are you drawn to the warm, cluttered charm of Amélie’s apartment? The sleek minimalism of a Bond villain’s lair? Movie sets are carefully crafted mood pieces that can reveal your aesthetic preferences.
12. Texture Treasure Hunt
Wander through your home and collect items with textures that please you. Maybe it’s a silky pillow, rough pottery, or smooth leather—gather them all in one place.
This tactile exercise bypasses overthinking and connects you with what physically feels good. The textures we’re drawn to—whether rustic or refined—speak volumes about our innate style preferences.
13. Room Mood Journaling
Spend 10 minutes in each room of your home with a notebook, writing down how the space makes you feel. Are you relaxed in your bedroom but anxious in your kitchen?
Notice which spaces foster positive emotions and identify what elements contribute to those feelings. This emotional inventory helps identify not just what looks good, but what feels right for your daily life.
14. Design Decade Dating Game
Which design era would you take home to meet your parents? Browse through images of rooms from different decades—from 1920s Art Deco to 1970s bohemian to contemporary minimalism.
Rate each era on a scale of 1-10 based on gut reaction. You might discover you’re consistently drawn to mid-century modern or that you have a secret crush on Victorian ornate details.
15. Color Swatch Speed Dating
Visit a paint store and grab a stack of color swatches—at least 50 different shades. When you get home, quickly sort them into “love,” “like,” and “not for me” piles without overthinking.
The colors that make your heart beat faster often form the foundation of your personal palette. Notice if you’ve chosen mostly earth tones, jewel tones, or pastels to uncover your color personality.
