In preparation for writing this article, Sean and Rachel decided to take five “What’s My Design Style” quizzes and read a few other articles on how to define design style. 

Modsy tells us that our style is “Refined Modern.”Decorist says that we are “Traditional.”MyMove says that “Bohemian” is our thing.The Ginger Home suggests that “California Casual” is our style.Bobby Berk describes our style as “Light and Modern.”

Which one is right? They all are. Because what we provide as a company is complex and unique, bringing a variety of styles to our client projects. Putting a label on our design style is just as unfair as referring to yourself as a “jock” or a “drama geek” as we did in high school (side note that Rachel called herself a rock-goth-70’s hippie-feminine tomboy-punk-fairy-princess in high school, and she was also a drama-geek). But the point is style can be as varied as our unique personalities.

Style is a particular way of doing things, a distinct appearance determined by design principles. It is a way of arranging your appearance and the appearance of the spaces around you. It may be influenced by environmental factors, cultural influences, and economic factors among others.

No quiz can tell you what your design style is, just like no one can tell you who you are.

Our point is that no quiz can tell you what your style is, just like no one can tell you who you are. Furthermore, there are indications as to how your home should be designed that have absolutely nothing to do with the categories of trends or styles.

What a quiz can do is get you thinking more about what you do like!

Not one of these quizzes asked me about region or location, but the Pacific Northwest has a distinctive regional influence on our design approach. However, our regional design identity is a fairly recent development relative to other locations. Before the middle of the century, many homes and buildings in the NW pulled from broader, more national design styles. For example, in the 1920s and decades following, we imported the California bungalow style like it was going out of, well, style. However, starting in the ’40s and ’50s, the founders of the PNW regionalism school began combining more vernacular (indigenous or traditional) building forms with modernism. We (re)learned regional lessons regarding the treatment of light, water, wind, views, and local materiality and combined them with the clean lines and bold approaches of modernism to develop our own regional approach to architecture and design. This development shifted our focus from blindly importing approaches from other regions like the American southwest to an approach that responds specifically to our more temperate environment while the modernist side preserved a dialogue with design and architecture elsewhere in the world.

We begin our design process by determining constraints. We look at what the property has to offer in terms of views, elevations, adjacent properties, and considerations such as wind direction, drainage, and any existing septic information as well as future considerations for septic systems. While we are not developing the style of the building in terms of aesthetics, a lot of this information begins to dictate the style in terms of functionality as the building adapts to its surroundings. 

Being a sustainable design firm, we consider local, natural materials which again contribute to a regional style. 

When we get to furnishings and decor, the personal aesthetic comes into play a bit more, but we are still absolutely considering the logical and environmental needs. Are you someone who rarely uses your upholstered furniture primarily for entertaining purposes because most of your time is spent out of the house? If so, the sofa we select for you will be very different than the one we choose for our client who shares their upholstery with their three dogs and two cats and loves to lounge and read endlessly. 

We find art and decor to be highly personal, and while we prefer a minimalistic aesthetic, we are also huge fans of functional decor. In our (Sean & Rachel) own home, we find that our art comes from a combination of travels, gifts, and pieces that move us both from the Vashon Center for the Arts annual Auction. We occasionally assist homeowners with decor, but typically we will pick up the styling from other aspects of the design, and try to find ways to work items they currently have and love into the mix. Typically, we’re doing more removing of the decor than we are adding! In doing this we find that the “style” is more directed and clear.

As a quick and fun exercise, we asked each of the three designers at Waldron Designs to label the following photos of our own work by design style. Enjoy our responses!

Ocean Floral Living Rom

Portage Residence:

Westside Farmhouse

Needlecreek Residence

Palisade Kitchen

Chautauqua Beach Residence

Manzanita Vacation Home

This was a fun exercise because we saw areas where we all aligned, but others were a bit more vague. Another fun part of the exercise was the fact that we did not begin these projects with a distinct design style in mind. Generally, it just “happened” and those that were the clearest followed the distinction of the home’s existing architecture.

So, what is your design style? Your design style is the location you’ve chosen to live, the function you need for your spaces, and a touch of personal aesthetics which likely comes from a conglomerate of trends, passions, cultural background, and how you chose to edit. The words you choose to describe your style will bring different imagery to mind for different people.

We highly recommend sharing imagery to represent style rather than terminology and descriptions when working with Waldron Designs. This allows us to all visually have the same vision.