Personality Type in Interior Design

Some people want their homes to look like decor magazines, or like furniture showrooms. These are the people who buy the $5000 Viking stove because it looks pretty, not because they cook a lot.

Other people want their homes to be more functional, like an artist’s studio. (That’s me.) This is Julia Child and here extremely functional, yet aesthetic, kitchen.

Still other people seem to have no interest or aptitude for the look and feel of their living space. I don’t know if this is time, energy, money, or just plain ol’ apathy, but there are a LOT of people who kit out their pre-fab homes with big-box furniture, no art, and call it a day.

I’m interested in what “good design” might look like for different personality types.

For instance, by the Big 5 measures I’m pretty high in openness and medium in conscientiousness. I do better with a bit of clutter–like leaves on a forest floor, or a busy wallpaper–than I do with minimalism.

I’m curious to see how this might play out amongst other personality metrics.

It will probably play out in aesthetics–how something looks–but also in the functionality of a space.

What does Intuitive style look like? How do Thinkers style their spaces, rather than Feelers?

Like most personalities, I don’t think this will be completely straightforward.

For instance, take introversion and extraversion.

The knee-jerk reaction would be to peg “introverted” design as bookshelves. I can’t argue with that line of thought–I would bet that introverts are more likely to have legitimate libraries than extroverts, more of whom I would bet have libraries just for show.

Most introverts I know have at least one bookshelf in their space. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. Reading books is a pretty solitary activity, unless you’re reading aloud to someone.

When I consider extraverted design, I think of design that is facilitated for a lot of people, or parties. Though a relic of the bygone era, the conversation pit comes to mind.

The conversation pit is designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to get people talking–the ultimate extraverted activity.

But is that necessarily true?

What if an introvert really likes to have intimate dinner parties that involve intense conversation, and therefore designs his house around those principles?

Why do we automatically assume that an extravert entertains at home? An extravert’s habitation could just as easily be a crash pad, since he is always away at some other dwelling or party.

Extraverted people like to read, introverted people like to talk.

There’s more at play than simply slapping a label onto a design element and then banishing it to a personality type forevermore.

I plan on exploring these ideas in more depth over the coming months, first on a high level, and them perhaps even delving deeply into specific personality combinations and aesthetic styles.

I wonder if it would be possible to predict aesthetics based on a personality analysis.

If you can predict things like how clean someone’s dwelling space might be, it makes sense that you could predict how much effort, at the very least, had gone into creating a cohesive aesthetic experience.

This will be fun to explore, and I’ll bring you along on the journey.