What your furniture style says about you (and your snob level)

In a world where no one really goes out any more, wallpaper is the new fashion statement. If a picture says a thousand words, then the way you decorate your home writes an entire thesis, or is it a coffee table book. Furniture isn’t for putting your bottom on while you watch the telly, it’s for saying 'look at me and who I am!' Carrie Symonds knew what she wanted to say with her Downing Street do-over – and it was that she and Boris are a cut above the Mays and their “John Lewis furniture-nightmare”.

The irony is that no real Carrie Antoinette figure would be pursuing a mere £3,000 rattan ripple console table or a four poster-bed boxed inside funky fabrics – all hallmarks of her chosen designer, Lulu Lytle’s Soane Britain. The properly posh would have inherited all their furniture from Granny. And the truly rich would be going for Francis Sultana’s furry patinated bronze and kidassia-upholstered Bodil chairs at £10,000, which look like muppets with very expensive blow dries.

So, what type of style snob are you? Read on...

Soane Rangers

The Soane Rangers, of whom Lulu Lytle is the Queen, embrace British country house style turned up to 11 – sharpened up America-friendly sleek ostentation. Intense prints, nods to the glories of chintz and marvellous finds from the Grand Tour given a modern spin, you could call it grown-up gap yah chic. Pattern layered on pattern is not for the fainthearted and it’s best to get the professionals in if you don’t want to look like an explosion in a wallpaper factory.

Industry insiders are stunned that the Downing Street decoration costs are so low; a Lytle job usually costs more like £100,000 a room. For a quieter interpretation of British style, Joanna Plant, Adam Bray and Nicky Haslam will buy you furniture that at least looks like you inherited it. Lytle’s obsession with rattan is starting to trickle down to the Habitat, Peter Jones and H&M Home fraternity, so who knows when you might find a rattan ripple console table on the high street.

Safe and Steady

Never knowingly over-designed, the John Lewis brigade believe in turning life up to five, occasionally six on a landmark birthday. Tutting at ostentation, as well as public displays of affection and people who appear to be having fun, the JL Luna sofa in a sensible grey or beige colour will be expected to last a lifetime, even if it has to be demoted to the television room when the grandchildren arrive. For the next rung up out of Safe and Steady, the Soho House interiors range and George Smith button-back Chesterfields have a nod to the bohemian without ever looking tatty or worse, flashy. Family photos and a print of their favourite fell in the Lake District adorn the walls, but actual art is pretentious and probably has nipples hidden somewhere. Stick to what you know, don’t make a fuss. The faint fragrance of some pot pourri bought in M&S in the Nineties still haunts the corner of the sitting room where the nice knick knacks sit. The idea of an interiors icon is, oh no, that’s a bit much, frankly.

Aristocratic Abstainers

Like most country houses (outside the commuter belt, Cotswolds and, of late, the odd corner of Somerset) the look is old junk shop full of things that are broken and should be thrown away. Though on closer inspection some of the copious brown furniture and crooked paintings clogging the walls do look rather good. There’s always a few surprises with probate – that ratty old tapestry covering the patch of peeling 19th century wallpaper in the hall is worth £100,000. Of course, the great British irony is that, like fascism and communism, at the very greatest extremes, the homes of the poorest and the richest are distinguishable only by their proportions and the size of the television, which itself is inversely proportional to the social status. These threadbare hand-me-downers wouldn’t have anything as twee as an interior designer; the closest they get to home fragrance is wet dog, whisky and old books. The curtains are Colefax and Fowler but only because Granny was great chums with Sybil Colefax, and generations of cats have since peed on them, but there’s still heaps of wear in them yet. Their interiors icon is Princess Anne.

Ultra High Net Worthers

Not a brown chest of drawers in sight, nor a chintzy floral, even in irony, the UHNW decorative preference is for one-off everything. Chairs, salad servers, rugs, tooth mug, all will be exclusive – it’s art. No one embodies this loads-a-lolly look more than Francis Sultana, the Maltese decorator and gallerist preferred by the yacht ‘n’ private jet set, whose preferred fabrics include patinated bronze and bespoke tweeds woven with bullion. The Sultana home will smell of Cire Trudon’s Solis Rex, a candle inspired by the scent of the highly polished floors of the Palace of Versailles. Unlike almost all other interiors trends – which will all land up at H&M, Habitat, or, yes, John Lewis eventually – there just isn’t an affordable alternative to Aristotle Onassis’s sperm whale foreskin-covered bar stools. The Sultana brand of opulence ends at the walls, which must remain neutral because nothing offsets your auction wall candy like ‘gallery white’.

When even your furniture is considered art, your extensive wine cellar must feature a wonderful cosy nook for socialising over cigars and fine wines. Never, ever, let a shivering end of a Cohiba or a droplet of 1961 Bordeaux near your priceless collection of furniture and rugs. With not even a bare nod to British interior styles over the centuries, who do these awful people think they are? Who knows! One thing’s for sure, though, they’re considerably richer than you, and the residents of Downing Street. Their interiors icon isn’t Lulu Lytle.

Saw-it-on-Instagrammers

At first glance, the younger decorating set’s preference for Coleman’s mustard yellow and Granny Smith green might looks a touch frumpily outré. The past seems to be where they are looking for inspiration, but really it’s Instagram. The apex achievement is sourcing a kidney-shaped dressing table on eBay for £50, which gets dressed up in a floral skirt like a suburban lady’s dressing room circa 1982 and shown off to their followers.

The bent for flaunting affordable hacks and smart second-hand buys has them up at 4am to get to Kempton Racecourse to rifle through the Sunbury Antiques Market (every second and last Tuesday of the month) or slavishly following millennial interiors stars like Matilda Goad and Charlie Porter’s Tat. Buying fashionable bits via small businesses on Instagram means the coherent trend is, well, what’s hot on Instagram. The bobble-legged stool, the skirted occasional table and the Pepto Bismol pink wall: throw it all together and what have you got? A fantastic social media feed! Their interiors icon is podcaster Pandora Sykes who entirely decorated her own home without the help of professionals and still got into Homes & Gardens.