How to Figure Out Your Actual Personal Style (No Algorithms Necessary)

Use my signature "aesthetic archeology" method to find what you're actually drawn to and stop emulating the trend du jour.

This post is one of my favorite exercises from The Well-Designed Life. I decided I wanted to make it free for everyone because I think it’s a super valuable tool for deciphering what you actually like vs. what you’ve been told you should like by algorithms, influencers, and corporations. Want the full framework? Become a paid subscriber today.

I firmly believe that your aesthetic identity isn’t something you invent. It’s something you uncover. I call this process aesthetic archaeology – digging through your life to find the patterns that have always been there. The colors, textures, compositions, and moods you’ve been consistently drawn to, often without realizing it.

This is design research methodology applied to your own life. And like any good research, it requires looking at evidence, identifying patterns, and drawing conclusions based on data – not on what’s currently trending on Pinterest.

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Mining Your Past

Think back to your childhood and teenage years. What did you love before you learned what you were “supposed” to like?

This matters because your early aesthetic preferences often reveal your core inclinations before they got buried under advice from magazines, influence from friends, or pressure to fit a certain image.

Questions to Ask Yourself

Take 15-20 minutes with your journal or notes app and answer these:

Colors:

• What was your favorite color as a kid? Do you still respond to it?

• What colors kept showing up in your room, your clothes, your drawings?

• Were you drawn to bright saturated colors or muted tones?

Spaces:

• What stores or places made you feel something? (Bookstores, hardware stores, botanical gardens, museums, craft stores?)

• What rooms in your house (or friends’ houses) felt the most “right” to you?

• Did you prefer cozy small spaces or open airy ones?

Textures:

• What textures did you seek out? (Velvet? Smooth river stones? Tree bark? Soft cotton? Rough denim?)

• Did you like shiny surfaces or matte ones?

• What materials felt good to touch?

Collections:

• What did you collect? (Shells, stickers, books, smooth stones, pretty paper, postcards?)

• What did you want to display versus hide away?

• Did you like having lots of things or just a few special ones?

Media:

• What books or movies felt visually right to you?

• What posters or magazine cutouts did you put on your walls?

• What did you draw or create when left to your own devices?

Dream Space:

• What did you want your room to look like, even if you couldn’t achieve it?

• If you could have designed your space from scratch, what would it have been?

Example from My Life

As a kid, I was always drawn to the curated, collected interiors from my favorite shows and movies. Lorelai Gilmore’s perfectly mismatched living room, Kathleen Kelly’s brownstone filled with books, Molly Gunn’s apartment decorated with fairy lights and floaty fabric, even the Weasley’s Burrow, chock full of charmingly curated clutter.

Now as an adult, I’m still drawn to that perfectly-imperfect mix of things. My aesthetic hasn’t really changed, I just have the vocabulary and resources to execute it now.

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Pattern Recognition Across What You Love

Now look at your current life. Don’t edit, don’t judge – just observe what you’ve actually chosen, not what you think you should have chosen.

Create a Visual Inventory

Gather these items (digitally or physically):

1. Screenshot your 50 most recent Pinterest/Instagram saves. Don’t self-edit or remove anything!

2. Photograph your 10 favorite belongings. Not the most expensive or impressive – the things you actually love using or looking at.

3. Note the spaces where you feel most comfortable. Where do you naturally gravitate? What rooms, cafes, stores, parks?

4. Look at your most-worn clothes.

5. Identify books whose covers you love.

6. Note which friends’ homes you love being in. What about their spaces appeals to you?

Now spread all this out (digitally in a folder or physically on your floor) and look for patterns.

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What Patterns to Look For

Color Patterns

Questions to ask:

• Do certain colors appear repeatedly across different contexts?

• Are they saturated or muted?

• Warm tones (reds, oranges, yellows, warm greens) or cool tones (blues, purples, cool greens)?

• High contrast (black and white, bold color blocking) or tonal (variations of similar colors)?

What I notice in my inventory: Moss green, millennial pink, warm creams and browns, rust, mustard yellow. Almost no cool grays or stark whites. I wear a lot of black but rarely ever decorate with it. I’m definitely drawn to bright colors, though they don’t tend to show up in my wardrobe.

Your turn: What colors keep appearing in what you save, wear, and surround yourself with?

Texture Patterns

Questions to ask:

• Smooth or rough surfaces?

• Natural materials (wood, linen, cotton, stone) or synthetic/modern (plastic, metal, glass)?

• Matte or shiny finishes?

• Worn/vintage or pristine/new?

• Heavy and solid or light and airy?

• Warm materials (wood, brass) or cool (steel, glass)?

What I notice in my inventory: Natural materials almost exclusively. Matte finishes. Worn and vintage over new. Wood and brass over steel. Lots of velvet, knits, leather, tapestry, boucle – things that are very textural. I tend to avoid synthetic materials like polyester and rayon when I can.

Your turn: What textures and materials show up in your favorite things?

Compositional Patterns

Questions to ask:

• Busy or minimal?

• Symmetrical or organic/asymmetrical?

• Layered or clean-lined?

• Collections or single objects?

• Walls full or walls empty?

• Surfaces covered or surfaces clear?

What I notice in my inventory: I like layered, collected spaces but not chaotic ones. I want bookshelves full, but surfaces mostly clear. I prefer organic asymmetry over rigid symmetry. I like curated clutter, but not overwhelming.

Your turn: How do you prefer things arranged?

Mood Patterns

Questions to ask:

• Cozy or airy?

• Dramatic or calm?

• Playful or serious?

• Nostalgic or modern?

• Warm or cool (emotionally, not just temperature)?

What I notice in my inventory: Cozy over airy. Nostalgic over modern. Warm and inviting, not stark or cold. A bit whimsical – I like spaces that feel lived-in and loved, not sterile or performative.

Your turn: What mood are you consistently drawn to?

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The “Why” Behind Your Favorites

Pattern recognition tells you what you like. But understanding why helps you replicate the feeling, not just the thing. For anything you love – an object, a space, an image – dig deeper than “it’s pretty.”

The Three Levels

Surface level: What specific elements appeal to me?
(The color? The texture? The scale? The composition?)

Deeper level: What feeling does it create?
(Cozy? Sophisticated? Calm? Inspired? Safe? Energized?)

Deepest level: What does this feeling remind me of or connect to?
(Childhood? A person? A place? A version of yourself you want to be?)

Example

Object: My favorite gingham Sézane pants that I’ve talked about a LOT.

Surface: The thick woven texture, the warm cream and brown color, the high-rise waist and wide leg.

Deeper: They feel high quality and well-made, and make me feel like a chic French lady. The style makes me feel intellectual but not pretentious, comfortable but intentional and put-together.

Deepest: They make me feel like my ideal version of myself – financially secure enough to be able to invest in well-made pieces that will last for a long time, confident enough to be able to wear a bolder patterned piece, and creative enough to find lots of pairings for it to justify the expense.

When I understand the why, I can find multiple ways to create that feeling. It’s not about owning this one pair of pants – it’s about understanding that I want spaces and clothes and objects that feel cozy, intellectual, well-made, and versatile.

Your turn: Pick 3-5 favorite things from your visual inventory and dig into the why.

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Want to go further?

This is just one small segment of what we’ve covered so far in the first four months of The Well-Designed Life. January was all about setting foundations for your dream life, in February we covered your aesthetic identity blueprint (where this exercise came from!), and March was all about creating your dream work life. Now we’re in the middle of April – aligning your budget and spending with your values.

If you subscribe now, you’ll get immediate access to the first four months of content, and everything new coming up.

The Well-Designed Life applies actual design methodology to the way you live: not as a productivity system, not as a self-improvement program, but as a framework for building a life that feels coherent and intentional from the inside out.

What subscribers have been saying:

“Love this! I was stressed because I haven’t been able to clearly describe my aesthetic with a label (one friend is focused on quiet luxury, for example, which I like but also is not me). I love the idea of instead saying what I actually like vs being put into a box. It’s more authentic and freeing.” – Demi

“I’m not sure if all the months will hit like this month did, but dang!!! I just got back from an annual girls’ weekend with my college BFF where we do all the shopping we didn’t do all year. I did everything except this last exercise before I went so I was about 75% on target. Got home and realized I want to return a bunch. Now that I’m doing this exercise it’s because those items didn’t fit my manifesto. In short, gosh I thank you for this work! You totally helped me nail it.” – Maggie

“I’ve been doing quiet work lately. The kind where you sit with a workbook and ask yourself what, actually, feels like you. Lizzie Campbell’s The Well-Designed Life has been my companion in that. (Think: The Artist’s Way, but for being the artist of your own life.) Style, space, work, finances — she takes it all apart and hands it back to you as something coherent.” – Cara

Parenthetical is a newsletter for women who dog-ear pages, overthink their seasonal wardrobe, and want to make their ordinary days more magical. Paid subscribers get access to the full resource library, plus The Well-Designed Life curriculum.