
World of Style offers a World of Choice!
One of the reasons we chose to build our home with Porter Davis was due to World of Style. Having never renovated on any scale, I was pretty daunted by the prospect of choosing fixtures and fittings for an entire house. If you’re an over thinker, like me, choosing a cushion can be a daunting process, so making choices for an entire home is a recipe for insomnia. Plus, I wasn’t particularly keen on driving all across Melbourne to look at taps and tiles with four kids in tow. World Of style offered the convenience of having all options in the one place. Tick!
World of Style is a world of CHOICE. It is one of Australia’s largest interior design showrooms in the heart of South Melbourne, which is open for everybody to visit. You don’t have to be building a Porter Davis home to visit the showroom. We found the experience pretty good overall, although my enthusiasm waned at decision number 346!

My first trip to World of Style!
World of Style: Selecting colours and fittings for our home
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Style Quiz
Once we signed with Porter Davis we were encouraged to take the “What’s Your Style?” quiz. Essentially it’s a set of lifestyle questions that helps you to establish which one of the four main themes encapsulates you best: Classic, Contemporary, Designer or Resort. It then matches you with World of Style interiors that best reflect your tastes and personality. My style was a mix of Classic and Contemporary with Berlin, Melbourne and Scandinavian themes.

What interior style are you? World of Style mood board inspo!
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Visiting the showroom
We were advised to visit the showroom 2-3 times before our selections appointment. I think we went four times in total. Bear in mind, however, that my attention was distracted at each appointment. My first piece of advice would be to NOT have a 6-week old baby when you are trying to make decisions involved money and permanence!
I was lucky to have a friend come with me on a reccie, as well as Suzanne from One girl Interiors. Mr NASD came a couple of times too. He asked questions about price, while I asked questions about style. Yes, we come at it from very different places 🙂
The best thing about the showroom is you get to see full size kitchens and bathrooms – one for each main World of Style theme. They also have interior designers available to assist with styling tips and suggestions.

A kitchen on display at World of Style
Overall, I found World of Style to be a fun and helpful experience. It took a lot of the stress out of choosing fixtures and fittings. But, it was very hard to get prices ahead of our selections appointment. Almost everything I wanted was an upgrade (no surprises there) but considering we are building a house from the Prestige range, we thought more upgrades would be included.
It also seemed impossible for the staff to tell us exactly how much more a Category upgrade would be. This made it impossible to budget accordingly and we only got exact prices at our selections appointment. And guess what? We went over budget, so we had to go back and downgrade.

Bubba visited World of Style many times.
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Selections Appointment
Our selections appointment (where we chose all colours, fixtures, fittings etc.) went for two full days. Given we are building a big house, we had a lot of decisions. OMG, SO MANY DECISIONS!!!!
My head hurt from all the decisions by the d of the first day. Admittedly, it was extra hard as I was breastfeeding my reflux baby and she was very unsettled. Although in some ways, this put pressure on us to make quick decisions. I didn’t have time to linger over 50 shades of white, and yes, there really are that many shades of white.
By the end of the two days our brains were fried. And our budget was blown. Our last appointment was with the window furnishing company. I basically instructed the lady to choose the blinds for me. I couldn’t make another decision. Not one more. And we left some of our windows unfurnished as I couldn’t decide between roman blinds and curtains.

Kitchen choices at World of Style. Note the “Fox” grey!
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Decision anxiety
Naturally, decision anxiety hit me a few weeks later. Did I make the right decision about the cabinetry finish? Should I have upgraded the tiles instead of the carpet? Was subway the right choice for our splashback? Even now, months later, I am questioning some of my kitchen choices. It’s so hard to visualise an entire kitchen when you are working from tiny samples. I hope that we made the right selections, as we are in this for the long haul. I can’t move in and tell Mr NASD I made the chose the wrong bench top or he will divorce me!
Have you ever done a reno or built a house? How did you find the experience? If you’re interested in our selections let me know and I’ll write a post on our colours and fittings.