What's Your Holiday Style?

Your holiday style is the kind of trip that actually leaves you rested and happy, not the one you think you should want. Some people come back from a week on a sunlounger refreshed. Others come back from the same week climbing the walls and desperate for a museum.

Knowing your style saves a lot of money and a lot of slightly disappointing weeks. It helps you choose where to go, who to go with, and what to pack. It also explains why your friend's dream holiday sounds like your idea of a long wait.

The quiz asks about the things that really decide a holiday: your ideal morning, what you pack, the view you want, your evenings, who you go with, what you do when it rains, and what the point of going away is in the first place.

You make ten picture choices, one at a time, each an original scene drawn for this site. Every option carries one or two holiday styles.

We use our own proprietary structure, the same tag scoring as our aesthetic quiz: each pick adds a point to every style it carries, and each total is divided by how often that style appears across the quiz, so no style wins just by turning up more. The highest score is your holiday style, and the second highest is your hint.

Go with your gut. You are not booking anything, so pick the scene that makes you sigh a little.

Here is every result you can get.

• City break: you want a neighbourhood, a museum and a late table. You walk ten miles a day without noticing, you read menus for fun, and you come home with a book from a shop you will never find again. Your perfect trip is three nights somewhere with good bakeries and a tram you almost miss.
• Beach: you want heat, water and nowhere to be. You pack almost nothing, you swim before breakfast, and you have truly switched off when you stop knowing what day it is. Your perfect trip is a horizon with nothing on it.
• Cottage: you want a path, a kettle and a book you finish. Rain does not ruin your holiday. It starts it. Your perfect trip is a field gate, a fire, a jumper you never take off and someone happy to be quiet with you.
• Road trip: you want the next turn more than the hotel. You love a map on the passenger seat, a windscreen at dusk and the places you only find by getting slightly lost. Your perfect trip has a rough route and no fixed ending.
• Festival: you want a crowd that knows the words. You go for the moment the lights come up and a field of strangers sing the same song. Your perfect trip involves a bag you carry all day and a ticket stub you keep for years.
• Stay home: you want your own bed and a plan you can cancel. You know that rest does not need a passport. Your perfect trip is a week off with a fire, a film, long lie-ins and nobody needing you anywhere.

Your runner-up shows how to bend your main style so the whole trip works. A City break with a Road trip hint wants two cities and a drive between them. A Beach with a Stay home hint wants a villa where you never need to leave the pool.

It is also useful when you travel with other people. If your top style clashes with your partner's, check the runner-ups. A Cottage person with a City break hint and a City break person with a Cottage hint can happily share a long weekend in a small cathedral city with hills nearby.

Plan around the one thing your style cannot do without, then let the rest be flexible.

• City break: book somewhere central so you can walk everywhere, and leave one afternoon completely empty for getting lost.
• Beach: choose the water first and the hotel second. Pack less than you think.
• Cottage: pick somewhere with a walk from the door and a pub within reach. Bring the book.
• Road trip: fix the first and last night, and leave the middle open.
• Festival: sort the ticket, the tent and the shoes. Everything else can be borrowed.
• Stay home: put it in the calendar like a real trip, turn off work notifications and plan one treat a day.

When you have your style, the aesthetic quiz is the natural next step. It finds the look that goes with the trip.

Some holiday styles pair naturally, and knowing which saves a lot of arguments in the departure lounge. Cottage and Stay home get on beautifully: both want a fire, a book and nowhere to be. Road trip and Festival make great companions, because both love a full car and a plan that changes on the way.

City break and Beach are the classic clash. One wants to see everything and the other wants to see nothing at all. The fix is a coastal city: mornings exploring, afternoons in the sea, everyone fed by eight.

Cottage and Festival can work too, if you split the week. Three days of crowds and loud music, then three days of birdsong and long empty afternoons, is a surprisingly good holiday for both of you.

If you are planning a group trip, ask everyone to take the quiz and look at all the results together before anyone books anything.