OPINION | If these walls could speak, what would they say about you?

For some people it's general tidiness (these people should probably not come over to my place).

For others - perhaps people in the construction game - it's the age and sturdiness of the building.

Or maybe you're one of those people who clock the smell of the gardenias at the gate, or notice whether there are shoes outside the door (and slip yours off accordingly).

For me, one of the first things I see is what's on the walls. I'm interested in what other people put up purely as decoration. Because decoration is never really 'pure' - it says something about you.

Do you go for mass-produced framed prints of blurry bunches of flowers, or do your walls feature enlarged photos of your children (dressed, naturally, in denim and white)?

Do you have heirloom landscape paintings inherited from Grandma or hipster wall stickers featuring deer and foxes?

Or are your walls adorned with the handmade weaving you brought back from Kurdistan, still redolent of the scent of the goats who donated their hair?

Wall decoration is the jewellery of the home, ornaments that perform no function other than to make a space more beautiful, while advertising something about their owner.

So maybe diamond earrings perform the same function as an expensive piece of art, while minimalist white spaces with a lone modernist print are the equivalent of women who wear no jewellery except for one chunky resin bracelet.

Most of us put pictures on our walls that mean something to us. We print a photo and buy a frame, or mount our children's artwork, because it expresses something - pride, love, joy, beauty - that matters.

Even those who live with the pictures someone else chose, or picked up a generic print on special in a bargain bin, are saying something about themselves, even if it's just, "I don't really care."

Pictures do tell a thousand words, but not only about themselves. About us too.