# How to Work with Interior Design Styles Like a Pro! Part 1 of 2 - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/how-to-work-with-interior-design-styles-like-a-pro-part-1-of-2/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Graphic Design · Deep dive · Rated 7 /10 # How to Work with Interior Design Styles Like a Pro! Part 1 of 2 Updated August 2026 Erikka Fogleman · Interior Designer All levels · 262 min Eighteen distinct styles get real depth here, but this is style identification, not room design, so plan on buying part two. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fhow-to-work-with-interior-design-styles-like-a-pro-part-1-of-2%2F499966885) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. "How to Work with Interior Design Styles Like a Pro!" is not a course about designing rooms. It is a course about naming things correctly, and it does that one job with unusual thoroughness. Across twenty lessons and roughly four and a half hours, Erikka Fogleman walks through eighteen interior design styles grouped into four families (formal, casual, twenty-first-century, and retro), and for each one she runs through the same checklist: furniture silhouettes, materials, color, pattern, window treatments, flooring, lighting, artwork, accessories, and where to buy it. That repetition is the structure, and it is also the point. By the fourth or fifth style, the format becomes a lens you can apply on your own. ## What the course actually teaches The traditional design lesson is a good example of how deep this goes. Rather than a surface gloss, it breaks the style into three named historical furniture lines, Queen Anne, Chippendale, and Sheraton, and explains how to tell them apart by leg shape, foot style, and carving details. That kind of specificity recurs throughout: the Scandinavian lesson names the Wegner chair and the Jacobsen egg chair, the art deco lesson identifies the sunburst motif and lists Picasso and Matisse as period-appropriate art references, and the Zen lesson explains why the style favors asymmetry while most others chase formal symmetry. This is a course for people who want to be able to look at a room and say why it reads as a particular style, not just that it does. Each style lesson closes with a room teardown, where a photographed interior is dissected element by element. This is the strongest recurring feature of the course. It forces the viewer to apply the vocabulary just introduced rather than passively absorb it, and it models the kind of analysis a working designer does automatically. The retailer lists that follow each teardown are a useful bonus, naming specific stores by price tier for each style, from Ethan Allen and One Kings Lane for traditional pieces to Etsy and Anthropologie for bohemian ones. ## Where it falls short The course is explicit about its own limits, and those limits matter. It does not teach furniture layout, rug sizing, or spatial planning, that material is reserved for a separate course, so anyone hoping to walk away with the ability to actually compose a finished room will be disappointed. The scope here is identification and sourcing, not execution. The pacing is also uneven by design: because every lesson follows an identical checklist, the middle stretch of the course can feel repetitive if watched straight through rather than sampled by style. The instructor's delivery is clear and organized, and the course structure explicitly invites nonlinear viewing, so learners can skip to the two or three styles they actually care about without losing coherence. That flexibility, paired with the included style quizzes for narrowing down preferences, makes this a genuinely practical reference rather than a lecture to sit through once and forget. For anyone building a personal style vocabulary or preparing to shop with more confidence, it earns its four and a half hours. For anyone expecting to leave with a finished room plan, it will feel like half a course, because it is exactly that. The standout The room-teardown exercises, where a photographed room is broken down element by element (furniture lines, wood tone, textiles, symmetry, lighting) into the vocabulary that identifies its style, train an eye for detail that the lecture content alone would not. ## What you will learn - · How to identify the furniture silhouettes, wood species, and leg/foot details that distinguish styles like Queen Anne, Chippendale, and Sheraton within traditional design - · Which color palettes, patterns, and fabrics define each of the 18 styles, from traditional's neutral-plus-bold-accent scheme to Scandinavian's white-dominant palette - · How to choose appropriate window treatments, flooring, and rugs for a given style, including specific fixes for budget constraints - · How to select lighting, artwork, and accessories that reinforce a chosen style, down to named artists and fixture types per style - · Where to shop for each style by name, including specific retailers and price expectations for furniture, lighting, and accessories - · How to visually audit a finished room and name the individual elements that signal its style, through guided practice on sample rooms Best for: Homeowners and design enthusiasts who want a reference-grade vocabulary for 18 named styles before they commit to shopping, plus early-career designers wanting a refresher. Skip it if: Anyone who wants help arranging furniture, choosing layouts, or actually pulling a room together, since this course explicitly excludes that and defers it to another title. Organization of Lessons Clarity of Instruction Helpful Examples Engaging Teacher [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fhow-to-work-with-interior-design-styles-like-a-pro-part-1-of-2%2F499966885)