Shadowing Practice: 80% of Interior Design Basics in 10 minutes - Learn English Speaking with Video
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here's a rule of thumb for interior design about 80 of
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what i do comes down to just a few basic principles
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it is finding the right space plan color palette cohesion
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and scale and proportion if you put time
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and effort into getting those three right you can't go wrong i'm a certified interior designer
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and i've spent almost 20 years designing hundreds of homes for people all over the world
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and in almost every space that needs my help it is typically one of those fundamentals
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that needs to be addressed
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so in the next few minutes i'm going to walk you through these core basics
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that do most of the heavy lifting so you can look at any room
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and know what to fix let's start with the most important
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and it's what i help out with the most
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and that's space planning i know that's an industry term space planning
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but it basically means the layout of your room
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or your home design starts here creating a floor plan is
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step one of my design process your layout is the most important
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because it decides how you actually use
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and live in your space a good space plan feels effortless
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while the space is in use you don't have to think
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about it it doesn't cause any hiccups in the flow of
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your lifestyle almost every floor plan i've looked at could use
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improvement somewhere to serve my clients better your space should be
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working for you for your specific needs not against those needs
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or your lifestyle now here's where it can get misunderstood a good layout is not a copy
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and paste situation there's no single correct floor plan for everyone we design spaces for individuals
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and families so copying a layout you saw online almost never works everyone's needs
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and lifestyles are different therefore every space plan and home will be different
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so before you plan anything you should ask yourself what your needs are
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and how you need your space to serve you and your lifestyle there's four questions i ask all my clients.
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And you can ask these about your own home and space.
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One is how many people actually use and live in this space day to day.
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Two, what happens in this space?
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List every activity that's going on in this room, like eating, working, watching TV, reading, hosting, whatever it is.
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Three, what does a good day in this room look like to you?
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And what does the room need to do to make that easy?
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That could be storage, a fold -out sofa, items that would make your life easier while accomplishing your goal and end use for this space.
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Four, when you walk in this room, what's the first thing you do?
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This is important in making your actions feel effortless with the least amount of pushback.
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For example, if you always drop your bag and kick your shoes off, there should be somewhere dedicated and easy to do that.
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If you sit down and open a laptop, there should be a seat and a surface ready for you.
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Those four questions are your starting point.
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This should identify who and what your needs are from your space.
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Here's what this looks like in reality.
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And I share this in the first chapter of my new book, The Functional Home, which is available on my website for pre -orders
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and it's coming September 1st. I worked with a family of five who had a tight galley kitchen, completely closed off from the rest of the house.
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It was, in short, a one -person kitchen.
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And my client physically felt closed off from the rest of the house, but more importantly, closed off from her family.
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For the space plan, I listened to their needs and wishes for more family connection.
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And long story short, they were able to take down a dividing wall to open the kitchen to the rest of the house.
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We added a peninsula with seating plus a large prep island.
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This new plan completely changed the function and flow of the kitchen as well as their family's lifestyle.
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Now the whole family can share this space at the same time.
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Kids doing homework, parents and kids prepping a meal together, having conversations and connections in a space.
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That was so desperately needed for this family
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because this layout changed how they spend their time together the problem wasn't
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that the kitchen was too small it was
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that their space plan of the kitchen wasn't serving them
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and their family's needs
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and once it did it was quite literally life -changing for
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them once you identify the perfect layout for your needs we don't stop there now comes the vertical space
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and design of the room and the number one
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and easiest thing i recommend to my clients to achieve a cohesive looking space is through using and identifying a color palette.
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This is often the ignored factor when pulling a room together.
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The color palette cohesion I'm talking about looks like five or six colors spread throughout and around your space in the furniture, wall color, flooring art, small details.
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This repetition of the color palette is key to a cohesive space because when we walk in a room, our brain is looking for and finding the visual connections.
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With the same color showing up in the rug, the pillow, the art, our eyes able to move around the room
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and connect the dots we may not even know that's what we're doing
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but it's more than likely the reason we may think a room looks good
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or bad easiest way to achieve a tight color palette is to start with the colors
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that are already there
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and aren't changing this could be the floor the trim cabinets countertops a fireplace those are all things
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that count as a color in your palette whether you notice them
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or not many people skip over wood tones
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and neutrals as colors as they don't count
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but they definitely do honey oak is a color warm white
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is a color a cool gray floor is a color once you start counting what's already there you may find
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that you're halfway to a palette without purchasing a single thing
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yet i had a client with honey oak trim throughout her
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whole home she'd been trying to design around it almost as
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if it was something to hide once we treated it as a color in her palette
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and added more of it in more modern ways to the furniture
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and decor the trim stopped feeling like a problem and instead looked like an intentional decision that tied the whole room together.
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Before I move on, I want to mention one more tip when creating a color palette, and that's making sure to have different values in your palette.
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In other words, it needs to have lighter and darker colors, as well as that middle ground.
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Without a contrast and gradient of the palette, a room can look flat and uninteresting, even when the colors are dispersed in the space.
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When you select or identify those five or six colors, make sure there's highs, lows, and middle ground colors.
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That range is what gives the room depth and dimension, and in turn, giving a more interesting and inviting space.
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When it comes to our next principle, this one may be the most challenging for my clients because it relies on the relationship between things in the space.
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It's a balanced principle that has to do with scale and proportion.
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The easiest way in my eyes to understand this is through positive and negative space.
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Negative space is the empty room, so the bones of this room, the bare walls, floor, and ceiling.
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Positive space is everything that we put in this empty room the furniture art lighting decorations
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but i do see windows and doors even
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if they are already there as the positive space they're still breaking the facade with dimension
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and subject matter a good rule of thumb is my 70
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30 ratio meaning 70 positive space 30 negative for example on
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a big blank wall you can aim for about 70 positive space with decor furniture lighting,
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etc. Whatever you're placing on or against that wall should count towards that 70 % of positive space.
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This could be achieved through a vignette of several items of furniture
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and decor or 70 % of art as a gallery wall.
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Scale is the main thing to identify with that 70 -30 rule in a room.
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Proportion has to do with positive space but also visual weight.
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A proportion mistake some people miss is a bottom heavy room.
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This is when most of the furniture and decor sits at around three feet off the ground.
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It almost feels like the space has been cut in half with all of
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that visual weight on the bottom half of the room.
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A simple fix for this is bringing positive space and visual weight up to achieve more overall balance.
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This could look like larger art, raising a curtain rod, adding something taller with more weight like a plant or bookshelf.
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We can also do this with lighting.
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A chandelier or pendant will help the positive space continue our eye up.
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With visual weight, it's more about perception rather than the physical weight of an item.
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Certain colors and materials or solid mass read as heavy or light regardless of their actual size.
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For example, a stone fireplace is visually heavy.
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A glass coffee table is visually light.
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A dark, dense armchair carries more weight than a slim wooden one.
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Proportion is partly about balancing that weight across the room so nothing feels lopsided or imbalanced.
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I had a quick consultation with a client the other day
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who recently just installed a heavy stone fireplace with floating white shelves on either side she called me
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because now she felt that the fireplace took over this entire room
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and she didn't know how to fix it
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so i took a screenshot from her facetime
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and shared my screen for a quick fix in photoshop the
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fix wasn't lightening the fireplace weight it was adding more visual
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weight elsewhere i suggested dropping a larger chandelier adding a long curtain panel on the adjacent wall
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and adding larger art for her shelves i also brought in
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heavier accent chairs in front of fireplace to disperse more visual weight
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and flank it although it was a quick visual i made
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for her on the call it shows how this room had a balance issue
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that could be fixed fairly simply with adding more weight
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and color dispersion of that new fireplace around the room that's it that's my 80 in
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that order starting with the most important space planning comes first to properly function in your space
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because function comes before form color palette cohesion comes second
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because it's starting you off with intention in your design decisions
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and scale and proportion is the last important piece to achieve a balanced space no matter your budget
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or your square feet with all three considered you're on the
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way to a designer worthy room i love helping people apply my lessons in reality
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so if you're struggling with this space stand in that room
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and run through these filters for space planning does the layout actually match how you live
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or are you working around it every day.
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Remember to ask these four questions.
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For the color palette, list every color already in the room, including the wood tones and neutrals.
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Are they repeated across the space?
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And is there both light and dark for that range and gradient?
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For scale and proportion, pay attention to the visual weight of your room and items in it.
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Is the room bottom heavy?
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Is there a big empty wall?
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Is one heavy piece taking over?
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Once you identify what's missing, you've done the hardest part.
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Now make a list of what's most practical to achieve first remember good design isn't created overnight it's a process
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and takes time
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if you'd like to go a little deeper on building a
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color palette i have an in -depth video about the how
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and why of color plus i go a lot deeper on how to build a cohesive color palette
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so watch this video next it's a crash course on color theory and how to effectively use color in your space.
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I'll see you next time.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “80% of Interior Design Basics in 10 minutes”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: space, color, palette, weight, visual. This video has 155 sentences and 2083 words to shadow. The speech runs for 10:18. The speaker talks fast, about 202 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| palette noun | /ˈpælɪt/ | A thin board on which a painter lays and mixes colours. |
| fireplace noun | /ˈfaɪɹpleɪs/ | An open hearth for holding a fire at the base of a chimney. |
| layout noun | /ˈleɪ.aʊt/ | A structured arrangement of items within certain limits. |
| proportion noun | /pɹəˈpɔɹʃən/ | A quantity of something that is part of the whole amount or number. |
| decor noun | /deɪˈkoɹ/ | The style of decoration of a room or building. |
| cohesion noun | /kəʊˈhiː.ʒən/ | State of cohering, or of working together. |
| cohesive adjective | /kəʊˈhiː.sɪv/ | Having cohesion. |
| trim verb | /ˈtɹɪm/ | To reduce slightly; to cut; especially, to remove excess. |
| chandelier noun | /ˌʃæn.dəˈlɪɚ/ | A branched, often ornate, light fixture suspended from a ceiling. |
| disperse verb | /dɪˈspɝs/ | To scatter in different directions. |
| effortless adjective | /ˈɛfə(ɹ)tlɪs/ | Without effort. |
| gradient noun | /ˈɡɹeɪdiənt/ | A slope or incline. |
| visually adverb | /ˈvɪzju.əli/ | By means of sight. |
| curtain noun | /ˈkɜɹt(ə)n/ | A piece of cloth covering a window, bed, etc. to offer privacy and keep out light. |
| thumb noun | /ˈθʌm/ | The shortest and thickest digit of the hand that for humans has the most mobility and can be made to oppose (moved to touch) all of the other fingers. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| take over verb | To assume control of something, such as a business or enterprise, and sometimes by force. |
| come down to verb | To reach by moving down or reducing. |
| move around verb | To relocate to new homes repeatedly; to not live in any one place for long. |
| run through verb | To summarise briefly. |
| sit down verb | To assume a sitting position from a standing position. |
| take down verb | To remove something from a wall or similar vertical surface to which it is fixed. |
| work around verb | To bypass or circumvent (a problem or obstacle). |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be addressed · are dispersed · could be achieved |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | i've spent · i've looked · has been cut |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 26 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: proportion /pɹəˈpɔɹʃən/, cohesion /kəʊˈhiː.ʒən/, chandelier /ˌʃæn.dəˈlɪɚ/, shelf /ʃɛlf/, dimension /daɪˈmɛn.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: visually /ˈvɪzju.əli/, misunderstand /mɪs.ʌn.də(ɹ)ˈstænd/, preposition /ˌpɹɛpəˈzɪʃən/, repetition /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/, intentional /ɪnˈtɛnʃənəl/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like palette, fireplace, layout.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.