Why a Design Mood Board Saves Time and How to Create One!

Once you have some ideas about what you want and need in your space, its helpful to create a design board to make sure everything works together. If you are not sure what you are after and are looking for some design inspiration, check out these ideas or if you want a step by step guide to help you finally finish off some of the rooms on your list, I’ve got it for you here!

If you already have some of the items, then putting them in the space and testing them out is the best way. If you are going to be making some purchases however, its a good idea to create a design board so you won’t have to go through the hassle of returns. Now, its not to say that everything you choose, even after using a board will work out. That’s just the nature of design. Sometimes its a trial and error and once you get it in the space, you have to tweak it or change it completely. To be honest, that’s why its nice to pull things you already have and make them work when designing new spaces because you can see how they come together or it gives you an idea of what you might want to get.

If you’re starting from scratch, here’s how to create your mood board. You can do this by hand if you like, tearing out your ideas from magazines, etc. but if you’ve collected some ideas on Pintrest, Instagram or Houzz, its nice to be able to use those pictures in a electronic moodboard and then add the furniture and other pieces that you are looking to purchase.

I use PowerPoint on my iPad to create these but you can use Canva, PicMonkey or any other college app, even from your phone. I also take advantage of the screen shot feature so that I can quickly screenshot the design inspiration or the items I’m looking to purchase and then crop them to cut out everything except the item I want to see. Once I make the final selections, I just go back to the screenshot and revert it to the original so I can see where the items is from so make sure you get that in the original picture.

I will start out with either just a picture or a collage of ideas for a room, something like this

Then I will source the furniture, rugs, etc that will create the design I am looking for within the budget. I usually start with the big items such as furniture and rugs and then go from there. It is important to get those items right and then you can add accessories. If you find lamps, pillows, bedding, etc online that you think you might want to use, then it is a good idea to go ahead and screenshot it and add it in or once you have selected the furniture, go back and add those selections in. That way you don’t have too many choices going on in your original moodboard, especially if you are choosing from multiple sofas, tables, etc.

Because the sofa and tables fit so well in the design for this room and once they were in the moodboard, I could tell that they were going to work together well, it really was about choosing the rug.

Because of the warmth of the wood and stone, we chose the rug that was still a neutral brown gray but had more warmth to it. I want to emphasize that the purpose of the inspiration photo was not to copy the design but just give us a way to communicate the overall look and feel of the room while adding our own design elements and staying within our budget as well.

Here’s another example from the same house.

Here’s the moodboard that was created based on the inspiration photo and some of the furniture swapped out until we got the design were after that felt right. You can see from the inspiration photo that the elements that were important were the tufted headboard, an armoire, and the vanity set with mirror, white furniture, and brining in the blue in the rug like the information photo.

Here’s the picture after the install. We also kept the bedding neutral and that made it easier to choose the pillows in person. It is also a great idea to use moodboards to choose bedding and pillows, artwork, and lamps, especially when you have several choices and are undecided about which you might like best. It saves from the trial and error of lugging in and swapping those items around and then having to return them.

In this case, I was also able to use the photo of the room in progress. If choosing light fixtures, this is a helpful as well (see the following example). Even if you don’t have this, if you know the paint color, it can also be helpful to screenshot and include that from an app such at Sherwin Williams Color Snap. Using the actual photo of the room helped to make sure the rug, table color, and fabric would work with the other elements in the room.

Here’s the finished result, the mirror and the place settings also drawn from inspiration from the photos.

Here’s another example of using a photo of the room to create a mood board and using it to “try” a light fixture to see how it would work with the room.

This one used the living room to see how the sofas and rug would work and choose accent chairs for the client. If you aren’t using it just for yourself, I often include numbers to make it easier for us to discuss selections as we go.

The final example is of a dining room where we had a picture of the room, and the furniture items that were being kept. In this case we were also replacing the light fixture so it allowed us to try out some options.

The client was keeping the furniture and I used some inspiration photos to help us start with what he might like for the room to look like when we finished.

Once we had selected the new light fixture and rug and putting them into the mood board, we could choose the new chairs that would go on the ends to freshen the look.

I hope this has been helpful to see the progression from Mood Board to finished product and the way that I design my Mood Boards.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share about designing them, what software or method you use, and how you use them? I’d love to hear from you and get your ideas!

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