Behind any well-executed design, there is a lot of preparation. The mood board is a pivotal part of any design plan.
noun an arrangement of images, materials, pieces of text, etc., intended to evoke or project a particular style or concept.
Mood boards are used by interior designers to present their design ideas to clients. Instead of explaining in words, we use images to express our ideas and SHOW clients what we are going for. Usually, the designer will meet with the client and ask for their favorite colors, styles, budget, and any information to better understand what they want their home to look like and then present it to them in the mood board. The mood board, of course, is just a reference and can be altered to the clients satisfaction. It is a very important step and puts everyone on the same page before the work begins.
I like to think of mood boards as recipe for baking a cake; If you never baked a cake before, you’d probably search for a recipe that suits your taste, then get all the ingredients and tools and follow the recipe instructions so that you’ll have a beautiful and delicious cake in the end. The mood board is just that, your interior recipe to follow and make sure your design doesn't ‘sink’.
Whether you do it for yourself or for clients, it’s a really good exercise to follow before you start anything. That way, you know what you’re looking for, you don’t over-buy things and you don’t forget things either. You have a clear picture of what you need and you’ll even know what it’s going to cost you before you make the purchases.
How to create a mood board
I like to put one primary image on my board, that will be bigger in size from the rest of the images and then fill in the board with smaller images that are inspired by that primary image I chose. It can be a piece of furniture or art that I want to set the mood around, or a color scheme, or a place that I really like such as the beach, favorite city, natural landmark etc.
For each room, I make a separate mood board and include images such as the furniture you want in the room, colors, art, texture, space arrangements, etc. I actually made several mood boards for my bedroom and then chose together with my husband the one we both liked.
To make the boards more practical, I take screenshots of items that are in my price range, and are the right sizes, colors and functions. I look at sites like Wayfair, IKEA, All Modern, West Elm, Pottery Barn etc. It’s fun to add beautiful images of items you found online or in magazines but if you don’t know where to get them or if they’re within your budget range, you'll just add more steps to the process when you search for alternatives.
Get Inspirations:
I love searching on Pinterest for inspiration. I search for mood boards, living room ideas, interior design by colors, themed interior designs, and any suggested keywords that come up. You can also look at room ideas by the actual furniture sites that actually sell the items as well, which is really helpful.
Take photos of the decor in places you visit; that one furniture item you liked, the lighting, the space arrangement, colors, texture etc. I always take photos when I travel, especially when we stay in Airbnbs or vacation rentals, but also hotel rooms can give you great ideas for small spaces. I found myself in awe a number of times staying in a little hotel room yet the space felt so big and luxurious.
Tools:
You don’t need a graphic design background to create a mood board. You can use powerpoint slides, Word, even Excel. All you need is to insert few images on a blank page. There are sites like Canva that help you do that as well.
If you do know Photoshop, you can definitely use it for your mood board. I use Photoshop because I can cut the background of the items and place them on top of each other. If you are not savvy with Photoshop you can easily use Word instead. For aesthetic reasons, I would suggest you take screenshots of items with white backgrounds. If you can’t find the item on a white background on the site it’s from, google the item’s name and search in google images - I've done that a few times and managed to find what I was looking for.
Another way to create mood boards is to use a cork board, canvas or big white hard paper board. You simply cut out images from magazines or print images you find online then pin or glue them on the board.
The most important thing about a mood boards is that it clarifies your vision of how you want your space to look and creates a shopping list by default. The biggest difference between my cake analogy and interior design is that if the cake falls, cracks or tastes awful, it’s just a cake and you can make another one. If your interior doesn’t turn out the way you had it in your mind - you’re stuck with it.
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