If you are thinking of redecorating your home mood boards are a fun way to get creative and experiment with room styles before spending any money. Mood boards are used by interior designers when creating room ideas for clients. If they are used by interior designers then why not use them ourselves?
Are you confused about what mood boards are and how they can be used in interior design? You’ve come to the right place.
Here you will find out:
- What is a mood board is and what is its purpose?
- What to include in a mood board
- Where to get inspiration when creating a mood board
- Step by step description on how to use a Canva, an easy graphic design app for making mood boards.
What is a Mood Board and what is its Purpose
A mood board is a collection of images that are used as a visual representation of a room that you would like to create. Their purpose is to bring together design elements that represent the room that you want to create. This way you can see which design elements work well together and which don’t. Then you can swap the design elements that don’t work with something else until you create a mood board that you love that represents the room that you would love to create in real life.
What to include in a Mood Board?
- Start by making a collage of design elements including:
- A colour scheme
- Pieces of furniture that you would like in your room, including what you already have and will keep in your new room and new furniture pieces that you are thinking of purchasing
- Upholstery items such as fabric patterns or you can include curtains, rugs, cushions
- Anything else that is a feature in your room for example a painting, mirror, lamp, etc
Where to get Inspiration When Creating a Mood Board?
Great question! Inspiration can be found everywhere when designing a new room including interior design and fashion magazines, visiting shops and restaurants to name but a few. However, a quick and easy way to find inspiration that we can easily save to our laptop or phone is by looking at social media sites such as Pinterest and Instagram. Both sites are home to hundreds of thousands of interior design, home renovation, and home inspiration accounts. You can search until your heart is content for almost anything, for example, Scandi kitchen styles or industrial living rooms.
Get inspiration for your mood board from Instagram.
Once you have found inspiration start Googling design features that you like from the photos you have saved for inspiration, such as Googling “blue velvet couch”. Scroll through the images until you find one that you like and then save it to a file on your laptop. Continue this process when looking for other items you would like to include in your room for example rugs, lamps, coffee table, painting, etc.
A mood board can be as simple as a collage of items that you envision in your room all on one page to see if they go well together. Or, you can try to recreate your room using simple graphic design apps (don’t worry there are extremely easy to use and are made for people who don’t have a clue how to do graphic design) which will be discussed in the next section. When creating a full room plan ensure that you include things that are permanent to your room and cannot be altered such as windows, doors, fireplaces, etc.
5 easy steps on how to use Canva, an easy graphic design app for making mood boards
Canva is an easy and free app to use when creating a mood board for people who have no graphic design experience. Canva has interior design templates that are easy to modify to your needs.
Step 1: Search for Images of furniture and design pieces
Before using Canva, ensure that you have gathered images of the things that you would like to include in your mood board. If creating a living room this could include images of a sofa, curtains rugs, coffee table, cushions, lamps, etc. Ensure that you have several options for each product. Save this to your laptop.
Step 2: Set up an account with Canva for free
Google Canva. Sign up using your Facebook account, Gmail address, or email address.
If you are using your email address you will need to add your first and last name and create a password.
Step 3: Search for “Mood Board Photo Collage”
Click on a template that you like or Create a blank Mood Board Photo Collage.
Step 4: Click on Upload on the left-hand side of your screen, Then click on the purple bar saying “Upload media” at the top of the black background on the left-hand side of your screen.
Next, upload your images (on the black bar on the left of your screen) that you have saved of the items that you would like to include in your mood board, for example, couch, rugs, curtains, etc. They will appear in your images like in the picture below.
Step 5: Double click the images that you want to change
Now is a great time to play around and see what products work best together. Double-click on an image on your interior design template until it a blue box appears. Next, go to your uploaded images and click on a photo that you would like to use to replace the photo in the blue box. Repeat for all images until you get a mood board that you love. Now is a great time to play around and see what products work best together.
Conclusion
There you have it. 5 easy steps using Canva to to create an interior design Mood Board. Mood boards are an easy, fun, and creative way to come up with room ideas. There are multiple ways that you can gather inspiration for your mood board and there are also several ways to create a mood board. However, if you feel stuck do not worry. At Kitchen Design House we have specialist staff and resident Interior Designers on hand to help you express your vision. If you need help creating your dream room, feel free to get in touch.