How to Create a Mood Board For Interior Design & Home Styling
Today, I'm going to talk about how to create a mood board. Creating a mood board is one of my favorite phases of the interior design process. It is the starting point whenever we are beginning to design a space.
How to create a mood board
What is a mood board?
When you start to design a space, you need a starting point. You will start to search for images that will be your inspiration for your design or your client's design. It's very important to know what you want the mood of the space to feel like. Images can be from anything.
The idea of creating a mood is to open your creativity and get inspired from anything you want to get inspired from to create your design.
Now, it is very important that when you create a mood board, you think about what is the mood, of course, that you want to create in that space.
After you talk to the client or if you are your client and after you've gathered all the information on what the design will be like after you've gathered all your keywords.
You know what the vibe or mood of the space will be like; you have to begin searching for images that will reflect your design.
Abstract mood board
The first type of mood board is to be an abstract board. In this type of board, you will only be searching for abstract inspiration. So, you're not considering furniture or materials in this mood board. Do not worry about that in this space because what we want to do with this type of mood board is just look for the mood or the vibe of the space.
So, creating this type of mood board is very helpful because it does not distract you from choosing furniture or materials or any of that interior design stuff that we will get to do down the road. At this point, you want to focus on the mood.
This is a great mood board to center your mind and open your creativity into the possibilities of this space and what this space potentially feels like.
This is a mood board that I created, and one of the keywords I had from this client was girl, boss, chic, and luxury, and this was for a retail space.
It's always good to have two alternative mood boards for your clients because, a lot of the time, they will be really confused about what they want. Giving them two or more options will clear their mind, and it'll be easier for them to decide.
So, for the first one, I used colors such as yellow, blue, and golden tones, and you can see the whole vibe in this mood board. You can get the vibe of what this design intent will be.
This other one was a little more minimal, a little more straightforward, black and white, and modern. I incorporated some concrete. This one's a little less girly, but it was also an alternative that I decided might work.
Concept mood board
Now, let's talk about an abstract mood board with a combination of a concept board. When we talk about concepts, we're thinking more about what the interior space will look like. So, this type of board is a mix of abstract mood boards with a concept.
You can incorporate some inspiration from other interior spaces you are inspired by. This is one of my favorite mood boards because it's a lovely mix to get inspired from images and start thinking about the concept and what the interior space will look like.
All-in-one mood board
This type of board will be very similar to the ones you see all over Pinterest if you search for the word mood board. This mood board type incorporates furniture and materials you have already decided on and want to use for your project.
This mood is like a mix, you’ll incorporate your inspiration, furniture, and the materials you want to use.
I want to keep things very separate from each other to have a little bit more clarity in my mind, so I will first create an abstract mood board. Then, I will create a separate material board and furniture board.
How I create a mood board using Canva
The thing you want to do is go to Pinterest and look for your inspirational images. You can search for anything that you want.
So, right now, I will search for the blue ocean.
You will click on the arrow and choose from the drop-down menu which boards you want to save your image. Then, go to your board, and you can see that I already have saved all these images for my mood board.
If you click on the plus sign, you can share it with other people, and if you click on the three dots, you can do more things with your board, but for now, we will save all our images on our desktop. I usually create a folder to save images for one mood board to organize everything.
So now you want to go to Canva, and you want to go to the home, and here you want to create a design. We will choose a custom size. I will do 11 by 8.5 inches, the average size for a sheet of paper. Click Create New Design, and you have your sheet of paper.
Now you want to go to uploads and upload media.
After you upload all your images, they will show on the left, and you want to drag them into your sheet. Then you want to arrange them however you want and keep doing this until you are happy with your result.
You can make them bigger, crop them, move them, and do everything you want. I usually like to add the text to the board. Sometimes, I will also add the project I am working on and what this mood board is for.
Sometimes, I will add these shapes I like to use and add them to the mood board with the colors that I am thinking of using in the mood board.
I don't use materials in my mood board; it's just to give myself an idea of what colors I will use in my design.
Next, you want to download, and then you can choose the file type. My mood board looks beautiful and I love it.
How to create a mood board
Have you created a mood board for a project? Share your ideas in the comments below.
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