Mood board interior design free#
Having already decided on your core style and colour palette, you should now be free to instinctively pick out any pieces that catch your eye, and add them to your mood board. Now for the fun part - browsing through Pinterest, Instagram, interiors blogs, magazines and online and physical stores to pick out the finishes and products you love. Don't feel overly restricted or that you need to find items that match exactly - the point of the colour palette is make sure any pieces you buy complement your colour scheme, not that everything is an identical match. Once you've chosen your colour palette, carry paint sample cards, fabric swatches or other visual cues with you when you're deciding on other pieces so that you have something you can refer to. You probably already have a fair idea of your preferred colours, but if you pop down to a hardware store to play with the paint sample cards, you'll be able to better visualise which colours go well together. The next step is to decide on your colour palette, including your dominant neutral colours and any accent colours. There may be a design trend that you're crazy about right now, but consider whether or not you will still love it in 5 years' time, or whether you'll outgrow it long before then.
We originally thought we wanted a modern Scandinavian look, but then realised that we really love, is a Scandi-industrial look, with a lot of Oak and matte black finishes.Īnother thing to do before you decide on your core style is to think about whether it's practical for your space, and whether or not it will stand the test of time.
Even if you're pretty sure of what you like, after browsing through hundreds of images you may be surprised to discover that you actually prefer a different look to what you expected. There are many interior design styles that blend well together too, hence the birth of looks such as Rustic-Industrial and Japandi, so deciding on and sticking with a core style may be a little harder than you expected!īefore you lock in your chosen style, have a browse through Pinterest and Instagram so that you can visualise and confirm it. Country, Scandinavian, Eclectic, Minimalist, French Provincial etc… This step is crucial because it will narrow down your other options significantly, and will ensure you stay focused and disciplined when selecting your pieces. On the other hand, the beauty of going physical is that you can include actual sample swatches of curtains, carpets, upholstery fabric, wallpaper etc so that you have a sense of texture and true colour on your board.Īsk yourself what main style you want to achieve eg. The digital option also allows you to make changes quickly and easily, which is priceless when you're time-poor (which if you're building or renovating, you definitely are!). You might love that emerald green couch when it's in a small magazine clipping, but once you enlarge it on your digital mood board to be bigger than the armchair and coffee table, you may find that the colour overpowers the room too much for your liking. I'm a fan of old school pen and paper, and I still carry around a physical diary in my handbag for recording appointments rather than putting them into my iPhone - having said that, the beauty of a digital mood board creator like Style Sourcebook is that you can size things proportionately and get a better feel for how a space will actually look in real life. It's entirely up to you as both options have their pros and cons. The first step is to choose your mood board medium - you can go with something traditional, such as pinning physical magazine cut-outs onto a cork board, or sticking them inside a notebook, or you can create a digital board using Pinterest, design software, or a mood board creator website such as Style Sourcebook.
You can create a specific board for each room in your home, or you may want to start off with just one board for your whole project that centres around a general look and feel, such as our Natural Neutrals board below. Here are my tips on creating an interior design mood board for your next design or decorating project. Now that our home has been built and we're well and truly settled in, I'm happy to report that we love the final product, and even now, still stop to admire particular finishes or products that we chose. If you're looking to build, renovate or simply redecorate, you're probably overwhelmed by the mountain of decisions in front of you and the sheer volume of options available! When we built our house as owner-builders, every design decision felt like an ordeal…I knew what I liked when I saw it, but couldn't visualise whether everything I chose would work well together and create a cohesive look.Įverything became much easier when I started putting together mood boards - they allowed me to experiment with different styles and products before making a commitment, and gave me confidence in my decision making.