How to create a mood board in five easy steps

A mood board comes in many forms but it is essentially the inspiration for the design in terms of the colours, textiles and styles, laid out in a visually appealing way.

They can be quite abstract with images of scenery, art, objects etc. that have inspired a design, or sometimes more specific with images of furniture pieces and textiles which may have been discussed during a consultation. Or found online if you’re doing this yourself.

You can create them manually in and old fashioned scrap book, or digitally on a tool like PowerPoint, Photoshop or Pinterest.

I always start with Inspiration for colours, for example a client may have shared a favourite painting, or a place that makes them feel inspired, motivated, relaxed etc. such as a beach, forest and so on.

It could be based on a piece of furniture, a pattern or cultural and travel experience.

Some easy steps to get you started with your own mood board:

Start with what you want to achieve, and what you want to feel in the room: relaxed, motivated etc. or with an image, piece of art that you love and would like to feature. For example, for this mood board below, we wanted to keep the artwork in a room which was used mostly for relaxing with the family
Next, just cut and paste your images, play around, see what works best.
From these images, which colours can you see, which stand out, which ones do you like? Here’s one which started with a pieces of art which were to be kept in the room. The colour scheme came from this image

Mood board for a kitchen. Artwork was purchased from The Gower Gallery, Mumbles. www.gowergallery.co.uk

4. Remember, there is no right and wrong, it’s what you like.

5. Don’t limit yourself, have freedom with it and don’t restrict yourself with what inspires you. For example, this mood board started with a relaxed night dining in Ibiza Old Town, and now I have kitchen inspiration for someone willing to let me loose on their farmhouse kitchen :)