People Creating A Mood Board

Sometimes words cannot fully communicate the design that you are picturing in your mind, so a mood board is a fantastic way to visualise your design ideas. As designers, we create mood boards with our clients to conceptualise initial design concepts, to understand what the client likes or dislikes and to help visualise their style preferences.

Steps to Consider When Creating your Mood Board…

1.       The first step in your mood board journey starts with a question, how are you creating your mood board?  Each format demands a different approach. Generally speaking, a digital mood board is quicker to curate, easier to share and easier to edit. The limitations are that you can’t add physical texture to the boards, digital images are much harder to interpret for their nuances and you have to be more selective with your image choices. A physical mood board, on the other hand, can be more tactile, it can draw inspiration from textures, images and physical items which can make for a richer sensory experience. The cons of this approach are that you might have to get crafty, as cutting and glueing your samples to a board can take patience and time.

2.       We all know what we like but we don’t always know exactly why we like it. The next step in your mood board exercise is to identify your style. Your possessions tell a story of your style, so it can be helpful to picture items that you like. This can by anything from the car you drive, your bed linen, to the clothes hanging in your wardrobe. Collate everything together mentally and then start to break it down, is there a theme or common thread? Is it a colour? Texture? Pattern? Can you sum up your style or what you like about these items in a few buzz words? Try to identify a few buzz words that represent the style and feeling you hope to achieve.

Kitchen Design Mood Board

3.       The next step is to start pulling together the materials, samples and images for your board. For digital boards, Google images or Pinterest are great places to start but it’s important to remember that these tools prioritise trending styles and can often come laden with other people’s style influences. You can overcome this by interspersing these images with your personal images drawn from real-world inspiration. For physical boards you may like to source textured samples and many suppliers will send you samples for a small fee, or if you are using a designer they can source these for you.

4.       When creating a mood board specifically for a kitchen, you’ll want to source reference images or samples for each aspect of the kitchen design. Here’s a list of the core elements of any kitchen to help you get started:

  • Door / Cabinet Style
  • Worktop
  • Splashback
  • Handles
  • Appliances
  • Sink
  • Tap
  • Flooring
  • Lighting
  • Bar Stools

5.       Once you have all the materials to start creating your board, start to prioritise the images/samples that best represent the key theme or style. A great technique is to make your key images larger and then support the theme with small images and textures to tell the design story.

Interior Design Mood Board

6.       Keep the composition of your mood board flexible so you can always add things or take things away as you start to visualise your design. If you are creating a digital board you can change the board’s arrangement relatively easily, as for physical boards you may want to use Blu Tac, Velcro or display items on a tray so you can adjust the composition accordingly.

7.       When you have finished your mood board, step back and admire your work, how does it make you feel? Which buzz-words come to mind when describing your board? These words should resonate with your style and reflect the way that you want the space to look and feel.

We hope this helps to demystify the process of creating a mood board. For more useful design insights, tips and inspiration from our designers,  sign up to our monthly journal.