Design tips & trends
Bring your design ideas to life with a mood board
Are you trying to design the house of your dreams or re-style the family home but suffering from inspiration overload? Mood boards provide an excellent way to organise your favourite looks, textures and colours and help you visually map out your ideal result before making any financial commitments.
Mood boards can assist you to build upon your inspiration and create a clear vision from the layout through to the small finishing touches. It involves collating images, samples and colour swatches that inspire you to create an overarching picture of your design theme.
Collecting your ideas and inspiration in one place allows you to experiment before you make your final decision. You can mix and match to see what works and what doesn’t and be bold and brave with unusual styles.
It’s a great way to check if you have balance. Do your colours, textures, patterns and style work together or do they clash? Your mood board will provide the answers.
Once you are happy with your mood board, you can seek the opinion and expertise of experienced staff at Rawson Homes – or a relative or friend whose style advice you trust. A fresh pair of eyes can help identify problems you might have missed or suggest some new ideas to explore. Explaining your ideas to someone else will help you clarify your design concepts.
There are many online options for creating a mood board. Rawson Homes recommends signing up to the free website Pinterest. See Rawson Homes Pinterest here.
Pinterest allows you to select design images online that inspire you and “pin” them to your own board on the website. You can follow other designers or amateur style gurus for inspiration and share your own designs.
A digital mood board is helpful when it comes to finalising your plans as you can simply present your ideas to a Rawson Homes consultant on your smartphone and look it up when you are out shopping.
A more retro offline option is to acquire an actual pinboard and cut out samples of fabrics or images from magazines that inspire you. Your board doesn’t need to be perfect or tidy. It will evolve as you determine your style and the final vision becomes clearer.
