Whenever I’m working on a new project, I start with a mood board. Mood boards let me bring all of my ideas for a design together so that I can look at them as one cohesive entity and decide what works and what doesn’t.
For me, it’s both integral to the creative process and a crucial technical step that helps me get a design off the ground.
There are countless ways to make interior decorating mood boards. Whether you use a special design software or go old school with some poster board and a glue stick, all that matters is that your process works for you.
Today, I’m going to explain my step-by-step process for creating an interior decorating mood board. I use Pinterest (duh) and Adobe Illustrator, but you can follow the same basic steps no matter what you use to create your mood boards.
Step One: Make a Pinterest Board & Save Everything
Before you can actually make a mood board, you need to find stuff to put on it. I use Pinterest for this step.
Make a new board for your project and start saving anything and everything that fits the vibe you’re going for. It will be helpful if you have a general design story in mind (ie. you want the room to be fun and upbeat or clean and modern), but you don’t need to know exactly what your plan is at this stage—that’s what we’re working towards.
This first step is all about finding what you like and what you want to incorporate into your design, so don’t overthink it, just save everything.
Step Two: Edit Down Your Pinterest Board
Once your Pinterest board is filled out, you can start to edit it down. Review every image you’ve saved and decide whether it really fits your vision. If it doesn’t, delete it.
As you cut away the excess, you’ll start to hone in on a clearer vision for your design. The images you have should all have a similar aesthetic that aligns with your vision for your project.
Now, you can analyze.
Look at each image carefully and start to figure out what they have in common. Maybe they’re all a similar color palette, or you’re seeing a ton of sculptural furniture. These similarities will help you decide what to include in your design.
Step Three: Create a New Project in Illustrator
Now, we're diving into Illustrator. Start a new project and create an artboard. This is where you’re going to build your mood board.
Unlike your Pinterest board, which is a collection of inspiration for your project, your mood board is going to bring together the actual elements that you want to include in your final design, from furniture and decor to paint colors, tile, and hardware.
You can go into as much detail as you want when building your mood board, but I tend to stick to the main components of the space. Remember, we’re not creating an actual layout at this point, we just want to get an idea of what the final space might look like.
Step Four: Bring in the Must-Haves
When I’m working on a design, I always start with what I call the must-haves. This isn’t something that you necessarily want to include in the final design (although you might), but rather something you have no choice but to include.
Unless you're decorating with an unlimited budget, there are probably going to be pieces of furniture that you can’t afford to replace. And, if you’re working in a rental, you might not be able to change things like wall color and flooring. You want to include these elements from the get-go instead of trying to pretend they don’t exist. If you ignore them, the design won’t look right when it comes to life.
In this example, I’m going to be creating a mood board for a balcony makeover. I have a set of patio chairs that I’m not going to replace, which means they need to make it into the final design. These chairs are my must-haves.
I’m going to start by taking a picture of them, inserting it into my Illustrator project, and making a clipping mask to cut away the background. (If you don’t know how to make a clipping mask, you can find tons of tutorials on YouTube.)
Step Five: Experiment with Different Elements
Now, you’re going to start to build your design in Illustrator.
The idea here is to create a mockup of what the room will look like without getting into the nitty-gritty detail of dimensions, sizing, and placement. You just want to see whether the materials, colors, and pieces you’re choosing look good together.
- Gather images of furniture, accessories, paint colors, tiles—anything you want to use in your design. Make sure you’re thinking about feasibility and cost here. We’re not just getting inspiration anymore, we’re looking for items we want to buy.
- Screenshot and save these images in a folder on your desktop so you can easily access them, and make sure you keep track of where you found them.
- Cut away the background by making a clipping mask. Getting rid of the excess will allow you to better visualize the piece in your space.
- Experiment! Bring in different elements in different combinations to see what you like.
