How To Get The Most Out Of Your Handmade Mood Boards
How To Get The Most Out Of Your Handmade Mood Boards
Allegra Muzzillo is the owner and proprietress of the Brooklyn-based boutique, You & Yours Fine Vintage. This design maven has been a writer for Real Simple and Cottages & Gardens.
In Part 2 of this 3-part series, we reconnect with our design pros, Shelly Lynch-Sparks, of Homepolish, and Jessica McKay, of Birdhouse Interiors. Having covered the uses and types of mood boards in Part 1, we're ready to take a look at how to create a traditional handmade mood board.
With helpful rules of thumb straight from the professionals you’ll have everything you need to create the perfect mood board to get you started on your best design project yet.
[Image Credit]
The Traditional Mood Board
While putting together a traditional mood board might seem like a time consuming and well...analog way to approach organizing your thoughts, it does present some major advantages when compared to its digital counterpart. Probably the biggest advantage that old-fashioned mood boards have is that they work on a number of levels. While digital boards exist only on the screen, traditional mood boards are a 3D experience that can encompass a number of different elements that you can see, touch and even smell.
This can make it easier to get a sense of what you want the room to feel like and provide additional inspiration that you might not get from a set of images alone.
The primary elements of a mood board usually include a selection of complementary colors, textiles, furniture, accessories, lighting—and sometimes, artwork. If you have personal items you absolutely love, these, too, can make it onto your mood board as one of your sources for room inspiration. “Incorporating random objects is so fun,” says Lynch-Sparks. “A rhinestone necklace you love, a painting by a famous artist, an abstract image from an advertisement and even a picture of a place where you’ve vacationed are all fair game.”
Once you've begun thinking about your elements, laying out your board is an easy, four-step process:
[Image Credit]
Step 1: Pick A Style
When gathering images for your board, start by loosely following a certain style. Mid-century Modern, Hollywood Regency, or Contemporary are all examples of places to start. You can even start by picking a main color that you like and look for images in that vein.
If you have a hard time choosing a particular style at the outset, Lynch-Sparks suggests adding a step and creating a set of conceptual mood boards comprised of three different versions of one space.
Conceptual mood boards don't need to be as comprehensive as full mood boards – they're just a way to feel out different directions to see which one you'll ultimately go with. “That way,” says Lynch-Sparks, “I can narrow things down based on the client’s likes and dislikes and get more precise in round two.” If McKay creates a solely inspirational board, she incorporates more general, abstract ideas such as shapes, textures and colors, rather than images of the actual pieces that are destined to go into the final design.
[Image Credit]
Step 2: Setting The Foundations
Once you've begun thinking of your major elements, the next step is to draw up the foundation of the space. That means getting the floor plan, color palette, carpet, and furniture all laid out.
Knowing what elements to incorporate for inspiration is a vital step to creating a working mood board, but before you can add even a single element to your board, you need to create a floor plan of the space to determine what will and won’t fit.
“Even if you’re just making an accessories mood board,” says McKay, “you still need to know a room’s actual dimensions, because you can’t judge anything based on its photo alone.”
Lynch-Sparks and McKay both utilize AutoCAD drawings to properly lay out spaces in 2-D and 3-D formats. But if you don’t have a background in AutoCAD, Pottery Barn and Google SketchUp both offer free printable layouts based on measurements you plug in.
Now, if you're really feeling old-school and want to lay your analog mood board out around a handmade floor plan, McKay recommends measuring out your room’s dimensions, and sketching them out on a sheet of graph paper. When sketching a room by hand, McKay stresses the importance of remember the Golden Rule of Graph Paper: “Each cube equals one foot,” reminds the designer. An accurate depiction of the room's dimensions means that, “now all you need are the dimensions of your furniture.” At the very least, according to McKay, the actual dimensions of the room should be represented “so you know that everything is the correct scale and has the correct placement in the space.”
[Image Credit]
Step 3: Layering In Fabric and Textural Elements
When making mood boards for clients, Lynch-Sparks and McKay always include furniture, fabrics, rugs, and color palette options for each. “A space’s overall aesthetic is represented by these elements,” says McKay, “and they’re also things that the client can actually go out and buy."
[Image Credit]
Lighting and accessories are the necessary final steps to any complete room plan. Having these elements in place is a great landmark to have for letting you know that your board has moved past the inspiration point and is nearly ready to be implemented in your space.
[Image Credit]
A few things to keep in mind when polishing up your finished board:
Color should be the one common denominator in your scheme. Just because you like something, doesn’t mean it will work with everything else you’ve selected, so once you’ve laid everything out, compare and contrast. If each selection incorporates different, dissimilar colors, you’ll need to step back and find more cohesive images.
Likewise, before making a pricey purchase such as wall-to-wall carpeting or wallpaper, stores realize you need to be sure about the decision.
“Pretty much any store or showroom you enter will give you a sample or swatch of their flooring finish, tile, fabric, rug—you name it—regardless of whether you’re a professional designer or contractor,” says Lynch-Sparks. Just ask! (Note: Some will charge per sample and some won’t.)
Mood boards can start with a paint swatch you love, a piece of textured paper, a memento, and pretty much anything else that makes you happy. Start with just one beloved thing, whether a wallpaper remnant, a dresser, or a travel token, and build upon the room’s scheme from there.
[Image Credit]
Allegra Muzzillo is the owner and proprietress of the Brooklyn-based boutique, You & Yours Fine Vintage. This design maven has been a writer for Real Simple and Cottages & Gardens.
In Part 2 of this 3-part series, we reconnect with our design pros, Shelly Lynch-Sparks, of Homepolish, and Jessica McKay, of Birdhouse Interiors. Having covered the uses and types of mood boards in Part 1, we're ready to take a look at how to create a traditional handmade mood board.
With helpful rules of thumb straight from the professionals you’ll have everything you need to create the perfect mood board to get you started on your best design project yet.
[Image Credit]
The Traditional Mood Board
While putting together a traditional mood board might seem like a time consuming and well...analog way to approach organizing your thoughts, it does present some major advantages when compared to its digital counterpart. Probably the biggest advantage that old-fashioned mood boards have is that they work on a number of levels. While digital boards exist only on the screen, traditional mood boards are a 3D experience that can encompass a number of different elements that you can see, touch and even smell.
This can make it easier to get a sense of what you want the room to feel like and provide additional inspiration that you might not get from a set of images alone.
The primary elements of a mood board usually include a selection of complementary colors, textiles, furniture, accessories, lighting—and sometimes, artwork. If you have personal items you absolutely love, these, too, can make it onto your mood board as one of your sources for room inspiration. “Incorporating random objects is so fun,” says Lynch-Sparks. “A rhinestone necklace you love, a painting by a famous artist, an abstract image from an advertisement and even a picture of a place where you’ve vacationed are all fair game.”
Once you've begun thinking about your elements, laying out your board is an easy, four-step process:
[Image Credit]
Step 1: Pick A Style
When gathering images for your board, start by loosely following a certain style. Mid-century Modern, Hollywood Regency, or Contemporary are all examples of places to start. You can even start by picking a main color that you like and look for images in that vein.
If you have a hard time choosing a particular style at the outset, Lynch-Sparks suggests adding a step and creating a set of conceptual mood boards comprised of three different versions of one space.
Conceptual mood boards don't need to be as comprehensive as full mood boards – they're just a way to feel out different directions to see which one you'll ultimately go with. “That way,” says Lynch-Sparks, “I can narrow things down based on the client’s likes and dislikes and get more precise in round two.” If McKay creates a solely inspirational board, she incorporates more general, abstract ideas such as shapes, textures and colors, rather than images of the actual pieces that are destined to go into the final design.
[Image Credit]
Step 2: Setting The Foundations
Once you've begun thinking of your major elements, the next step is to draw up the foundation of the space. That means getting the floor plan, color palette, carpet, and furniture all laid out.
Knowing what elements to incorporate for inspiration is a vital step to creating a working mood board, but before you can add even a single element to your board, you need to create a floor plan of the space to determine what will and won’t fit.
“Even if you’re just making an accessories mood board,” says McKay, “you still need to know a room’s actual dimensions, because you can’t judge anything based on its photo alone.”
Lynch-Sparks and McKay both utilize AutoCAD drawings to properly lay out spaces in 2-D and 3-D formats. But if you don’t have a background in AutoCAD, Pottery Barn and Google SketchUp both offer free printable layouts based on measurements you plug in.
Now, if you're really feeling old-school and want to lay your analog mood board out around a handmade floor plan, McKay recommends measuring out your room’s dimensions, and sketching them out on a sheet of graph paper. When sketching a room by hand, McKay stresses the importance of remember the Golden Rule of Graph Paper: “Each cube equals one foot,” reminds the designer. An accurate depiction of the room's dimensions means that, “now all you need are the dimensions of your furniture.” At the very least, according to McKay, the actual dimensions of the room should be represented “so you know that everything is the correct scale and has the correct placement in the space.”
[Image Credit]
Step 3: Layering In Fabric and Textural Elements
When making mood boards for clients, Lynch-Sparks and McKay always include furniture, fabrics, rugs, and color palette options for each. “A space’s overall aesthetic is represented by these elements,” says McKay, “and they’re also things that the client can actually go out and buy."
[Image Credit]
Lighting and accessories are the necessary final steps to any complete room plan. Having these elements in place is a great landmark to have for letting you know that your board has moved past the inspiration point and is nearly ready to be implemented in your space.
[Image Credit]
A few things to keep in mind when polishing up your finished board:
Color should be the one common denominator in your scheme. Just because you like something, doesn’t mean it will work with everything else you’ve selected, so once you’ve laid everything out, compare and contrast. If each selection incorporates different, dissimilar colors, you’ll need to step back and find more cohesive images.
Likewise, before making a pricey purchase such as wall-to-wall carpeting or wallpaper, stores realize you need to be sure about the decision.
“Pretty much any store or showroom you enter will give you a sample or swatch of their flooring finish, tile, fabric, rug—you name it—regardless of whether you’re a professional designer or contractor,” says Lynch-Sparks. Just ask! (Note: Some will charge per sample and some won’t.)
Mood boards can start with a paint swatch you love, a piece of textured paper, a memento, and pretty much anything else that makes you happy. Start with just one beloved thing, whether a wallpaper remnant, a dresser, or a travel token, and build upon the room’s scheme from there.
[Image Credit]
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