How To Create A Mood Board

How To Create A Mood Board
How To Use The Mood Board

Putting together a selection of samples before you decorate can help you get your room schemes right first time. Here's how to do it.

By Sarah Warwick

Why Create A Mood Board?

Ready to decorate? Before you pick up your paintbrush, take the time to create a moodboard. It's a great way to check that your scheme works beautifully before you commit to the work and expenditure of everything you'll need for your room.

How Does A Mood Board Work?

A moodboard is a representation of all that you want to use for your colour scheme. Interior designers create them when they're planning new looks, and it's a method that will help you, too. By combining your proposed paint colour, samples of wallpapers, fabrics and flooring, and pictures of furniture and accessories, you can see the elements of your room in one place, try out alternatives, and check your favourites all work together perfectly.

How To Make A Mood Board

To create your moodboard, you'll need to start with a plain piece of board - A3 is perfect, and bigger if you prefer. Then collect examples of everything you might want to use in the room. Buy tester pots for paints, and get samples of wallpaper, fabrics and carpet or other flooring from suppliers. When it comes to furniture and accessories, cut out pictures from magazines and catalogues. You might want to take your own photos, too, of items you see and like, as well as of the parts of your existing room that you're keeping in the new scheme.

Be Realistic

If you're cutting out pictures of rooms that you like from magazines, ask yourself whether a similar scheme would work in your room. Are the proportions of the rooms similar? Would the colours work? Is your natural daylight as good?

Keep Samples Proporitionate

It's important to keep the elements of the moodboard in proportion to the room:

If you're painting all four walls, paint the whole board in the colour you are using. If not, paint a proportionate area. If you're undecided between colours, paint on to a piece of paper, then stick this on the board, so you can swap between the options.

For a feature wall of wallpaper in the room, use wallpaper on a corresponding area of the board.

Reflect the size of your window treatment in the amount of fabric on the board; likewise with upholstery.

Use a photocopier to get the furniture pictures you've cut out to the right size, and make sure accessories are small on the board to represent the area they'll take up.