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Creating a mood board is an essential step in the design process. It helps you clarify your vision, communicate your design intent, and ensure a cohesive look throughout your space. But before we dive into the “how,” let’s clear up a common mix-up: mood boards and materials boards are not the same! While both serve important roles, they solve different challenges.
What is a Mood Board?
A mood board is a curated collection of images that visually represent the look and feel you want to achieve. It captures the essence of your design direction, from colour palettes and textures to lighting and overall ambience.
To get the most out of your mood board:
- Start with an overall mood board for your project.
- Then, create individual boards for specific spaces (e.g., kitchen, master suite, bathroom).
- Annotate your images to clarify what you love about each element—this helps bring your ideas into focus.
Pro Tip:
If your mood board lacks cohesion, keep refining it. The goal is to ensure that your home has a consistent theme, rather than a mix of conflicting styles. A well-thought-out mood board helps tie everything together seamlessly.
How to Make a Mood Board
The tools you use don’t matter as much as the process itself. Here are some great options for creating your board:
- Canva
- PowerPoint
- Style Sourcebook
- InDesign
- Photoshop
Style source book is generally Rebeka’s favourite for moodboard layouts, while our Head of Interiors Rebecca Papas like to use PowerPoint or Canva, so it’s really just personal preference. Find what works best for you!
What About a Materials Board?
A materials board takes your vision a step further by identifying the actual materials you’ll use in your project. While you can create digital versions, we always recommend assembling a physical materials board—colours, textures, and finishes can look very different in person.
Where to Start?
We like to begin with flooring and build from there, constantly referring back to the mood board to maintain cohesion. For example, here’s how we structured the Cliff Street materials board:
- Tiles: RMS Traders
- Timber: Godfrey Hirst
- Stone: CDK Stone
From there, we layer materials for each room:
- Bedrooms: Carpet, Curtains, Paint, Joinery, Handles
- Bathrooms: Tiles, Benchtops, Tapware, Joinery, Paint, Handles
- Kitchen/Lounge: Windows, Paint, Timber, Joinery, Stone, Tapware, Handles
To add character, we might also include hero pieces like feature lighting or statement furniture. Here’s what we have planned for Cliff Street:
- Couch King Living 1977 Range. Colour – Leura S Pinot Noir
- Rug – King Living Daylesford 300×430. Colour – Latte
- Coffee Table – King Living Heritage. Size. 90mm and 120mm (2 x Tables). Colour – Natural Oak
Bringing It All Together
As we refine our materials board, we check for:
- Cohesion (Do the tones, colours, and patterns blend well?)
- Contrast (Are there enough variations to keep things visually interesting?)
- Alignment with the Mood Board (Do the selected materials match the original vision?)
If something feels off, we revisit the mood board and make adjustments. The goal is to create a space that feels thoughtfully designed and harmonious from start to finish.
Happy Designing
Designing a home is an evolving process. While you can absolutely do this yourself, your design team can also guide and refine your vision. Sometimes, the more we immerse ourselves in the process, the harder it is to edit and streamline our ideas—but that’s all part of the journey!
Good luck, and most importantly, have fun creating a space that truly reflects you.
If you still think you’d like a hand with this process – we can help! Book a chat here to tell us all about your project and how we can help with the Interior Design for your next project.
Excitingly, we have more incredible interior design insights and helpful case studies in our latest edition of Quarters, where we focus on all things Design! It is a beautiful reference guide that you can come back to time and time again. Printed locally, on accredited recycled paper, showcasing stunning imagery of our very own BuildHer and DevelopHer projects and suppliers – Quarters is so pretty, it’s coffee table worthy!
You can order your copy here!
