Hi all! Working on all those restyling options in the  last post was great fun. I worked on 3 different schemes for a single room, and I usually use a very simple tool to help me do this. I make a mood board.

Styling a room sounds simple enough. Change some furniture, get new curtains and upholstery, add a wallpaper, and you have a new room! There are so many options available, in different styles, colours, size and design, that it is easy to work on any particular theme or colour scheme that you want and get exactly what you are looking for.

But this can also get very confusing and intimidating. You walk into a furniture store and see 4 sofas that you like… which one should you choose?

You love those embroidered cushion covers… but will they match the upholstery? And HOW do you make sure that the wallpaper and the curtains go with each other!? This becomes more complicated because all the stuff that you liked… it’s from different stores. You’ve chosen 10 elements for your room, from 5 different stores.  How do you bring them all together to figure out what goes with what? This is where it helps to make a mood board.

What Is a Mood Board? 

A mood board is a collage of pictures and samples of all the elements of your design. It brings together all the different elements that you found in the various stores on to 1 piece of paper, or 1 screen. This helps you to get a feel of what your room will look like before it has been put together. It is especially helpful if you aren’t good at visualizing things. Once you’ve got everything down on paper to see, you don’t have to imagine it. It is also very useful when more than 1 person is involved in the design decision. For example, the meaning of ‘bright’ might be totally different to you and your spouse… or the teenager in your home. But once you have it printed, you’re all on the same page!

So Let’s Make a Mood Board:

When you start decorating a room, you usually have some design concept in mind. It could be a style or colour scheme you have chosen, or even a piece of art that you want to build your room around. Pinterest is a great place to look for inspiration. A search for ‘bedrooms’ will get you thousands of pins to choose from with so many different ideas.

Save the ones you like, and you can eventually narrow down to the ‘look’ you want for your space.

Window Shopping the ‘Look’:

Let me pick the ‘Teenage Girl’s Room‘ from the last post, and make a mood board for this ‘look’.

I’ll also go with a painting I already have because it seems to fit in with the ‘look’ pretty well.

I decide to use this over the bed, and begin to build my room accordingly.

I take a printout or my ‘look’ and my painting, put it in my handbag… and go window shopping! Whenever I like something, I make sure I take pictures. If it’s something I see online I just save the link and a photograph. If it’s something I see in a store, I use my phone to click! At furnishing stores I ask for fabric swatches to take home.

Putting Together the Mood Board:

Then I take a printout of all these pictures.

I cut them up into separate photos, and line up all my photographs and samples.

Now that all the choices are in front of me, I can start juggling them around to see what combinations I like best.

I think all these cushion covers are bringing out the colours of the wallpaper beautifully, and would look great on the plain white bed.

Then I begin to filter out what I don’t like, to narrow down the list. For example, this wallpaper is really bright and quite busy. So the printed sofa is completely out… that’s too much pattern for 1 room. I like the blue cushions on that sofa, but it doesn’t really go with the wallpaper. So I’d rather just stick to the plain orangish-red sofa here.

Till finally I have my winning combination!

This way it’s easily possible for the whole family to pitch in to finalise the design, even if you haven’t all gone shopping together. You can all sit together, go through the pictures and see what everyone likes before coming to a decision.

So the next time you’re putting together a room, make a mood board!

Shop the Teenage Girl’s Room:

In the mean time, here we have it. The look…

… and the final mood board for the Teenage Girl’s Room.

| – 1 – Dark Green Cushion Cover | – 2 – Orange Cushion Cover | – 3 – Red Cushion Cover | – 4 – Light Green Cushion Cover | – 5 – Painting – from existing collection | – 6 – Orange Blinds | – 7 – Green Blinds | – 8 – Wallpaper | – 9 – Day bed | – 10 – Rug | – 11 – Wooden Shelves | – 12 – Mirror | – 13 – Wall Clock | – 14 – Study Table | – 15 – Study Chair | – 16 – White Side Table | – 17 – Sofa | – 18 – Side Tables |

I only window-shopped online for this post, so you can easily check out all the ‘finds’ by clicking on the links above. Happy shopping!

Until next time,