Decorating Tips & Advice•Home Decor•Resources for Blogging

How to Make a Design Board

May 23, 2020

In this post I will show you how to make a design board with my favourite program Canva. It makes it quick and simple to start designing!

How to make a mood board or design board!

Design or mood boards are a tool that interior designers have used for years to show their clients how home decor elements will look when all together.

The great things about mood boards is they are really easy to make and perfect for home decorators to use when planning their own home decor projects!

What is a design board?

A design board is a photo of home decor, furniture, paint colors etc. layed out for a visual of what a room will look like prior to actually purchasing or decorating a room.

this is an image of a mood board for a bedroom

A design board can be layed out in an abstract way. This means its used more for inspiration and less to see an actual layout of a room.

this is an image of a mood board for a living room — By Sage

It can also be layed out to look like a mock up of say a living room so you can really visualize what your project is going to look like without needing fancy programs.

this is an image of a mood board for a bedroom for a living room — Mood Board by Design loves Detail

Why make a design board?

Design boards are a great tool, when it comes to the planning process of decorating a room or designing a space. They are also great for content creators and bloggers. They show how you would style a room and pull a concept together.

It’s so important when planning a design project to be able to visualize how the design will work together.

There are a lot of expensive and complicated design programs out there! They will allow you to layout a room and fill it with decor. However many of us don’t have the money or time to invest in these fancy programs. A much faster option us using a design or inspiration board to give a visual before starting a project.

Check out some of design boards here. You can also follow along with us on the Liketoknow.it app. I share lots of inspiration boards with shoppable links.

Where to start

To start making a design board, first you need screen shots of the products on inspiration you want to include in your board.

The first place I go to when I am wanting to design a space and create a mood board is Pinterest. I start pinning images of rooms I love on Pinterest and get some ideas for what I want my space to look like.

You can start by researching some vague like country bedrooms and then niche down as you figure out what you like.

After you look through a bunch of country bedroom images you might find you’re pinning a bunch of images that are titled French country bedrooms.

You can create a new search specifically for French country bedrooms for even more specific inspiration. Pinterests algorithm will also start showing you similar posts as you pin images as well!

Finding a focal point

Most often something will jump out at me as a starting point. Maybe I am designing a bedroom and I see a four poster bed frame that I love. Everything I choose will be with this as my starting point.

Its very important to have a starting point or focal point so you do not get overwhelmed when creating a design.

I tend to gravitate towards rugs, or large furniture pieces as my focal point.

You might see an ombre dresser and fall in love with it. This would now be your focal point of you design and everything you choose will be around this specific idea.

Design tip

My design tip when it comes to finding products for your home or mood board is, you won’t LOVE everything.

And thats ok.

In order for your interior design project to look curated. A.K.A like an actual designer designed that space, you need to find a focal point and then choose items that curate the whole look.

Don’t focus on finding individual items that you love love love.

You might love a rug but once you try it in your mood board and realize its too busy with everything else going on you’ll realize you need to search for a plain jute rug.

For some people this is hard because they don’t LOVE a plain jute rug. And they think they need to LOVE every single item the put in their homes. But thats just not going to work in creating a curated design space.

Prioritize the over all look, over your love for each individual item!

Search for products from actual stores

I always encourage people to search for products from actual shops after they have gathered inspiration from Pinterest.

If you saw a four poster bed you love in someones home its now time to head over to google and search for four poster beds. Alternatively you can click the post you saw on pinterest and see if they have the item shared on that blog post.

This is very important so that you don’t base your entire design around a product that doesn’t actually exist and leaves you very disappointed later on.

this is a screen shot of crate and barrel

Gather your product photos

Now that you have inspiration and your focal point start gathering product photos. To do this I take screen shots of each item from the store. On a Mac you do this by hitting shift+command+4 all at once. Then you drag your mouse over the image and it will save to your desktop.

Save all your product images in a folder so everything is organized!

Now that you have your product images it’s time to arrange them all on a mood/design board.

Which program do I use to make my design boards

I have tried a couple different programs over the years. Recently I started using Canva Pro to create my design boards. In this video I go into detail on how to use Canva Pro to create a design board. I highly recommend this program over others because of their nifty new tool for removing backgrounds from you images.