How to Make A Mood Board For Interior Design (2024)

Sharing a step-by-step tutorial on how to make a mood board for interior design projects!

Mood boards are so essential when designing a room in your home!

They are useful for interior and exterior updates, home renovations and room remodels!

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Mood boards are so fun to make and a critical step for success – whether you are refreshing a room, renovating a kitchen or designing a room from scratch!

I create a lot of mood boards for my interior design clients!

Today I’m sharing the easiest and fastest way to make them!

I’ve created a step tutorial on how you can create your own mood boards – so follow along!

First let’s go over the basics of mood boards so you can understand exactly what they are and why you should create them:

What is a mood board?

A mood board is a visual presentation, a ‘collage’, that consists of images of furniture, lighting ect, plus text to demonstrate a room design.

A mood board can be for any room, for interior and for exterior spaces.

Mood boards can also be called design boards.

Why make a mood board?

Mood boards are essential in the design process!

They demonstrate the style, feeling of a room as well as the colors, fabrics and materials used in a room design.

They are also editable so changes can be made until the final design is achieved.

Creating a mood board before purchasing furniture, lighting and decor will save you money and time.

The mood board is the place to edit everything until the right look is created.

It’s also essential to creating a cohesive, pulled together space.

Mood boards are helpful if you are:

• building a new home
• renovating a kitchen or bathroom
• buying new furniture for a living room
• refreshing a bedroom
• designing an outdoor patio
• selecting new flooring for your home
• picking paint colors for a home
• choosing new shingles to coordinate with your home’s exterior
• painting the exterior of your home

How do you create a mood board?

Mood boards can be created in many different ways.

Here are some of the methods:

• Microsoft Word
• Picmonkey
• Photoshop
• Mood board Apps

Today I’m going to show you how to create a mood board in Picmonkey – which is a user friendly tool that’s perfect for beginners!

How to make a mood board for Interior Design

Picmonkey is an easy to use design and photo editor that can be used on your computer, iPad or through a mobile app on your iPhone or Android phone.

It’s not free, but it is inexpensive – and there is a FREE 7 day trial!

1. Collect and save the images you want to use in the mood board

The first step in mood board creation is to collect the images that you want to put in it.

Find the images on Pinterest or on the web and save them to a folder on your computer where you can easily find them.

I recommend that you name the folder with the name of the room, so you can easily find it later.

To save an image on the web, you can right click on it and click ‘Save Image As’. Give the image a name then save it to your folder.

Saving an image will be different for every type of computer and device.

You can Google how to save images for your specific device.

2. Create Your Picmonkey Account

• Go to Picmonkey.com and create your account.

I highly recommend creating a Pro account because it has a background remover tool, so you can instantly remove the background of an image!

Removing the background of an image is essential for layering items on top of each other, such as layering pillows on a sofa.

The Pro plan has other amazing powerful design tools too!

How to Create your Blank Mood Board:

• To start a new design project in PicMonkey you can either use one of their templates or start with a blank canvas. I recommend that you create a blank canvas.
• Click on the ‘Create New’ button on the top left hand side, by the Picmonkey logo. When you click on the ‘Create new’ button, a dropdown menu appears called ‘open image from’.

• Select the second option in the list called ‘Blank Canvas’

• A new window appears. Go the top right and type in the pixel length and width. I recommend 2200 x 1600 pixels.

• Click on the blue ‘Make it’ button on the top left side. This will create a large rectangular mood board.
• This is what your empty mood board will look like:

• Give your mood board a name so you can easily find it later. For example you can name it ‘My Living Room Makeover’.
• To name the mood board – Go to the top middle of the screen and click on ‘Blank 2200 x 1600’. You can type in the name of the mood board ‘My Living Room Makeover’ ….or whatever name you want to give to it.

• You can also use one of Picmonkey’s templates to create a mood board collage for Instagram, Pinterest, LiketoKnow.it, Etsy and other social media platforms using their templates, which are perfectly sized for these different platforms!
• Go to the Picmonkey home page and scroll through all of their templates to select the one you want. Click on it and a blank mood board will appear in the correct size for the platform.

3. Add images to the mood board

Next step is to add the images to the mood board to create your room design.

How to add images to the mood board:

• Click on ‘Photos and Video’ tab (left side) then click on ‘add photo or video’. A drop down list appears.
• Click on ‘Computer’

• Select the images on your computer, that you’ve saved in your folder, to add them to your mood board.
• The photos will appear under the ‘uploaded’ tab (under ‘add photo or video’).

• Select all of the images you want to add to your mood board.
• They will all appear under the ‘uploaded’ tab.
• Starting with one image, click on it to add it to the mood board.
• After you’ve clicked on it, it will automatically be added to the mood board.
• It will appear with a blue outline and blue circles at the corners and each side of the blue lines.

4. Remove the background from images

For a professional looking moodboard it’s important to remove the background from images.

This will give you a true look and feel of the room design.

Removing the background will also allow you layer images on top of each other, such as layering pillows on a sofa.

To remove the background from your images:

• Click on the ‘Remove Background’ tab (it has a scissors icon), located on the left menu.
• This will instantly remove the background of the image! I LOVE this feature!
• Repeat the steps to add images – until you have all of the images uploaded and added to the mood board.
• Use the ‘Undo’ and ‘Redo’ tool at the bottom of the screen to make changes as you go along.

5. Resize and move images

Now it’s time to move your images around the mood board and resize them!

To move an image:

• Click on the image and drag it to the location on the moodboard that you want it to appear.

To resize an image:

• Click on the image – you will see a blue rectangle outline with blue circles on the corners and sides.
• Click on any corner circle and drag it so the image becomes bigger or smaller.

6. Arrange the images into a collage

• Add all of your images to the mood board following the above steps.
• Remove the background, move and resize according to how you want the mood board to look.

Shop this living room – click on the images below:

7. To layer, crop or delete an image:

• Right click on any image in the mood board (in the image below I clicked on the wood end table).
• A drop down menu appears.
• Select ‘move layer to front’ or ‘move layer to back’ to move it to the front or back, to layer it.
• You can also select ‘Crop image’ to crop it.
• If you want to delete the image click on ‘Delete layer’.

8. Saving your mood board

The beauty of Picmonkey is that it automatically saves as you work! I love that!

When your design finished and looking the way you like it you can move it to your computer if you’d like.

To move your mood board to your computer:

• Click on the button on the top right side as shown in the image below.
• You can save your mood board as a .jpg, .png, or .pdf file.
• Also you can select the quality of your graphic.
• How you save your mood board is completely up to you!

9. Help and support for Picmonkey

Another reason I love using Picmonkey is that they have a lot of helpful articles that can give you advice if you get stuck!

To access help and troubleshoot:

• go to the top right where you’ll see a blue question mark with a blue circle around it.
• click on this blue question mark button.
• A ‘How can we help you?’ drop down menu appears.
• You can type in your question in the search bar or click on their articles, guided tour, tutorials or troubleshooting page for more help.
• In this drop down menu you can also submit a support ticket to Picmonkey’s support team if you’re stuck. They are very helpful and quick to reply!

10. Your mood board is finished!

Now you are finished making your mood board!

You can go back and make changes to your mood board, move items, add more items ect.

You can also make a copy of your mood board so you can make changes to it, but still keep the original intact.

Picmonkey is really easy to use – just take some time to play around with it and you’ll get the hang of it in no time!

I love using Picmonkey to:

1. Create 2D design boards for my design clients!

Here’s one that I’ve recently completed to give you some inspiration.

2. Make design boards for my LiketoKnow.it page

I love creating mood boards – like this kitchen styling mood board for my LiketoKnow.it page!

Did you know that my LiketoKnow.it page is a fabulous place to shop my favorite furniture and decor finds?!

Follow me on LiketoKnow.it!

Kitchen Styling and Lighting Ideas

Shop these kitchen styling ideas! Click on the images below.

3. Make mood boards for my Instagram page

I also make moodboards for my IG page – to showcase room design inspiration.

Shop this bedroom – click on the images below!

4. Create design boards for the rooms in our home that we plan on updating

Here’s an example of a bedroom refresh I’m working on.

Shop this bedroom – click on the images below!

Have fun and enjoy making beautiful design boards for your spaces!

If you have any questions about creating mood boards, please leave a comment on this post!

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• How to Mix Design Styles So They Don’t Clash!
• 5 Best White Trim Paint Colors
• Top 50 Bestselling Paint Colors At Sherwin Williams
• Our Dark to White Kitchen Remodel
• 7 Ways To Make A Small Room Feel Larger Instantly!
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• Sherwin Williams Evergreen Fog Color Of The Year 2022
• 5 Ways To Create A Whole Home Paint Color Scheme
• How To Arrange Furniture With An Open Concept Floor Plan