Mood Board for Interior Design | A Complete Guide

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All homeowners wish to make their house or apartment a comfortable and attractive living area. In fact, most consult interior design experts who come up with dozens of ideas to refurbish their dwelling. However, creating a stunning interior decor involves paying attention to several factors. For instance, one has to work with multiple themes, colours, fabrics, wall decor, furniture, lighting, flooring, and accessories to achieve an attractive and balanced look.


Designers often find it tough to communicate their ideas because interior design choices are quite personal. Using the Mood Board in interior design is one way to address this challenge.

Mood Board

Designers and creative professionals have always counted on mood boards in interior design to creatively display their ideas to clients. It helps them present their design and decor idea with clarity and also gets the creative juices flowing. Further, it helps the client visualize how their space will look after the refurbishment project is complete. The client feels that he/she is an active partner in design process.

So, let’s have a view on what exactly is interior design mood board and how you can benefit from it. You will also find simple tips to create a mood board.

Interior Design Mood Board – What Is It?

  • Mood board is a creative collage of ideas and concepts in the form of images, text, and samples of home decor objects, composed by the mood board creator.
  • Designers use it to help clients visualize their ideas. Thus, the mood board in interior design serves as a visual tool to inform others of the overall design the interior decor expert is trying to achieve.
Mood Board collage
  • Mood boards allow us to collect our thoughts, feelings, ideas in one place, helping designers to form a clear concept of design, clarify doubts and confusion if any, and come up with more creative ideas.
  • It also helps designers store details pertaining to client preferences, such as their favourite colour or theme.
  • A picture is worth a thousand words! Designs are tough to be expressed in words. That’s where mood board helps. It displays what the end product will look like, leaving enough room for changes and updates as per the client’s choice.
Mood Board Illustration

As mentioned by Garner, Steve & McDonagh, Deana, (Published in Problem Interpretation and Resolution via Visual Stimuli: The Use of ‘Mood Boards’ in Design Education), “while mood boards have purpose and importance they should also be effective, innovative, and fun to use, providing a powerful tool or technique for communicating a statement or focus of a project.”

Interior Design Mood Board – Where to Get Inspiration?

For many designers, the toughest part of creating a mood board is to find inspiration. But it’s quite easier than we think!

  • Interior decor books, magazines, websites, and documentaries can offer awesome ideas for your sample board. Go through them to get inspiration related to the themes that are in trend.
Source of Inspiration for Moodboards
  • Source of Inspiration for Moodboards and Ideas

    Inspiration can also be found in nature, artifacts placed in a restaurant, shop, or a museum, and in patterns around you.

  • If you like the look of something, remember to take a picture of it and pin it on the mood board. If it doesn’t make sense to you right now, you can always refer to it later.
  • The “Best Home Designs” at Gharpedia presents you the trending designers’ album with thousands of images.

Interior Design Mood Board – How to Start?

  • To make a mood board you need to understand the client’s preferences and the project requirements.
  • Let’s say, you are making a mood board for the interior decor of a luxurious villa or bungalow. To begin with, you will need to know what the client expects. Further, you will have to use high-end material and pictures to describe your ideas.
  • Traditionally, designers used physical material and samples to create mood boards that clearly expressed their ideas to clients. However, modern designers are also using innovative apps on their laptops and tablets to express their creativity. In fact, many home decor experts are using the style sourcebook that helps them visualise interior designs using an online shareable mood board.
  • Another important factor you need to pay heed to is the presentation of the mood board. You can do this in two ways:

a) Collage: In this, all you need to do is to create a collage of all your interior decor ideas and pictures. There’ no specific format or layout to be followed.

Mood board options for Interior Designs
Mood board options for furniture

b) Template: Here, you have an organized chart of colour palettes, materials, and pictures coming together in the form of a formal design. Once you create your own template for the interior design mood board, presenting your ideas becomes comfortable and quick.

  • Begin by creating a sample board and keep updating it as and when you think of new ideas.

Interior Design Mood Board – What to Include?

  • Your ideas and concepts
  • The colour palettes and combinations you will use in the designing process.
Mood board Collage with colour templates
  • Samples of the materials, fabrics of curtains and upholstery, lighting, and flooring tiles to be shown to the client. This will help experience the quality of the products used.
  • Pictures that represent the basic ideas and inspiration behind your proposed design.
  • Pictures and illustrations of all the desired interior options, helping the client make a choice. It also helps designers play around with colours and themes. Various options of interior designs and their illustrations are available at Best Home Designs on Gharpedia.
Items Moodboard Design

Interior Design Mood Board – Benefits

  • Mood boards in interior design offer designers a fun way to express their creativity. Hence, compiling ideas on the design mood board hardly feels like work.
  • The informal design format helps designers explore different layouts and styles without any limitations.
Mood Board Template
  • The interior design mood board keeps our ideas together for future reference.
  • It helps determine the project requirements and plan for it in advance. For instance, once designers know what materials and colours they will be working with, they can plan the execution of the project easily.
Benefits of Mood Board
  • It keeps the revision cycles to the minimum. The client and the designer are on the same page, reducing confusion and unnecessary hassles.

Considering the various benefits, it has to offer and how easy it is to create an interior decor mood board, every designer should use it to present their ideas in an effective way. Do you have innovative ideas for creating the interior design mood boards? Have you made any mood boards for your home’s interior decor project? Share your story with us. We would be delighted to hear!Hope the article on mood board was helpful to you. So, have you thought of implementing it? Here we are to provide you articles on home décor and furniture where the information regarding various ideas is provided. You can take those ideas, make a mood board and implement them in your homes.

Also Read:
Decorate your Home with Best & Trendy Furniture Materials!
Varieties of Designer Wall Clocks for your Home Decor!
10 Outstanding “Vase Fillers” Ideas for Your Home Interior!

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