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Ekta Kohli

Verified Expert in Interior Design

With over 11 years of experience in interior design and kitchen design, Ekta has worked on a wide range of projects from residential to commercial. She is currently leading the design team at Infinite Ideas Interiors, India.

Home » Design Ideas & Inspirations » How To Create Amazing Mood Boards For Interior Design?

Mood Boards for Interior Design

Mood Boards are not like your ideal whiteboards or sample boards. It is a creative canvas where you can ideate your designs, patterns, and even content. It is also known as an Inspiration board. They are not just great for brainstorming ideas but also to showcase creative depth. 

So, if you are wondering how to present a massive stack of content for a busy stakeholder or have a centralized board for your design elements, then mood boards are the best option. It’s a collage of all your creative thoughts that helps you transit from ideation to the first draft. 

Many believe that mood boards are only for designers or content creators, but every person in the creative field can use them. According to research, mood boards are an in-discipline and design rationale approach that brings together heterogeneous objects to establish a cluster of possible relations.

Mood boards are essential to your design strategy. For interior designers, mood boards offer a great deal of clarity on the design front. If you are wondering why you need a mood board, here are some reasons.

Read also – 10 Best Mood Board Software and Apps

interior design mood boards

Image Credit: eclectictrends.com

Why are mood boards important for interior designers and clients?

An interior designer can leverage mood boards to showcase different elements of design to clients. It includes various aspects like style, mood, textures, pieces of furniture, fixings, accessories, etc.

The journey towards a complete design draft for any interior designer begins with a concept board. Let’s take an example of an interior design project for a house that will accommodate two young children and two adults.

Read also – Importance of Mood Boards In Interior Design

Image Credit: fiverr.com

If the clients want a nordic theme for their interiors and have never experienced it first hand, then a mood board can offer them insight. A concept board is the starting point with an inspiration of scattered ideas that you can bring together through the mood board and allow clients to visualize.

A mood board offers,

  • Enhanced visualization
  • Complete design detail
  • Presentation of each element
  • Establishes a relative connection between design elements

You can either create a digital mood board or a physical one. However, creating a digital mood board is easy and takes less time. It also reduces the need for physical props to represent design elements for your mood board. Here, we have discussed some of the best software and pro tips to create amazing mood boards.

Read also – How To Create A Bedroom Mood Board Design?

5 Best Powered Software to Create Mood Boards for Interior Design:

Creating a digital mood board can be incredible for interior designers. Interior designers and professionals leverage various software to create visual layouts that help visualize the space.

Foyr Neo is the one-stop solution for all your digital interior designing needs. It allows interior designers to plan, design, and render creatives within minutes. The best part about Foyr Neo is its web interface which provides interior designers all the necessary functions related to creating digital mood boards. You can also install the software for ease if you wish to.

create mood boards in Foyr neo

Foyr Neo is a powerful tool that offers rendering of images in 4K quality, making it an excellent option for professionals to execute client presentations. Furthermore, it has a user-friendly interface making the transit from conventional interior designing tools to advanced software much smoother. In addition, several intuitive tools make designing easier to learn, even for beginners.

It enables interior designers with functions to create, design, and render 3D spaces. So, you don’t need to invest in different software for individual tools that offer either designing or rendering.

create renders in Foyr in 25 mins

Further, it offers a massive catalog of more than 50,000 render-ready and pre-modeled designs. Apart from ready-to-use templates and designs, you get real-time data for different creative projects.

Visualizing any interior design with this software is possible with its ability to create a 360-degree virtual tour of your designs. The premium plans start from $49 per month, but you shouldn’t miss out on the 14-day trial we offer.

Read also – 5 AI-Powered Interior Design Software Tools

AutoCAD LT is one of the most popular software for interior designers, architects, and engineers. It allows interior designers to draft designs and document accurate 2D drawings. In addition, there is an entire suite of tools and features to edit, annotate, or create sketches. The user interface of Autodesk AutoCAD LT is intuitive, and it also does not require any installation as you can use it through the browser. 

AutoCAD LT is a high-performance tool that offers cloud functionality and is compatible with major operating systems like macOS or Windows. It lets you create and edit drawings offline through the app on a smartphone or tablet. 

It charges around $200 per month for the premium account. You can use the free version, but it offers limited functions.

SketchUp is a modeling suite for interior designers that can easily create 3D models for conventional architecture with modern furnishings. You can create detailed drawings in 2D and convert them to 3D models. Customization of the models is accessible through the addition of different layers and styles.

SketchUp allows interior designers to generate creative representations of design elements by integrating several virtual reality apps like Microsoft HoloLens, HTC Vive, and Oculus. The mood design maker will enable your client to visualize every detail of the design. SketchUp offers a desktop software application, web interface, and even unlimited cloud storage. So, you can design, store, and collaborate with other teams in real-time.

Designing professionals can analyze not just the interiors but also energy usage of buildings, ventilation, daylighting, etc. It offers a web-based version for the designers, which is free but limited in functionality. However, you can sign up for a premium plan at $100 per month.

Read also – Top 10 SketchUp Alternatives for Designers

SketchUp

Infurnia is an interior design cloud-based software that allows professionals to create designs and collaborate with other designers in real-time. It is more of a building information modeling(BIM) software than CAD. Infurnia resembles Revit software in many of its functionalities.

infurnia

However, the scope of the software is limited to interior designs related to houses or apartments.

If you are looking for software for residential interior design with the ease of co-designing, then Infurnia can be the right option. It offers a 14-day trial, and once the trial period is over, you can opt for premium plans starting at $50 per month per designer.

HomeByMe is a freemium interior design software that enables designers to create, render, and present design ideas. It offers a free version with limited functionalities, but if high-quality rendering is your only requirement, HomeByMe is an excellent choice. The software has a simple UI, and so you get more area per screen for designing with a toolbar that helps in switching from 2D to 3D.

With this mood board maker, you can have complete zoom control over the design to enhance the minor details. You can also leverage different tools to add furniture, structural elements, dividers, create screenshots, and render objects.

The software is only a tool for designers to create mood boards; creative inspirations need more than just a digital tool. So, here are 15 pro tips to create amazing mood boards for your creative projects.

Read also – 15 Best Home Design Software

home by me

14 Pro Tips to Create Mood Boards for Interior Design:

1. Take Cues from Brand Personality

Establish the brand image through the inclusion of typography, icons, fonts, and colors that relate to the brand’s personality in your mood board. The image below shows how the home kitchen’s mood board is established using different warm and earthy color palette schemes, images of the restaurant, and clean font.

Read also – The Ultimate Guide To Build Interior Design Brand

mood boards via brand personality

Image Credit: Pinterest.com

2. Relate to People

Add images of real people or visuals that are a perfect fit for social media. It helps to bring the human element on board when you are mood boarding.

create mood boards with human element
Image Credit: Pinterest.com

3. Parallel Concepts

The collage of two or more concepts together for a mock-up of the proposed design is common among many designers. You can always create parallel designs through mood boarding for the same project. Here you can see two different designs where the first one represents a vintage style and the second one shows an urban theme.

create mood boards with collage designs
Image Credit: Drible.com

4. Period-based Moodboards

If you are designing a mood board based on a specific period in time, you can add different elements related to the same era. Here, the retro-based theme mood boards showcase different elements like public transport, retro cars, classic colors, and other elements.

Read also – Colors in Interior Design

perioad based mood boards

Image Credit: Dribble.com

5. Limitless Approach

When it comes to the creative process of designing beautiful mood boards, don’t limit yourself. You can add as many elements to your mood board as you want, but it should not be too cluttered and should add meaning to the design.

limitless approach

Image Credit: Pinterest.com

6. Going Corporate

If you want to create a user interface design for a website or an application, using an organized style for your inspiration board can help. Here, you can see how each element, like fonts, button layouts, shapes of icons, and even typography, is presented in an organized manner. Interior designers can use such a method of styling for an office design process.

Read also – 15 Best Tips To Create A Kitchen Mood Board Design

Image Credit: Dribble.com

7. Core Elements

If you are creating a corporate-style mood board, it becomes essential to cover the core elements during the design process. For example, a UI mood board should have well-planned elements like fonts, menus, icons, colors, and others. Keep the selection of these to a maximum of 3 styles, as too many elements can get heavy on the eyes.

core elements to create mood boards

Image Credit: Dribble.com

8. Material Design

If you plan to showcase different materials used in the furnishing and how that will impact the overall design, use little crops of textures and patterns. These material crops designed through a mood board maker or paired with an actual image will help your client understand the final output better.

Read also – How Interior Design Influences Your Mood?

create mood board with material design

Image Credit: Pinterest.com

9. Explainer Moodboards

If you want to showcase a step-by-step guide of an idea, then adding some words to the design will not hurt. See how detailed is this mood board here that allows the client to envision the entire interior design.

explainer mood boards

Image Credit: efarchitettura.com/portfolio/moodboard

10. Drawing Design Inspirations

You can always enhance the mood board by drawing design inspiration from real-life activities and other external elements like nature, experiences, and even social media. As you see in the image below, the web design mood board has customized fonts and logos according to the visual inspiration taken from an adventure trip.

Read also – Best Inspiration Ideas for Interior Design

mood board design inspirations

Image Credit: Dribble.com

11. Communicating Ideas with Images

Communicating your ideas through mood board designs is one of the best ways to let your clients grasp the project’s theme. Images allow a person to visualize the feel of the subject. As here with this image, the musical theme is showcased through different guitar images and clears the intent of rock music.

ideas with images to create mooe boards

Image Credit: wrayward.com

12. Consistent Style Templates

Maintain consistency in showcasing certain elements to make your mood board templates more visually appealing. Here you can see the icons of different elements in sync with the main color scheme of the mood board template.

Read also – Difference Between Mood Board and Concept Board

design template to create mood boards

Image Credit: Dribble.com

13. Product At The Center

If you are designing the mood board for a specific product, try and keep it at the center. Things at the center demand attention. If you want something to be the focus, keeping it center is the way to go.

add product in the mood boards

Image Credit: Pinterest.com

14. Theme-based Designs

Theme-based interior design mood boards help you co-relate the elements, materials to be used for the project, and color from the entire palette. So, the entire design works in harmony to bring the core theme to the forefront. As you can see here, the nature-based theme of mood boards comes alive through elements like a leaf, earthy colors, and wooden materials.

Read also – Instagram and Pinterest Marketing for Interior Designers

theme based designs

Image Credit: Pinterest.com

Conclusion

Designing mood boards does not need any pre-defined norms or rules, making it an exercise more fun for designers. They can experiment with creative ideas and present them in unique ways. The advantage that a digital mood board maker offers over a physical one is the ability to brainstorm more. As physical mood boards need real elements to add to the concept boards for presentation, they can take more time to create.

So, whether you are an interior designer or any other designing professional, here we have discussed some of the top tips to create amazing mood boards. Still, wondering how to get started? Check out Foyr Neo’s intuitive tool with a 14-day free trial today!

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