How to Design an Entire Room Using Picmonkey

Embarrassing moment storytime:  I was a class A dork in middle school.  Might as well embrace it.

The day before my first day of school, I was so anxious that I drew out my wardrobe plan for my first week.  I kid you not.

I sketched (badly) each individual outfit- tops, bottoms, shoes, jewelry, hairstyles, and all for each day of the week.  And when my mother found my fashion notepad, she thought it was the cutest/most hilarious thing she’d ever seen.  It’s so funny to me in hindsight, but really, it doesn’t take much to embarrass a 12 year-old.

Thankfully, those awkward sketches somehow paid off now that I’m checking room makeovers off our house to-do list.

So that whole planning thing?  I still do it.  Only I retired my fashion notepad for something a little more 21st Century.

When we first moved into our house, I was completely focused on just furnishing it.  Then, when I tried to decorate the rooms, I felt completely overwhelmed.  I had so many ideas in my head, and even after finding my style, I sometimes didn’t know the direction I was going in a room design until I didn’t like where it was headed.  Trial and error is a pain in the butt, y’all!  Even if it is a great learning tool.

But once I started piecing together room design ideas onto a mood board?  Boom.  Instant game changer.

And it’s because I started attacking each room with a plan that I finally started liking how they ended up.  (Our breakfast room, master bathroom, and Olivia’s bedroom each had a plan beforehand.)

I shared our kid’s/guest bathroom design plan the other week:

(I’ll be sharing a big change in that space tomorrow too.)

And as I was putting together my design board for our foyer, I thought I’d share the details of my process.  I don’t have Adobe Photoshop software- it seems overwhelmingly complicated and costs a pretty penny.  Picmonkey, to me, is really user-friendly (not to mention free).

I’ll warn you now: Designing rooms like this can get super addictive if you’re the planning type like I am.  It’s SO FUN!  You can make it as simple or as complex as you want.  So here ya go.

How to Design an Entire Room Using Picmonkey:

1.  When you go to Picmonkey.com, the main screen will look something like this.

2.  Start your blank design board by hovering your mouse over “Design” at the top and choose one of the drop-down canvas sizes.  I went with 8×10, but anything works.

3.  Once you open up your blank canvas, you can rotate it by clicking from the “Rotate” tab on the left.

4.  Here’s where the fun begin!  Click on the butterfly icon on the left for “Overlays” and you can start adding in paint colors, flooring, wallpaper, whatever you want on your room’s walls.  Before designing my room, I save images of what I want to use from Google, Pinterest, or shopping sites.

5.  In the “Overlay” tab, click the button on the top of the tab that says “Your Own” to upload images from your computer.

6.  I am planning to add a plank wall in our foyer, so I had Googled “plank wall” to find a good background in helping me visualize.  After clicking “Your Own” overlay, I chose my plank wall image I had saved.

7.  You’ll have to size your overlay how you want it.  That plank wall obviously needed to be bigger.

8.  To make the overlay bigger, click and drag one of the circles in the corner of the image.

9.  I kept repeating steps 5-8 to set up my room’s walls and flooring.

10.  Once you’re ready to add furniture, you can do the same thing as the plank wall.  Upload an overlay, resize it, and position it.

11.  With the furniture image still highlighted, you can see the window pop up.  Click “Eraser” on the right of the window.

12.  You can then erase any background on the overlay that you don’t want.  I adjust the eraser hardness to 100.

13.  This step is way easier in Photoshop, but I’m not one of the lucky people to have that software.

14.  Start adding in wall decor, lighting, accessories, or anything else you want using the same overlay process.

Bam!  A brand new room design!  And also, FYI, a mock-up of our foyer makeover.  We won’t really be using this exact light, table, or lamp, but they’re good examples of thrifted/DIY items we already own.

Runner | Lamp | Table | Pendant Light | Wall Frames

If you want to make the process easier, you can drop images together on a design board like I did our more simple bathroom plan.

Are you excited to go planning-crazy on some room designs?  Or more like sitting there thinking, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”?  It’s probably not for everybody, but it’s great to have a road map.  If you start with a plan, you tend to save money by avoiding any of those trial and error moments.

I’m so excited to tackle our foyer, which currently looks like this:

Are you seeing the vision yet?  Are you loving the plan as much as I am?  Should we make this an adolescent embarrassing story share?  Okay, I won’t make you do that.

P.S. Terrys Fabrics is featuring me for their Designer Insights with lots of info about the behind-the-scenes design process. How cool is that?!

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