How to Make a Mood Board for a Room Design and Kitchen Refresh Plans

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A step-by-step tutorial depicting how to make a mood board for planning a room makeover in your house to create a simple and seamless design process.

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I’m just checking all kinds of little questions off of the list over here this week. A few days ago it was something as simple as how to make your bed to look plush and designer-y. And that sparked me wondering what other little decorating details I should talk about to help y’all in your own homes.

One question I got from a few of y’all in the Bless’er House Budget Decorating Community was how to make a mood board for designing a room makeover. (P.S. You can sign up for the community here, if you want to join.)

And since we already have our kitchen on the makeover docket…

…this seemed like the perfect time to share my process.

If you don’t already put together all of your makeover ideas onto a Pinterest board or save images in a folder on your computer desktop or create a mood board before starting on a room refresh, I HIGHLY suggest you start doing it.

Ever since starting the mood boarding process a couple of years ago, I can’t even begin to tell you how much clarity and confidence it has given me and Robert when jumping into a room makeover. It helps us get on the same page, see the direction together, and know how all of the elements will look together so that we’re hit with fewer surprises than if we were just wingin’ it.

In the past, I used Polyvore, but that website is no longer around. So lately, I’ve been making mine on PicMonkey. (It’s $5 a month, unfortunately, but you can get away with using the free trial version for mood board creating.)

How to Make a Room Design Board with Picmonkey:

1. Go to PicMonkey and hover your mouse over the “design” icon at the top of the screen.

2. Click the “blank canvas” option that pops up.

3. Click “print” in the drop-down menu under “blank canvas” and click the size of the image you want to use for your mood board.

4. After you click the image size you want, this screen will show up.

5. On the left side of the screen, click the butterfly icon for overlays. And click the “add your own” button.

6. Click “my computer” from the drop-down menu.

7. Prior to creating my mood boards, I save screen shots or jpeg images of items I plan to use in my room makeovers and put them in a folder. So I open the folder and click the images I want to use in the mood board.

8. After clicking the first image you want to use and “open”, it will show up on your blank page.

9. Click and hold the corner of the image on the small circle and a double arrow will pop up to let you shrink or enlarge the overlay image.

10. Repeat the process by adding more overlay images, clicking the middle of the overlay so that you can drag it to where you want to place it on the page.

11. For any images that have a large background that you want to get rid of, click the overlay image and a pop-up will show up on the screen. Click the “eraser” tab in that pop-up and adjust the size of the eraser you need. A circle will show up on the screen that you can click on the background of your overlay image to remove any part of it that you don’t want to show on the mood board.

12. Then just click and drag the overlay image where you want it like you did the other images.

13. To arrange the order of your overlay images so some of them lay on top of others, click the icon that looks like stacked squares on the toolbar at the bottom of the screen, and a “layers” pop-up will appear. Select the overlay image you want to manipulate, and choose an “up” arrow to stack the image on top of others or a “down” arrow to push an image underneath other overlays.

14. Once you’re happy with everything on your mood board, click “export” at the top of the screen.

15. Title it, size it to the dimensions and quality you want, and save.

Done!

So now we have our kitchen refresh plan…

1. White upper cabinets – to still keep the space feeling open and bright

2. Pressed “tin” ceiling tile backsplash – which we installed over the existing tile using inexpensive PVC sheets last summer until we can take on a full gut job in a few years when we open up a wall

3. Deep green lower cabinets – to add a dose of color and high contrast to the existing super neutral, slightly bland space

4. Antique brass track lighting – to replace our existing 80s-90s track light above our peninsula. For some reason, it’s slim pickin’s when it comes to track lighting, and this was one of the very few antique brass ones I could find. Thankfully, it works with the rest of the space.

5. Antique brass and white mini pendant light – to hang over the sink in place of the existing can light

6. Benjamin Moore Simply White – to use on the older yellowed upper cabinets and trim

7. Sherwin Williams Billiard Green – to use on the lower cabinets

8. Benjamin Moore Swiss Coffee – to continue the creamy white color we’ve already used in the living room and breakfast room to make the rooms flow together

9. Neutral wool flat weave rug – to make the existing beige floor work for now while still adding in a subtle pattern. Wool repels stains and spills better than other fabrics like polyester and cotton.

10. Antique brass sink faucet – just to tie in the other brass elements and also because our existing one drives us a little crazy

11. Antique brass knobs and pulls – We will spray paint our existing hardware for an easy, quick update.

So that’s where we are! Can you envision it yet? We currently just put the lower cabinet doors back on after painting over the weekend and are cranking out painting the rest of the upper cabinets and spray painting hardware to have finished in the next day or so (if the rain will go away long enough to let us finish).

It’s going to be the perfect punch this kitchen needs and I’m DYING to see it come together!

Are there any other little decorating details you’ve ever wondered about? I hope to share more about these things more often since it’s something I never think about. Ask away in the comments!

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