The Online Tool We Use to Design Rooms for Clients (That You Can Use Too!)

Here at TLC Interiors, we never complete a room makeover without using an online mood board tool. It’s not only the starting point for all of our designs, but it’s a first step I reckon you should be undergoing when making over your spaces too.

Now, I know some interior designers create physical mood boards. But honestly, we never do. The one time I took an entire tray of physical samples to a clients house they were so confused. Which fabric went where? What would the colour actually look like when applied to an entire sofa? How would the pieces really look side by side? The list of questions went on and on.

The lesson here: an interior design online mood board tool is all you need to get an idea of what your space is going to look like at the end of the makeover. And you don’t have to be a designer or tech genius to create one either, I promise! Let me show you the tool we use that you can enjoy too.

This post is produced in partnership with Style Sourcebook.

An Online Mood Board Put Everything Side-by-Side

Whether you’re designing an entire room from scratch, updating furniture in your current space, or even bringing in smaller decorative moments, you’d be mad not to map them out in an online mood board first.

We use Style Sourcebook for our mood boards because it’s such an easy tool to navigate. You simply save all of the images of furniture and decor from retailer websites and then upload them into the mood board tool. A simple click and drag gets them onto the board, and pretty soon you start to get an idea of which pieces work together side-by-side.

What I find a mood board tool does best is prove to you which pieces don’t work. They tend to stand out like a sore thumb. It’s a great way to put any arguments to bed that you might be having with your other half too.

The other huge advantage of this tool is that you can choose from a large list of house and garden retail products in the Style Sourcebook image library and drag them straight into your board. It’s such a great way to get ideas for your room without having to do all the uploading yourself.

Swap Pieces in and Out with Ease

If you’re tossing up between two armchairs or two coffee tables, for example, just pop them both into the Style Sourcebook mood board and see which one works best. You can easily swap images in and out, overlaying them to get a real-world idea of how they play together.

I do this with my partner when mapping out the rooms in our own home because we have different design tastes (he’s more mid-Century, I’m more contemporary luxe). So seeing all of the furniture and decor together on one board helps us lock in the important design decisions without buyer’s regret.

You Can Link to Products, and Find New Ones

One of the other great things about using the Style Sourcebook online tool is that when you’re uploading images you can pop in the link to the product you’re considering. So when you’ve put all of the furniture and decor onto the mood board and locked in a room design, you can click over to the retail website to place an order.

There’s nothing worse than spending weeks mulling over a mood board, finally deciding on the products you want, but then forgetting which store they came from. Trust me, it’s happened to me before and I’ve spent hours in Google Images trying to find its original source. It’s not a cute way to spend a weekend!

The other godsend is that Style Sourcebook has a vast library of images you can pull from, which have links included in them as well. So if you’re struggling to find that perfect cushion, or artwork, or rug to go in your living room, you can search for it in the mood board tool, and see the product name, price, and website it comes from.

Paints and Finishes are All There Too

Often you might use the online mood board tool, have all of your products side-by-side, but struggle to understand how they’ll work against your flooring or wall colour. I mean, they can look great against a white backdrop, but what about against your beige walls or grey carpet?

Style Sourcebook also has a ‘paints and finishes’ section, where you can pull in paint colours, hard flooring, carpet and more. It’s a really nice way to see how the furniture and decor will look in the room. But, it’s also a godsend if you’re considering new flooring or paint for your space.

Again, the names of all the samples are included, so you can lock in a paint colour, then head off to the hardware store to buy sample pots. I find this component often gets clients over the line if I’m trying to sell them on a new colour for the walls (or, as I often suggest, wallpapering entire rooms – do it!).

Our Mood Board to Makeover Projects

When I use Style Sourcebook to create mood boards for our clients, I tend to upload the actual products I’m wanting to use. Some designers create more abstract concepts with inspiration images, but I don’t want the client to love a cushion that’s not available in Australia, for example.

So all of the mood boards in this post contain local products from our trade suppliers, but also retail stores (I tend to finish off rooms with decor from retailers, especially if the client’s budget is limited).

Now, some products don’t make it into the final room reveal, of course. Clients might see decor or furniture and not quite love it, but for the most part I find using the Style Sourcebook mood board gets them over the line on a concept I’ve created because it makes sense to them.

When all the products are laid out beautifully on the board, the client can see how all of the pieces relate to one another. It’s not some abstract idea; it’s a real-world representation of the end result.

To see more of TLC’s Mood Boards click here.

Sharing Boards and Seeing Other Creations

Last but not least, when you sign up and log into Style Sourcebook, you can see the work of other people who’ve decided to share their boards with the community. You don’t have to do this (you can set your profile to private), but I love the ability to be inspired by what other people are doing in their homes.

There are a number of interior designers and stylists using Style Sourcebook too, so you can get insight into what they’re working on for clients, and perhaps end up with some ideas for your own space.

To sign up for free and get started on making your own interior design online mood boards, jump over to stylesourcebook.com.au and get started.