What's the point of mood boards? Do they really help?

Inspired by my recent visit to Lenleys and its 'mini themed show homes tour', as you may have read in my previous post, I just wanted to explore this a little further. Exactly how helpful is seeing things in context? They are masters at it. I'm not sure how big their Canterbury Showroom is but it stretches to thousands of square foot and is on two levels.

As you wander round, furniture is displayed through a collection of different styled set-ups. Each one is uniquely defined by its own decoratively wallpapered, false wall. The Kensington sideboard, for example showcases the beauty of solid reclaimed wood. It's all natural, raw looking and grainy. It's chunky and gorgeous and makes you just want to stroke it. The keyword here is natural. Hence Kensington stands proudly against a backdrop of impressive botanical garden mural wallpaper. And the piece itself is nestled amongst an array of faux plants, greenery and accessories. It sits perfectly in context. It makes perfect sense. If I bought Kensington this is how it would look its best.

It's not just about upselling

Thankfully, I know a little bit about retailing and the power of visual merchandising. You can't fool me Lenley's, I know what you're trying to do to my subconscious. I know you're on the upsell. I need to buy Kensington's backdrop wallpaper and all the accessories too don't I? I get it and actually, I don't mind at all. It helps seeing things in context. As an interior designer, I do it too. Not everyone can see how they can make things look their best. People need help visualising. That's why we make mood boards and use fancy software to draw floorplans and 3D room elevations. It helps people get it.

It's about visualising

This is why in my new little business I'm keen to focus on the importance of helping people visualise. Because it's so important and it's so hard to do. Particularly these days when we are all constantly bombarded with visual stimulation all day long. Scrolling through Instagram feeds and Pintrest can leave you feeling completely overwhelmed.

So let's cut to the chase. Let's take two more of Lenley's lovely sideboards and use them to showcase my Snipit Room Design Service Ironville sideboard, another beauty as you can see and Bloomingvilla (apologies Lenleys, I'm not sure this is the right name).

Snip It Room Design Service

Let's remodel both sideboards in the fancy 3D software so we have a good visual representation of them and drop them into place. We can then play around with the colours of the paint behind them and the accessories we use to dress them. To me, they both needed greenery and both had an oriental feel about them. Hence the orchid plant found online at, Ambience Deco and the beautiful heron artwork on the wall from Desenio.

Putting things in context

Now we really get to understand how they'd work. We've defined a style and it's given us a framework to make the rest of our design decisions around. Let's add a little extra meat on the bones by finding that background paint colour, courtesy of Lick and their fabulous spectrum of muted colour paints, and place images of all the actual products together. Like this....

Option 3 - approved.

Now I can see this scheme works. And that's the beauty of fancy software and moodboards. They help you see how it would all look. This is the missing link between seeing something either in store or online, liking it, but not being sure if it's right. This proves it is. It gives you a really good starting point from which to develop a full room design scheme. Now, I can go shopping!