mood board interior design living room

hi, i'm nathan turner, here at my store in los angeles, and i wanted to talk about mood boards. when i'm approaching a room, i will often times start with a color, or a piece of tile, or even an image of something that i saw on a trip, and so i like to lay it out, and put it on a board, and then start building upon that image, or images that i've started with. mood boards are a really good way to edit your process, because one of the hardest things, i think, about decorating is anticipating what things are going to look like, i find this so often with my clients that they love a color, or they really like a fabric, but they just can't visualize what it's going to look like when it's splashed all over a room.

mood boards are also a really great way for you to play with ideas, and to have time to see what things are going to look like, and there's no rush with a mood board, you don't have to do this in an afternoon. a really important aspect of doing a mood board is bringing in the fabric and color and textures that you want to implement into the room, and pottery barn's design services are fantastic because they have benjamin moore paint samples, they have carpet samples, and fabric swatches. you can even get a wood finish, so you can see how it relates to wood, and existing pieces that you may have. it's always great to start with an electronic layout of the room. this is really important for

furniture placement and furniture scale, which is something that a lot of people get wrong. it's fantastic because you can do it at home with pottery barn's room planner, it's going to keep you really organized and it's also a way to keep you really focused on the scale and layout of the furniture. and then you print it out and put it on the board so it relates back to everything, and you can kind of have an idea of which fabrics are going to go on which pieces, and it's all laid out right there for you. it's kind of the most important step. color is so difficult for most people, it's one of the most common questions i'm asked as a decorator, is how do you anticipate what a color is going to look like?

i think mood boards are a great tool for this because you can see color in relation to other things, your existing furniture, furniture that you are going to be purchasing, you can see what color is going to look like on a big scale. so i'm doing this living room mood board, and i started with two things, a photograph of me in mexico city in front an amazing tiled wall, that i just could never get out of my head, and then, these african beads, which i really love the color combination. so these are a unique item that you usually wouldn't associate with an interior, but they inspired me. the beads have this great blue with a little splash of red,

and i love the pattern on them. i was inspired by images of greece and southern italy with those tan and white buildings with those bits of blue painted on the roof, and the blue ocean. they, oddly, really relate well together, and i like the idea of this room, even though it has an ethnic flare, it can still be american feeling, because what is more american feeling than the color scheme red, white, and blue? and that's what we basically have here in a really chic, sophisticated kind of way. these are things that made me happy, so by starting that way, you're going to layer on that, and every time you walk into that room, it's going to give you the same feeling,

you're going to have colors and textures and things that are pleasing to you aesthetically. so the most exciting part is when the mood board is finished, and now it's time to actually execute this room. you have your guide, and now you're able to start the room, everything's chosen and laid out for you, and that's the fun part.

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