Coloursmith
Journal
August 31, 2021
Creating a colour palette from a mood board.
Whether you are looking to design your home or a space for a client, creating a mood board is an effective method of putting visual details together in a cohesive vision. Mood boards allow you to explore your creative side with no limits on what you choose to inspire you from colours, patterns, interior design images, fabrics and furniture.
They are also particularly useful in communicating a vision when there are multiple decision makers involved. For example, one person’s "retro theme" may be vastly different to the next’s. Once you have created it, you can refer to it whenever you are looking to add a new element into the space, to ensure it fits with the original aesthetic.
Finding Inspiration
Not sure where to begin creating your mood board? Start by brainstorming words and feelings you or your client would like the space to evoke. Once you have a shortlist, you can start collecting links and images that feel aligned to these feelings and phrases. Our tip? Cast a wide net of inspiration and then narrow down your final mood board collection. Create folders online and offline to help keep track of your reference shots. Websites such as Pinterest will help you streamline this process of saving and sorting reference images into collections.
Refining your colours
Unlike a design mood board, a colour mood board is a distilled version of the overall vision that focuses on your colour palette. How is this done? A selection of colour swatches, or photos of anything that reflects your colour inspiration from landscapes to products, will help you see how colours interact and which shades and tones look best together. While building your mood board, there are a few things to take into consideration:
Consistency – If you are creating a colour palette for a brand, using the same brand colours throughout the space will help create brand awareness for instant recognition.
Creating a mood – How do you want a space to feel? Narrow down the feelings you want people to feel in a space and create a colour palette that works to evoke that feeling. For example, yellow is normally associated with energy and happy emotions.
First impressions – If you want to be subtle with your use of colour while ensuring it is still conveying a mood, opt for accent colours that people might not actively notice. Want a calming space without going all out with blue tones? Instead, opt for cushions, hand towels, paintings with blue features. This way you can still get the same effect without overwhelming the space.
Highlight your personality – If you or your client is unsure of what they want their space to evoke, try thinking about you or your client's personality. Design is often a good way to showcase the extension of your personality.
Bringing your colours to life!
Now you have narrowed down your colours and how you want the space to look, it’s time to get painting. But how do you match the exact colours from your mood board? Coloursmith tools are perfect for pinpointing an image or object for the closest match every time. Once Coloursmith has matched your colours, you can take the generated QR code to a trade store for a paint pot or order a sample pot directly.
Envision, plan, select and paint!
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