How to Build a Kitchen Mood Board

Redesigning a kitchen is a big task, and can be expensive. Without taking care, it can be easy to get lost in the trends and the latest must-have designs, resulting in a result that you may not be happy with in the fullness of time. A mood board is a great way to mitigate that risk, allowing you to dream and experiment without committing time, money and labour to building it in reality.

Giving you ultimate flexibility to dream and to go wild with the aesthetics, a mood board will help you circle in on the style you really want, while giving you a place to put good ideas that you may otherwise forget.

But where to start..?

There is an inherent danger in going the mood board route. Having the whole of interior design just a simple internet search away, and without the pressure of reality guiding your decisions, why would you ever settle on anything?

We have some tips to keep your mood board focused and rooted in reality, but still giving you the space to dream and experiment.

Sketch Out Your Space

Having your kitchen in front of you can help to keep your dreams a little more grounded, showing you the space you have to play with. It sounds rudimentary we know, but measuring your kitchen, even roughly, and keeping a floor plan to hand when looking at options can really help to visualise the final result. It also stops those interior design dreams from running headlong into the fantasy realm; though we wouldn’t begrudge you dreaming of the day they might be possible…

Doing this will also help you think about the workflow of your kitchen. How will you use it? What needs to be kept accessible and what needs to be tucked away? How will this perform in the real world? All this saves a headache later, and keeps your decisions realistic.

Thinking about the space you have, what style do you think would work with your home? A sleek, minimalist look with all rough edges hidden away? A rustic country cottage with exposed wood and ceramics? Perhaps an industrial, chef-focused design that’s focused on the act of cooking itself? Having an approach in mind is also crucial to avoid endless chopping and changing, focusing your mind on the right choices and decisions that matter.

Gather Your Inspiration

With reality out of the way, it’s time to dream! Design magazines, social media, lifestyle photoshoots, kitchen showrooms – all can be your portal to the kitchen you want. Keep your options open and look to unconventional places to find inspiration. Whether your dream kitchen is in an already established style or will take pieces from different aesthetics, now’s your chance to go wild.

Pulling together samples can help to bring dreams into reality. From paint colours to materials, from picking out handles to window-shopping for appliances, thinking about where to source all the pieces you need will start to give you a realistic sense of what’s needed. Hardware shops or online stockists (such as French Furniture Fittings!) are a great place to start when looking at practical details.

These days, designing a mood board is easier than ever. Using free, online digital tools such as Pinterest or Canva has revolutionised the process, allowing for easy searching and saving, along with non-destructive editing. They require a little learning, but you can be up and running in just a few minutes, learning the subtleties as you go. It also allows you to share it with friends or professionals, gathering opinions on style and feasibility.

Of course a physical “board” is still a great way to model your kitchen, in fact we’d argue that it helps you to “see” your future kitchen in a way that software misses out on. Both have their place, being hugely useful and flexible places to workshop your ideas before putting them into action.

Explore Your Ideas

We’d also recommend theming ideas together – for example, you might have a “handles” section” or an “electricals” section, to ensure you don’t get lost in the maze of your own creativity. Stay organised so you can spend more energy on creating, and less remembering where you saw something…

Final effects such as lighting design or floor covering can be enormously important, but are often missed when thinking about everything else a kitchen needs. Surprisingly, this can also extend to crucial appliances, with their aesthetics at least being an afterthought. Dodge this iceberg by incorporating them into your mood board, and your overall design; your kitchen will be so much more coherent and usable as a result.

If you’re dreaming of a new kitchen, and don’t know where your ideas may take you, a mood board is a great place to fire up your imagination. You may even find that your inspiration takes surprising turns, leading to a design that you never imagined!

If you’re searching for inspiration, why not explore French Furniture Fittings’ range of high-quality, hard-to-find knobs and handles – getting the details right can lead to something much bigger.