Discovering Your Style: How To Collect & Organize Your Design Inspiration With Intention
Stop randomly cluttering up your cloud drive and Pinterest boards and start saving with intention
There’s a critical step in the design process between finalizing a Floor Plan Design and developing the design details, elevations or selecting materials - and that step is to refine your vision for the project, aka to create a Vision Board or Inspiration Board. This visual collage represents the aesthetic direction (look and feel) you want to take your project. But before doing this, you first need to gather inspiration images for your particular project if you haven’t already.
Whether you already have a collection of saved design images or not (its never to early to start), researching and gathering up inspiration images is an essential step for discovering your style and creating a vision for your project. In some cases this collecting starts long before you’ve even defined your project. You might later discover many things you saved just won’t be relevant to your new space(s). That’s ok, when the design process actually begins on your project you’ll only use the most relevant images to create a vision board. Gathering inspiration becomes much more focused once you have your new Floor Plan Design completed.
COLLECT INSPIRATION IMAGES WITH INTENT:
Visual research is a way of discovering what inspires you and what styles you’re drawn to. Inspiration images you collect are a lens into what you like and don’t like - this is so important when you’re striving to design a home that reflects you and your story. My approach is not only to focus on collecting images of things you love in home design and features you dream of having, but also most important to include things that speak to you emotionally, things that trigger good memories and bring you joy whether abstract or literal, indoors or in nature. Focus on how things make you feel and on things that you have a positive reaction to even if you don’t know why.
I think Pinterest is the best tool for collecting visual inspiration. It’s the no.1 visual search engine, it’s free and allows to you save images from anywhere on the internet, uploaded from your desktop of mobile. Alternately you can save images to Google Drive, but I feel if Pinterest is where most searches end up taking you it’s also convenient to archive what you like right there.
TIPS FOR SAVING AND ORGANIZING YOUR IMAGES
If you don’t already have a Pinterest account or Google Drive, set up an account on either one for free. Then create some pin boards or folders to categorize what you’re saving, this will make it easier to edit down your vision later. You can Install the Pinterest app on your mobile, and you can also install the widget tool into your browser extensions to easily save directly to your board of choice while browsing. Here are 8 categories that I recommend you start with, add more as you like, break it down to specific rooms if needed. If you don’t plan on saving images regularly you can use fewer folders/boards.
Rooms I love - Images of spaces and rooms you love (separate from kitchens and bathrooms)
Millwork Details - (doors, mouldings, trims, staircase railings, beams, fireplace mantles, panelling, builtins)
Colours & Materials (material palettes ie; flooring, tile, marble, stone, brick, paint colours)
Kitchens - including cabinetry and fixtures
Bathrooms - including cabinetry and fixtures
Exterior
Things I Love - (random things you love, things you collect, things that trigger great memories, passions,)
Art & Decor Inspiration
Impotant: Resist pinning anything and everything you like. Try your best to Pin to your board categories especially if you’re saving a lot of images.
VISUAL RESEARCH - BE INTENTIONAL WITH WHAT YOU SAVE
The biggest mistake people make is saving anything and everything they like, soon they’ve amassed hundreds or thousands of images. That’s fine as a past time but not helpful for a specific project. When it’s time to focus on an upcoming build or renovation, you need to be more specific. If you have old boards,,, start fresh ones or cull the old ones out. Think of your upcoming project and only save things that are relevant to your goals for it, even if you don’t have the floor plan design or new layout figured out yet. This is about doing visual research to help you discover your style and aesthetic preferences. To get the most benefit from your visual research here’s my best pinning advice.
IMPORTANT TIPS:
Focus on images that are relevant to your house type and architectural style
Search out images of spaces that have similar physical characteristics as yours (low ceilings or vaulted ceilings, layout similarities etc.)
Focus on images that are relevant to your home’s geographic location and setting
Collect inspiration that is relatable to your real lifestyle not a fantasy one
In summary KEEPING IT RELEVANT is the key advice. If the Images you’re collecting have little relevance to your actual project or aren’t aligned with your lifestyle they’ll clutter your design vision instead of bringing clarity. Treat this activity as visual research to help you find the design aesthetic you desire and is appropriate for you home so you move forward to that reality.
If you’re on Pinterest you can find me there too. I’m in the process of doing some needed reorganizing myself, adding a new series of style boards, and adding more to our Good Design resources and guides board in the coming months. Follow along if you don’t already - and save the above image as a future link back to these tips.
If you need help transforming your vision into the home you love or designing the kitchen or Bathroom your’ve been dreaming of, we have various level of design packages to get you there, learn more below.
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Blog Author
Carol Reed |InteriorDesigner
Carol has been a practicing Interior Designer for over 28 years, focusing on residential interiors since 2005 as Principal of Carol Reed Interior Design Inc. Her work has been featured in Canadian House & Home, Style at Home and Canadian Home Trends magazines among others and frequently contributes as a design expert for their various editorial content. Honoured to be included in House & Home Magazines Top 100 Canadian Designers list.
