When it came to renovating and designing his studio apartment in Melbourne, Colin Chee had some clear ideas in mind, including what he wanted to change, remove, and replace, and how he wanted to organize the space. The first source of inspiration was a room-dividing modular shelving system from one of his favorite designs featured on NTS — El Camarin.
Creating a Mood Board
Colin built his mood board in Milanote, but there are many online tools to choose from, such as Pinterest and Canva. He liked the existing Milanote interior design template and how easy it was to drag and drop images, links, and videos from websites or platforms like YouTube. He suggests doing some research and trying out different options to ensure you select the tool that best suits how you personally like to build and interact with your mood board.
According to the report, Colin especially loved Milanote’s ‘web clipper’ extension, which brings in items from websites with one click.
Collecting Details
Use your mood board to collect textures, colors, or specific living room furniture pieces, such as sofas for compact living rooms. The more specific and detailed you can be, the better. Colin knew he wanted to incorporate some bamboo texture and a rice paper light shade, for instance, so these were early additions.
Importantly, try to avoid collecting lots of images of rooms or complete designs that you like the look of. Instead, focus on the details within these designs or rooms, such as colors, patterns, textures, finishings, furniture, and furnishings, and perhaps even how these are working together.
Organizing and Editing
Once Colin had gathered all his inspiration and imagery of what would be staying in his space, he started to organize his mood board and edit as needed – removing any duplicative content or anything that wasn’t quite working. He might choose to add some annotations with text and arrows, like Colin did, and even create some color swatches from his mood board additions.
A Visual Shopping List
For Colin, his mood board acted as a visual shopping list and reminder for things he’s looking for. Having redesigned his previous small apartment, he knew it would be an exercise in patience, and that the mood board didn’t need to be realized instantaneously, but instead could be brought together over the period of a year or more, much like designing a tiny home for a family.
Colin’s dog, Shiro, can now be found relaxing in his light, bright, and highly functional updated home. The Milanote mood board had helped Colin achieve his design goals, and he was able to enjoy the process of creating his ideal space.
