A few people asked for a tutorial for how to make a mood board in Canva. I’m going to walk you through the step-by-step process that you can do in the free version.
I’ve included as many screenshots as possible but if you want to see the video there is a link below.
First thing you’re going to want to do is capture a bunch of screenshots or snap photos of things that you want to put into your room/mood board. I keep these mood boards and I change them over time as my rooms change. I add things and swapping things out to see how they look.
Step 1 – Open a Template
The first thing you’re going to want to do is start with a brand new template. You can pick any size you want. If you want to do it horizontal or vertical, it doesn’t matter. I usually choose the Pinterest size because I usually like to pin my designs.
Step 2 – Adding Things Using Uploads
I add my paint color to the template. You can usually get a sample of the color from the manufacturer’s website. And that just helps with setting your color scheme. You upload the screenshot of your color by clicking “upload”.
You can upload any file. All your uploads will be housed in the upload queue on the left side.
In this case, the mood board that I’m going to make is something that’s from all IKEA. The reason why I’m getting to that is because someone commented that everything at IKEA is the same style. But these boards will illustrate how you can really source a traditional bedroom or a modern bedroom.
3. Adding and Manipulating Items On Your Board
I picked an oriental style rug from IKEA. I took a screenshot of the rug and uploaded it to Canva as noted above. When you click on the item Canva pulls the item into the board.
There’s little symbols below the items you add. You can use this to rotate, move and resize any item you pull into your board.
I picked this bed from IKEA. I took a screenshot of the bed and I uploaded file.
You can see it brings in all the white background, but I don’t want that because that makes my image too full of white things. So I click “edit photo”. Then I click “background remover” and it removes the background.
If you have the free version of Canva, you can go to a web site called remove.bg and upload your photos there first. This program does an even better job of removing the background.
I like to put a window into my mood boards. Window coverings, especially in a bedroom, all lots of texture and also control light.
You will notice that each time you upload new items they appear in front of things that are already on your board. The window is in front of the couch instead of behind it.
You can rearrange the order by clicking on position, and then the layers tab. There you can grab any layer move. You can move the window behind the bed.
I continue to upload images of furniture, fabrics and accessories until I’m happy with the way it looks.
Mood Board Limitations
The one thing that a mood board is not good for is judging the scale of items. There’s no way to represent the actual scale of the things that you add to your board.
Make sure when you are sourcing your room, that you do a space plan with the bigger items. It’s not so much important with smaller items like a nightstand as it is for the size of the rug for the room and the size of the bed for the room.
Those larger things you should test out in a space planning app.
You can either do it on a piece of paper, which I have a free furniture tool to help you.
Pottery barn has a free tool you can use and even if you don’t want to buy the items you can pick similarly sized items just to see how they fit in your room.
How To Use Your Mood Board
If I wanted to take this shopping with me I would download it and share it to my phone.
I can take it shopping if I’m shopping for things, then I sometimes pull out my mood board. If I’m buying things secondhand on Facebook marketplace. I will often take a screenshot of the item and drag it into my mood board to see how it goes with my room.
That’s the basics of how you use Canva to make a mood board.
