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Are you an aspiring Airbnb host starting a vacation rental business or planning to remodel your rental home? If you’re a visual person, creating an Airbnb mood board is the perfect way to envision what your place could look like.
Think about it—a mood board helps you capture everything you want and need for your space in one place, from furniture and accessories to color schemes, materials, and textures. It will also help you tell a story, set the tone, and create an ambiance you want your ideal guests to experience when renting out your space. A well-thought-out mood board will give you the confidence to move forward with your project and help you avoid decision fatigue.
How to Gather Inspiration for Your Airbnb Mood Board
If you’re still deciding on the style you want to go for, fear not! Start collecting images of anything that catches your eye and resonates with you. Just keep in mind that you’ll want to consider your ideal guests and the location of your property before creating a mood board.
For example, a beachfront property that caters to families with kids might not be the best fit for an urban, industrial style or an ultra-glamorous, sleek design.
One fun way to gather inspiration is by creating a physical mood board with magazine cutouts, fabric swatches, paint chips, and other materials and decorations that strike your fancy. Look at other Airbnb listings and jot down notes on anything that stands out, such as colors, furniture pieces, and accessories.
Like most people, I like to keep track of the inspirational and reference photos I find on Pinterest. This one is my favorite because I can share a secret Pinterest board with my client, and we can pin ideas to it as we go along. I tell my clients to go to design magazine accounts to start, like Elle Decor, Dwell, Domino, House Beautiful, and Architectural Digest. Often, they have boards organized by room, style, or trend, which can help the process feel a little less overwhelming.
The Different Elements of a Mood Board
If you’re new to creating inspirational mood boards or want to make sure you’re not forgetting anything, here’s a quick list of everything you could include in your Airbnb mood board:
- Photos of anything that evokes a feeling – they don’t have to be interiors
- Color palettes and combinations, again, can be anything from a landscape to a piece of art
- Surface materials like flooring, wall treatments, and wallcoverings
- Wall art and sculptural objects
- Furniture, accessories, textiles
- Lighting fixtures and window treatments
- Architecture details and shapes
- Decorative elements and objects
Creating an Airbnb mood board is a great way to ensure that all the design elements of your vacation rental align with your vision and create a cohesive style.
Putting Your Vacation Rental Mood Board Together
Look at the images you’ve collected with a critical eye
After some time, you’ll start noticing the patterns among your images that will help you shape the style of your rental – and this is where you’ll turn all your inspiration into a tangible vision for your space.
Let’s say you want to give your beach vacation home a makeover. What kind of images are you drawn to? Pops of bright colors, beach-inspired décor, natural materials like rattan and wicker furniture, and decorative fixtures with a coastal feel? These answers will give you a better idea of whether you want a boho chic, contemporary, or Mediterranean style.
Once you have an idea of the look and feel you’re going for, I recommend creating a mood board or two for each room. In Pinterest, you can do this by creating folders within a board.
Having a few choices for things like a particular piece of furniture or wallcovering at the beginning is fine. Your mood board is a tool to help you narrow things down.
Cut and paste, literally or digitally
When it comes time to put all the images together, there are a couple of ways to do it. You can go old school with foam board, printed images, and samples. This approach works particularly well for materials boards so that you can see and feel samples of fabrics, tile, wood, and paint swatches.
You can also create digitally with an app like Canva, Adobe Spark, or Photoshop, depending on what program you already know and are more familiar with. Putting boards together like this takes a little more work since you have to save and upload the images you like, but it gives you a good sense of how things look together – an important part of the process.
You can also use Pinterest boards as your actual, well, boards. Just make sure you edit these so that they show only your selections for the space. Otherwise, your boards will be more confusing than helpful.
Move stuff around, add and delete
Once you have all the elements, it’s time to refine the mood board. Remove anything that doesn’t fit into the overall style or story that you want to tell with your space. Once you’ve got it all together, adjust until you have a nice balance of contrast, color, and scale.
No rule says you can have only one mood board for a room. When I design for clients, I present different boards for different phases. In the first phase, it’s a concept board: photos that show how the space should feel. This helps determine what style I’ll be using for the project. For a remodel, I’ll show a materials board and the floor plan, which illustrates the recommended surface materials and installed lighting. Finally, in the furnishings phase, I’ll show a board illustrating the selected furniture, rugs, portable lighting, window treatments, and accessories. Depending on whether you’re remodeling, furnishing, or just updating a few things, make as many boards as you want to see how everything will look together.
Consider getting feedback
One simple step in creating a mood board for your vacation rental – that is too often forgotten – is seeking feedback. Once you’ve created your mood board, show it to friends or family members for input. They may have suggestions that you hadn’t considered, or they may spot a detail you overlooked. Or you could book a call with a design expert to get professional input with new ideas.
By the end, you should be left with a curated, focused mood board (or boards) that will serve as a roadmap for your entire design project. You can use it to pick out furniture and décor items for your rental or to communicate with vendors and discuss specific details. In other words, turning your vision into reality!
Chill Out, It’s Just a Mood Board
You’ve spent so much time crafting your dream vision board, only to discover that a lamp that fits perfectly into your dining room design is out of stock. Now what?
Don’t panic.
A mood board is meant to be a launching pad, not a strict roadmap. It’s there to guide you and give you a sense of direction, but don’t get discouraged if every detail doesn’t come to life exactly as it appears on your mood board. Remember, a mood board is just a starting point, so breathe easy and enjoy the process!
What if Interior Design is Not Your Strong Suit?
Don’t be discouraged. There are plenty of options to help you create the perfect vibe for your rental, even if interior design isn’t your strong suit – like these done-for-you Etsy mood boards where you can shop the entire look!
Besides, you could always opt for virtual interior design services designed to help Airbnb and vacation rental owners create a custom look for their space. If you need inspiration, advice on how to DIY your rental design, or even a curated shopping list with all the pieces you’ll need to give your rental an amazing look, you’re welcome to book a complimentary chat with me.
Are you ready to bring your vision to life?
