How to Make a Mood Board ┃ Basement Movie Theater Room Inspiration

Have you ever wanted to remodel a room, or give it an updated look but you didn’t know where to start? With millions of choices of paint, furniture, light fixtures, and decor options, it can quickly become overwhelming. Thankfully, using a mood board to narrow down your preferences helps you see what looks best together before you even begin. 

Making a Mood Board is Simple & Helpful

We are currently in the process of remodeling half of our basement into a movie theater room. This is a dream we have had for years, and are thrilled to be able to make it come true! There is a fairly large area in our basement that we are working on. About half of the room will be the movie theater area, and the other half will be bookshelves, storage cabinets, and a kids’ play area.

Remodeling any area of a home can be daunting, especially a large area like this one. I am going to share my top tips for using a mood board to create a space you and your family will love, all while keeping it stylish and functional!

This is Overwhelming, Where Do I Start? 

1. Browse pictures on Pinterest. Pin with abandon! You do not have to like every aspect of the picture, this is more for an overall feeling of the room. After browsing through your pins, look for commonalities. Did you pin a lot of rooms with dark walls? Floral rugs? Printed wallpaper? This will help narrow down the decisions as you continue planning your room.

For our basement, I knew we needed to use dark paint, as that is what works best in a theater room. This helped narrow down the paint choices, and pin rooms only with dark paint on the walls. I decided to go with dark green paint, so I headed to Sherwin Williams and picked up a few (okay, a LOT) of paint chips! After narrowing it down, I bought a few samples to try on the wall. ALWAYS try a sample in the actual room you are going to paint, as lighting can change the look immensely! Yes, I realize these 4 dark green paints look VERY similar in the photo, but I assure you they did differ slightly. 🙂

2. Think through anything that is “set in stone” in your room. This could be the flooring if you are not replacing it, built-in shelves, a sofa you already own and are going to keep, or your favorite art print. If the only thing you are trying to figure out is the paint color, then everything else would be “set in stone”. These will be items to use on your mood board.

In the basement, the only items “set in stone” were that we would be putting in a projector and screen. We were basically starting from scratch. This was exciting as it felt like the first time I could design a room in the correct order, using the ideas and skills I have learned through the years. Therefore, the items I knew for sure were the screen and dark-colored paint. This was a good place to start!

3. Create a mood board to help guide the rest of your decisions. Based on your pinned images and anything set in stone, create a mood board using Canva or PicMonkey. This is where you are going to use your own photos, or find images online, and place them all together on one board. By seeing the elements of the room all in one place, it makes your decisions MUCH easier. Think…replacing the photo of a black sofa with a photo of a cognac leather sofa, rather than RETURNING an ACTUAL black sofa, after you already have it in the room, and decide you do not like it! MUCH easier!

The small amount of time it takes to create a mood board is well worth the effort in the long run. It will save you time and money because you have something to base all of your decisions on.

Below is a mood board I made using an ACTUAL picture of our basement once we painted and put in the flooring. I used this template to test ideas for furniture and accessories.

How to Create a Mood Board

Canva and PicMonkey are the two online design platforms I would recommend using to create a mood board. Canva is a great, FREE option. If you are only using it for personal designs, you should not need the upgraded, paid version. I use the paid version of PicMonkey, as there are additional features. For simple, personal use, I recommend the free version of Canva.

1. Go to www.canva.com and log in with Google, or create an account.
2. In the upper right-hand corner, click the Create a Design button.
3. If you have plans to share your design on social media, or download on a particular size of paper, choose the appropriate image size. You can also create a custom size if you wish. If you are only using this tool for personal use, it does not matter what size you create. I would suggest choosing “US Letter Document” as it is a basic 8.5 x 11.
4. Find images of items you like, based on your Pinterest pins. I always try to find the most simple image of the item possible, not one with a lot in the background.
5. Remove the background by copying the image (Ctrl + C) and pasting (Ctrl + V) on the website remove.bg, then download and save to your computer. Remove.bg will automatically remove the background of the image, making it much easier to move around on your mood board!
6. On your blank Canva design board, click “Upload Media” and find the image you saved to your computer. Click on the image to load it onto your mood board.
7. Repeat this process until you have all of your items on your mood board. Move them around, change the sizes, delete items you no longer like, just play around with it and have fun!

By using my original mood board to guide decisions, I saved time and money.

I am going through this entire process in my Instagram stories this week, so head on over to check it out! I will also save the steps to a highlight reel, so you can refer back to them anytime. This process is much easier to understand when seen through a video versus words. It is actually a pretty quick process once you get the hang of it.

Designing a room can be overwhelming, but using a mood board to help can make it fun!