Behind Our Red Door

Sharing our family life and lessons learned as we raise 3 little kids in the Midwest.

How to Design Rooms on Your Computer

I’ve been getting some questions about how I put together my room mockups for the spaces we’ve been working on in our house—and ones still to come in the future! It really helps to see different furniture, flooring, paint colors, etc. together before making a decision and it REALLY helps me get the roomie on board for another project. 😂

This one started with a picture of our empty living room!

I totally get wanting to make your own! But I’ll say very clearly for all to hear that I am not an interior designer—just a former journalist with a real love of all things home. ❤️The following are my little amateur hacks for designing spaces…

For my own mockups, I’ve been using the very few things I know about Adobe Illustrator to create revamped versions of my dining room, kitchen, family room, etc. Illustrator is a design application that I pay for, annually. The mockups take me forever, but I think there are some easier ways to see different pieces/decisions together that don’t involve buying a new application and learning how to use it. Let’s talk through some of your options.

A great starting point is always a picture of your space completely empty (if possible) and taken in natural light. Below, you can see a picture I took of my dining room at night that makes everything look yellow because of the lights I had on. I was too impatient to wait until morning and that is a bummer for me now. 🤷🏻‍♀️Having a blank slate–aka a picture of your empty space–is easily the best way to overlay furniture, light fixtures, flooring, etc. and get a true idea of what things will look like IN your home.

See how taking a picture with lights on/at night, instead of in daylight, makes a difference?

Making a mood board is also a phenomenal and much easier way to see your choices altogether.

Making a Mood Board in PowerPoint

Before you even start, collect a number of screenshots of what you want to see. Helpful Tip: If you pick product images with white backgrounds, your life will be much easier later. Examples of this would be paint color  (google “Sherwin-Williams Alabaster” for example), rugs or flooring, light fixtures or fans, a specific wall treatment if that applies, any furniture, etc. If you can’t find an image of something you want to include, I recommend looking for something similar to include.

To take screenshots of only the little area of your screen that you want to see in your mood board later, use the shortcut Command + Shift + 4. Meaning hold all three of those keys down at the same time and then drag your mouse to capture only a specific area of your desktop.

  1. Start in Microsoft’s PowerPoint with a blank slide.
  2. Drag in your screenshot of the paint color you’re hoping to use (if you aren’t using a picture of your empty/mostly blank space to use).
  3. Stretch the image of the color to as wide as your PowerPoint slide, then crop it down to the size of the slide, and right click to find “Send to Back.” Now, you’ll have the paint color as your starting point.
  4. For everything else you want to see in the space, drag in your screenshots and look up to the Picture Format menu at the top of the app. You should see a button on the far left that says “Remove Background.” Click that and fiddle around with your image until you have a cut out version of the fixture, furniture, rug, etc. that you want to see.
  5. Play around with the arrangement of your items by bringing some to the front, sending some backward, and so forth using the drop-down menu you’ll see when you right click.
  6. When finished, go to file, export, and then choose which type of file you’d like it to be. I like PDFs or JPEGs. Don’t forget to save the Powerpoint, itself, too!
Great example of what I would call a mood board. This was my starting point for the nursery!
Simple Alternative Options

If you want to see a new paint color in your space, I’d recommend trying out Sherwin-Williams’ free Color Snap Visualizer. You can google this and access it online or download the free app. It allows you to upload a picture of your space, then choose a paint color and see it on your walls instantly! It’s not a completely foolproof app, but it can definitely be helpful.

I’ve also heard that Flooring America has a similar tool for flooring! Google Flooring America My Floor Style to find the desktop version, but you can also try out the app version on your phone. It’s super similar and requires a picture of your space, too.

Lastly, taking product screenshots and just pulling those into Microsoft Word is helpful in itself. Without removing backgrounds or anything, you can play with the crop of the image and arrange them differently to have a better idea of what things look like together. That, alone, can be very helpful—and easy! ☺️

This was done without a photo of the room. I had shots of the furniture I wanted to see and the color. Then, I drew shapes to create the look of board & batten, the monitors, etc.

Happy Home Designing, friends. 😘 If you run into any pain points while trying out these methods, I’m happy to help (if I can). Direct messaging me on Instagram or shooting me an email are both great options to get my attention in a hurry!