We’ve been doing a lot of talk about sharing designs for upcoming projects (currently our upstairs office!) and one staple we use to visualize a space are design boards. There are a ton of tools that can be used to create design boards (think Canva or Photoshop), but one of my go to’s is a simple process in Microsoft PowerPoint. Something you likely already have on your computer, which makes it even easier!
PowerPoint has a simple photo editing ability that can be used to remove photo backgrounds and layer objects – this helps me see how the colors and shapes of my designs will look together.
The Process
- Open a new PowerPoint template
- Find the product images online that you want to use in your space – ex: for a dining room you may do a dining table, chairs, chandelier, curtains, rug, artwork, sideboard, etc.
- Use a snipping tool to screen capture images of the products, one at a time – copy and paste each image into the PowerPoint template
- Double click on each image that was pasted (one at a time) and select “Remove Background” on the Picture Format tab – this tool helps remove the background coloring of each image so the product looks like it is floating on the screen, which enables you to layer images (like a dining table on top of a rug)
- This will highlight all areas in purple that are to be removed – toggle back and forth between “Mark Areas to Keep” and “Mark Areas to Remove” to carefully select the portion of the image you want removed, when you are done select “Keep Changes” – the image will now be able to be floated on top of other images
- Continue this process for each image added
- After all of the image backgrounds are remove you can use the Picture Format tab to move images either to the front or back, which enables you to chose how you layer the images, like how I have layered the dining table and chairs on top of the rug
Design Boards Compared to the Actual Room
Creating design boards helps me bring my vision to life and keep me focused on my goal for the room I am working on. I use them for almost every project I work on! Below are a few examples of the design board I created and the final image of how the space turned out in real life!
Main Bathroom
Nursery
Upstairs Bathroom
Main Bedroom
