Start your Search for DIY Design Inspiration Using These 5 Great Design Resources.
DIY Design Inspiration
The DIY home-decorator has become increasingly design-savvy over the past few years. I give credit to the popularity of new and ever more creative design and DIY Home Decor shows on TV, and of course credit goes to the rise of the internet. The prevalence and accessibility of DIY and interior design blogs has equipped the amateur with an incredible amount of information to work with…not to mention that many of these blogs are of professional quality or better, and most are free.
This has spread the prevalence of the mood board. Sometimes called an inspiration board or an idea book, the mood board is a collection of items, drawings, and photographs that represent things that inspire you, or things that you want your next design project to be. This practice, regularly used as a brainstorming practice by interior design professionals, is now part of the design process for home individuals as well. For those of you thinking of beginning a new project, or perhaps stuck in the middle of one; these are some good places to start looking for inspiration! (And make sure you’re looking for picture frame ideas along the way!
Houzz
By their own definition, Houzz is a “…collaborative platform for home remodeling and design, bringing homeowners and home professionals together in a uniquely visual community.” And uniquely visual is right! Houzz is home to hundreds of thousands of photographs of incredibly designed living spaces, and allows you to search for examples of specific things you want to see in a room. Our search for “picture frame design ideas” turned up a whopping 26,330 photos! The site also has other remarkably useful features. The site has the ability to connect you to reputable home professionals in your local area, as well as start a discussion with other DIY-ers. Perhaps the most useful feature is the ability to maintain your own digital ideabook right on the site, which you can come back and review at any time.
HGTV
HGTV (or “Home and Garden Television” for anyone who’s been living under a rock for the last few years) has been and remains one of the most valuable resources for the home decorator, not to mention the home-buyer, home-renter, home-seller, or apartment-shopper. In addition to all the wealth of information on buying a new home, and revamping curbside appeal for homes on the market, HGTV also has several shows that really showcase budget redecorating. Shows like Color Splash, Sarah’s House, and Design on a Dime give in-depth how-to’s on how to make a maximum design impact with minimal budget and effort. Not to mention HGTV.com has a wealth of articles and demos hosted for free online. They even have a whole section just for picture frames! (That shouldn’t surprise you that it’s our favorite!)
Apartment Therapy
Founded by the ‘Apartment Therapist’, a half interior decorator, half life coach named Maxwell Ryan, the Apartment Therapy blog believes “A calm, healthy, beautiful home is a necessary foundation for happiness and success in the world.” Tackling subjects from budget living, to designing small spaces, to eco-friendly homes, Apartment Therapy could be the greatest free resource for the amateur home decorating enthusiast. The Apartment Therapy blog has extensive blog posts, descriptions of home projects and unique solutions that have before and after photos, and detailed project diary posts. The project diaries are one of the greatest resources for someone looking to author their own home project, because you get to see talented amateurs lead by example, describing their problems and solutions, posting photos along the way, and (most useful of all!) showing their research that inspired the project. A must-subscribe to anyone that loves home decor.
Curbly
Curbly is a DIY design community that believes “Everyone should have a happy, beautiful home.” More broad and far reaching than many other design resources, Curbly is the place to find all the things that you didn’t even know you wanted. If you’re looking for a more unique or more resourceful type of project, this is definitely your destination for everything home design. Curbly’s staff of contributors and editors are made up of self-made DIY experts and amateur design gurus; You won’t find fancy interior design degrees here. That tends to be a boon for the average weekend warrior looking for some DIY advice that’s a little more down to earth, for those folks that might not be as design-savvy. Complete with room specific design, room and furniture makeovers, great how-to’s and inspirations, Curbly is a fantastic place to start to dive into the DIY world.
Oft-overlooked as a viable resource, Pinterest is the ideal launch point for your mood board. Pinterest in its entirety is nothing more than a simple pinboard, where you can find images that inspire or motivate you and you can repin them onto your own board to share with your friends, or just to go back and review yourself later. Official pins from design sites frequently have a link back to the original source material, making Pinterest a fantastic way to keep track of pages and pages of inspiration material all digitally online, rather than printing and clipping. Here at The Frame Place, we proudly maintain our own Pinterest, where we share what inspires us with you, from beautiful nature photography, to our fellow manufacturers that create quality products that are 100% American-made, like our picture frames.
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Obviously, we’ve only scratched the surface of the awesome amount of resources that are out there for do-it-yourself design. If you have any favorite design resources, galleries, or websites, please share them with us in the comments below! We’d love to share your suggestion in a future blog!