1. Explore Your Feelings

If you’re finding it hard to even identify a starting point, a game I like to play before we even get friendly with social media is – how has a space, or element in a space, made you feel?

Hotels, museums, art installations or galleries, restaurants, office foyers, others’ homes, pockets of your own home – do you get a sense of inspiration, calmness, discontent, invigoration, refreshment, awkwardness, warmth, or coolness when you’re in them?

Why do you think that is? Is there an element in that space that was memorable or frustrating? And what other elements made you take notice of it?

Because as well as an overall ‘feeling’ or mood and the standout elements that captured your attention, this exercise will usually help you identify other elements you might need to consider or avoid including to help you create that same feeling of contentment or otherwise. 

2. Find Your Keywords

Once you’ve got a few spaces that have made you feel content, take note of their name and research their designers and architects.

Read up about their architectural influences and the inspiration that directed their makers – because even typing in the name of a hotel, restaurant or Googling who designed these spaces and their key elements will give you your first keywords to throw into social media.

You’ll hopefully get a sense for their design style too, but at this point, it’s also probably pertinent to do a little digging into top design genres so you understand what you’re looking at moving forward – who knows, you might also find another style (and therefore keyword) that catches your eye!

Googling top interior design or architectural publications and following those that resonate with you on social media can also be helpful (I’ve profiled a couple of my faves here), particularly for what comes next.

3. Inspiration Imagery

You’ll already have a couple of these if you’ve saved some from the spaces and resources from above – but now my friend, you’re ready to really delve into the wonderful world of Pinterest and Instagram: follow those boards and hashtags to your heart’s content! And then start your own Boards and Guides to chronicle examples complete with notes on why they jumped out at you.

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Starting to define a concept direction

It can be overwhelming trying to sift through and connect your inspiration images into a cohesive concept direction, but here’s a few tips: 

1. Refine

If you’re not liking at least 75% of all elements in one particular image singled out, toss it and refine your hundreds of images to 20-30.

2. Categorise

You should be starting to see better flow in your imagery, so now for the nitty gritty. What are the most common elements? Look closely – what is it that you truly like about an image and that you also see appearing across others? The exposed ceilings that gave a sense of ‘grandeur’, the clean minimalism that felt ‘tidy’, the cottage core eclecticism that felt ‘cosy’? Is it a colour, texture, layout, plant, pattern? The oak cabinetry, flooring and tables? The colour blue?

3. Don’t compromise

If your inspiration imagery doesn’t give you the same feeling as the spaces you identified at the start, they probably shouldn’t be in your final collection.

4. Fast Five

While it probably wasn’t fast to reach this point, hopefully from the above exercises you’ll be able to identify the top five things you want the space to be or feel like, and then your top five non-negotiables to bring into your home to achieve this.

In closing – I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but it really is the most important point: remember, anything you love will remain timeless and never go out of style in your eyes, so you do you boo, and try to have fun while you’re at it!