Where to Find Design Inspiration
Video Transcription
Hello again! This is Becky Bonnell with Lykke Haven Design which is a purpose-driven interior design company here in Grand Rapids and West Michigan and we create homes with intention, mission, and connection. I'm excited to be here again with you today. I will be honest, today is a day of all the feels for me. Some of you know, I am/was an engineer, project manager and I have been with the same company for 10 and a half years and today was that final day. I took a very long transition out. In fact, it was three months of transition from when I told them to my last day just to help prepare a little bit of myself and then them as the transition happened. And today, I just turned in my computer. So, it was my final day. I'm having a lot of feelings both anxious, excited, yeah, just all the feelings. So, just wanted to share that with you and where I'm at but today, we are going to talk about where to find inspiration.
Yesterday, I had a recording. I hope you got to watch the video. It was all about the design process. How do you even begin? And we did a very high-level overview of this cyclical kind of process in design where you have your mood board and that is your guiding star and then there's this cyclical, getting inspired, color palette, tuning in that, the floor plan, and selections, and just going through this process more cyclical before doing the finalization of your final design. But always having that intention statement and that mood board be your map in all of this. That way you know you're headed in the right direction, that was intended for the space, based off your empathy exercises.
Today, what we're going to talk about is where do you find inspiration in the first place? There are so many different places to find inspiration and I wanted to take a step back and talk about those. You found some inspiration during your mood board exercises but as you start to develop into the design, you're always on the lookout for where to get inspired, what bring about those feelings, those moods that you want for that space and we're going to talk about a few places that I find inspiration. I would love to hear your comments on this video also. Send a picture of something you were inspired by and let people know what inspired you about it. So, that way we can really work to inspire others.
The first place, people mainly think about inspiration are websites or getting on the internet. You go to Pinterest or Houzz. If you are on Google, a really good thing to try to find images with is giving one of your intentions and then adding on the word aesthetic. So, let's say you are designing a bedroom and you wanted it to be restful. So, put rest and aesthetic together on Google, and you'll start to find some images in the image search that really play that word, make you feel that word. And so you start to get inspiration from just images on different websites. Another good one, Instagram, obviously, all about pictures is another great place to start getting inspired. Follow your favorite designers, and to start saving pictures. At my time here at DISHER, I had a friend and once a month, she would bring in pictures of what inspired her. Random pictures she found on the internet or an art piece or a poem just anything that inspired her and she would share it with her team. I just loved being able to understand what inspired her about it and take it in for myself also. Then pinning those on a board so that we can see it throughout the throughout the whole month. It's a great way to get inspired. If you find pictures, pin them up, don't hide them away in your feed. If something really inspires you that you find online, print it out, pin it up on a board that you have. It may not have any purpose in one of your designs in the future but it's there to inspire and you never know what it's going to spark.
Another great place to find inspiration are places. Your favorite coffee shop can inspire design elements into your home. Your favorite restaurants. There was one design that a person really loved train stations and just the feel of the old-fashioned train station. So, going to a train station, seeing pictures of a train station. You can start to pull out maybe the lines on the locomotive or maybe it's the benches that you sit on. There's a lot design elements from them that you can pull into your home, into the design of the home. Places that you've traveled to. Pulling out different architecture from it. On my feed today, was when we went to the Mediterranean for three weeks, my husband and I, there was so much inspiration all around us that we don't see every day. I was taking so many different pictures, detailed shots at the most random things because it sparked something in me and inspired something and I wanted to hang on to that. Any time you're taking these pictures when you're out and about, save them away in an album on Google Photos or Apple photo and save it as an album. That way you can always remember what are the pictures that inspired you and separate them out from all those kid pictures that we seem to take. Other places that you can find inspiration, when you're at an arena. That's another great place. If you love sports like I know the Mitten company in Grand Rapids, a pizza place, loves baseball. So, a lot of their design elements are based off of the baseball field and bring a fun-ness to their design. Other places let's see, going to a concert hall, right? All the at details placed in those or a mural on the side of a building in Grand Rapids. The Blue Bridge. There are so many places. Go into Art Prize.
There are so many places that you can find inspiration just by traveling around. Notice the feelings that you have as you walk into places. Notice the feelings you have when you see something when you're walking. And just take note of that. Take a picture of it. Save it in an album. Another thing I like to do is I like to travel around with just this little notebook. And a pen. Anytime I find something that's inspiring that I want to capture, I just start sketching or writing down words of what it inspired in me so that way I can remember. Maybe all of a sudden, I'll start sketching this piece of furniture or this light fixture that was inspired from a coffee shop I was at. There was a place in Chicago, this pancake place, and the light fixture was so interesting to me because it was a pancake place known for all the berries on these pancakes and the light fixture kind of looked like berries. Really being intuitive to what's around you and getting inspired from the little things.
Other things are objects. Looking at magazines is an obvious one but what kind of objects can inspire you? I shared yesterday about instrumentation and the compass and the gears and what that looks like and how that can inspire things into a space or things like if you like coastal, the ropes that hold the boats in the harbors. Being inspired by those ropes. There are lots of, for example, chairs out there that the back is a rope that's intertwined in it. Getting inspired from let's see what else, um my coffee mug. I have a coffee mug that is a combination of ceramic, metal, and wood that I love and it is something about that just inspires me. The mixed materials, the smoothness of the mug can bring out design elements that have unconsciously developed into spaces.
There's just all this inspiration around you. Another one, I was going antique shopping with a friend and we were at Blue Door and she found this amazing vase that was a head and you put the plant on top. The plant was coming out of out of the head and I know these are around a lot more of these around now than there were then. It just really sparked inspiration for me in how to bring to light a homeschool room design. So, you just start jotting these things down. It's a place where the mind runs free and what kind of plant could you put in that and the stone of that vase, how it could inspire the other places in the room. And you know inspiration just takes over. Having that notebook to write that down. Having that that phone to take the picture and save it away for when you're ready for it.
Other things, nature is another great place to find inspiration. Anytime I'm on a hike, I'm always noticing all these little things about nature that I have not noticed before. Maybe it's how the path of the bug made way on a tree or I was just walking the other day with my husband, and I noticed these really deep purple flowers that I had not noticed before on our walks. And we walked that path for years. You just start noticing all these little details that God intrinsically designed that are so inspiring. I don't know if you've seen, Restoration Hardware has a chandelier that the light bulbs are like raindrops coming down. I loved that light when I saw it. It was so inspiring. Just the design that God made naturally and how it can inspire your room and connect you to nature, to the bigger world. It's just great.
So, where do you find inspiration? What picture have you seen? What object, what nature item, what place has inspired you this week? I would love to see your pictures in the comments below. That's your action step is to find something that inspires you and if you've already chosen a room for this design process example that we're going through, pick out one of those words or one of those pictures from your mood board and dig deeper. Get inspired. A simple book for instance, inspired the arch of our girls' loft. If you look at a bound book it has an arch to it, and they love to read. So bringing that into their room through a simple arched loft area. It doesn't have to be so tied to exactly the object. But have that object really inspire a part of the design and it connects you further. You start to pay attention more out there when you're out and about of the littlest things that can cause inspiration. Yesterday I shared the seaweed in in the lake. Just the color, it had this muted red color at the tip and then the greens with the darker water. It was so beautiful. I just started sketching, taking a picture, sharing putting it in an album so I can remember later of what that can inspire in a room.
So, go out, find inspiration, share it with others, and just watch your creativity grow.
I am excited to come live again tomorrow. We're going to start diving into a little bit more science. Like I said, I nerd out on all the science stuff being an engineer-minded person. We're going to start talking about color palette and how you select that and the science behind even selecting specific colors and things to think about as you're tuning in that part of your design. So, join me tomorrow.
As always, please share this if you found it interesting. We are always trying to grow our community and helping just inspire others into creating our own Lykke Havens. So, I wish you all the best Tuesday and I will see you tomorrow.
Lykke Haven Design is a full service, purpose-driven interior design firm serving clients in West Michigan. We work with clients from Ada, to Grand Rapids, to Holland (and the occasional out of state). Our mission is to create Intentional Interiors curated with a Meaningful Mission that Cultivate Connection. We do this through a process driven by Human-Centered Design. We would love to discuss your next project and how we can help.
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