Read time ~ 5 minutes
Pinterest has changed the way we create. From planning mom’s 60th birthday party to announcing an engagement to designing your bathroom to making brunch to DIYing lipstick, inspiration is everywhere on this handy platform.
So, thank you, Pinterest. Now we can never show up to another family BBQ without giving the dessert table a once-over and checking to see if the chip dip matches the ceiling fan.
Jokes aside, Pinterest is an incredible tool for all things creative, especially when it comes to designing your home. If you are building, renovating, or designing your home but don’t have a Pinterest account it’s time to make one.
Since its launch in 2010, Pinterest has made some major improvements, making it even easier to streamline your process for gathering inspiration and storing your ideas for the home of your dreams all in one place.
We’re giving you four tips on the best ways to do it.
Here’s how to use Pinterest to design your home:
1. Create and Organize Your Boards
Depending on if you’re renovating your entire home or a single room, be specific when you create your boards to organize your pins. Avoid creating a board titled, “Dream Home”, but break it down further and create boards for each room so you can easily find what you’re looking for. Are you renovating your master bath? Re-designing your closet? Building a front porch? Create boards for each project.
Pinterest is all about giving you the freshest, most relevant content. As you create each board, set a goal for when you want to finish say, designing your mudroom to get reminders about planning and keep your recommended pins relevant.
Want your partner, teen, or bff to give you their two cents? “Group boards” are a great option if you want collaboration on your pins to get everyone’s ideas in one place.
Don’t want your neighbors stealing your design ideas? We get it. You can also create “Secret Boards” so you can keep your brilliance to yourself.
Organize your boards on your profile either from A-Z, last saved to or drag and drop them in an order that makes the most sense to you.
Inside your boards, you can organize your pins any way you want. Maybe you want to move the pins you love the most towards the top for easy access, to put all the dining room tables you love next to each other to compare them side by side, or push your partner’s suggestion down towards the bottom.
The better you can organize your pins and boards as you go, the easier it will be to finish your project!
2. Find Your Favorite Pinners
Don’t follow hundreds and hundreds of pinners. Find the brands and bloggers who are active on Pinterest and creating quality content on the regular that aligns with your style. These will become the brands you trust and love (if they aren’t already).
Here are a few of our favorites:
Luxe Interiors + Design Magazine
Jean Stoffer Design
Studio McGee
Becki Owens
If you don’t follow hundreds and hundreds of accounts, your “following feed” will be more streamlined and less cluttered.
If following only a few pinners makes you panic, don’t worry. Pinterest saw that coming. On your “Home” and “Today” tab, you’ll get served the latest, most relevant content that matches the content of your most recent searches that aren’t limited to the accounts you follow.
3. Be specific with Your Searches
The more specific you can get with your searches, the better the content you’ll get. For example, if you search “mid-century modern brass lamp” you’ll get pages of great options and likely find what you’re looking for faster than if you had searched “cool brass lamp”.
Once you type in your super specific search, you can use the “Explore” tab or the “Shop” tab. With the “Shop” tab, you can see hundreds of mid-century modern brass lamps with their brand and prices and if you so desire, you can buy it right then and there. There’s always the option to use “More Ideas” for similar pins, or to “Shop Similar” whenever you search. Pinterest is making this too easy for us!
If you’re not ready to buy just yet but definitely want to save the idea, when you save each pin, make sure to comment what you love or don’t love about the pin to remind yourself of the specifics when you revisit it later. For example, “love the color, not the shape”. This is a great way to customize your pins!
Pinterest also lets you share or download your pins. Share your pins with your friends who are fellow pinners on the app by messaging it to them or sending them the link. Download the image if you want it saved to your phone or computer. These features make it easy to interact with your friends on or off the app and save the images to a folder on your computer if you want to store your ideas there, too.
4. Share it with Your Contractor or Designer
Keep your boards to yourself, or better yet, share them with your contractor or designer so they can get a better feel for your style.
This is where all the hard work you put into organizing your boards and pins pays off! Easily show your contractor or designer your dream for your living room, backyard patio or kitchen. Let them know exactly what you want.
Refer to any comments you made previously on your pins to point out the specifics. Maybe you loved the countertops, but you hated the backsplash. Or you loved the layout of the living room, but would love it even more if there were bigger windows. Point out what you like or don’t like about the design and let them browse your boards so they can make your dream home a reality.
Designing your home just got easier with Pinterest. Use these four tips next time you curl up on your couch with a glass of wine and get to work designing your home with this app.
Did we mention we’re big Pinterest fans, too? Follow us @markscotthomes to see our latest projects and get inspired for your own!