How Can Pinterest Help You Around The Home?

Everyone’s heard of Facebook and Twitter, but Pinterest is a little lesser known and, we think it’s the one which should be shouted about when it comes to the home.

Pinterest is a fantastic interactive scrapbook – think back to when you would buy home magazines, cut out your favourite ideas and stick them on mood boards when you were decorating. In effect, this is an updated version!

You can add images in three ways

• Upload from your computer (this could be a picture of your room so you can plan ideas for décor whilst looking at what you’re working with
• Search the Pinterest site (more on that below)
• Scour the internet and purchasing websites and add in particular products

You can make both open and private boards – which is why it is classed as a social channel. Your open boards can be found by other people by your board theme or which hashtag you used on there. If you use a private board, however, the content in it will only be seen by you.

The best functionality of this channel is the ability to link to products in images to their original websites. They will sit in your board as an image but you can click out to buy them whenever you’re ready, saving you the time and hassle of having to remember where you saw them first or having to run out into town!

There is also a great search functionality in Pinterest. You can search for other people’s ideas by keyword, their personal or company page or themed boards – so if you were looking for garden renovation ideas, for example, you can culminate the best ideas in one place. From here, you can pin other people’s pictures onto your board and add a comment or link into it as a reminder for yourself at a later date.

But how can you be using this site within the home?

Why not use Pinterest for:

• If you’re doing up a room of your home, why not plan out different wallpapers, potential furniture choices and decorative items to compare products or check everything matches. Just moved into a new house? Make a board for each room so your ideas don’t all get muddled!
• Planning to do up your garden? Look at what other people have done with a similar space or add in potential decorative items to one board.
• Adding a new addition to the family? Plan your room décor ideas alongside potential purchases, toys and even baby grows!
• Planning out your Christmas menu for when the family descend? Add recipe ideas and even food products (that wine that Aunty Meredith insists is the only one she’ll drink!) into a board so your ideas are all in one place.

There’s so much you can do with this social channel – we’ve just scratched the surface from a home ideas perspective! Sign up now and have a go at making some boards and plans (a personal tips, it’s a great idea for collating your Christmas gift ideas!).