A moodboard app for interior designers, on every device your clients own

Interior design is a visual argument. You gather finishes, fabrics, furniture, lighting, and a palette, arrange them until the room reads as one idea, and then you have to sell that idea to a client who wasn’t in your head when you assembled it. The moodboard is where the concept lives and where the approval happens, so the tool you build it in matters more than it looks.

The most polished interior moodboard app, Morpholio Board, is genuinely lovely, but it’s Apple-only. It runs on iPad, iPhone, and Mac, and it’s tuned around Apple Pencil. If your studio runs on Windows workstations, or your client only has a PC and an Android phone, that’s a wall. DarkRef takes a different bet: a free, freeform moodboard app that’s native on Windows, macOS, iPad, and iPhone (plus a web app anyone can open), with client-facing view-only boards built in (hosting one is part of DarkRef Pro).

What goes on an interior design moodboard

An interior moodboard is really several reference types living on one surface, and a good app has to hold all of them without forcing a template:

• Finishes & materials: timber, stone, tile, metal, plaster, paint swatches.
• FF&E: furniture, fixtures, lighting, and the equipment that fills the room, often straight from a supplier’s product page.
• Textiles: upholstery, drapery, rugs, and the way fabrics sit next to each other.
• Palette: the colour story that ties finishes and textiles together.
• Spatial & mood references: the feeling of the space, light quality, styled shots you’re responding to.

DarkRef holds all of this on a freely arranged canvas: drag images in, drop rich sticky notes next to a material with the spec, SKU, or price, and snap items into tidy columns when a board needs to read as a formal presentation rather than a scrapbook.

Why cross-platform is not optional for a studio

Interior work moves between contexts constantly: you research and lay out on a desktop, walk a site or a showroom with an iPad, and photograph a real finish on your phone. If your moodboard app only exists in one of those places, you’re back to emailing yourself photos and rebuilding boards.

This is exactly where Apple-only tools cost you. A studio with a Windows workstation simply can’t run Morpholio Board on it. DarkRef runs natively on Windows and macOS and on iPad and iPhone, and with DarkRef Pro cloud sync the same board is current everywhere. Snap a tile in a showroom, and it’s on the board back at your desk. We put DarkRef head-to-head with the Apple-only option in the best Morpholio Board alternatives.

Present to clients with a view-only board

Here’s the part that changes the client relationship. Instead of flattening your board into a PDF and emailing a static file, you can host a live board and invite the client by email as view-only. They open the link in a web browser on whatever they own (a Windows laptop, an Android phone, an iPad), sign in with a free DarkRef account, and see the current board, always up to date, with nothing to install and nothing to buy.

• The client watches, you drive. View-only means they can see and follow the board but can’t rearrange your work.
• Always the latest. When you swap a finish, the client’s view reflects it: no re-exporting and re-sending “final_v3.pdf.”
• Bring collaborators in too. A contractor or a co-designer can get editor access on the same board (editing needs DarkRef Pro) while the client stays view-only.
• Free for the client. Viewing and joining a board costs the client nothing; hosting the live board is part of DarkRef Pro.

We wrote a full walkthrough of this in how to share reference boards with a team, and the underlying system launched in DarkRef’s live boards update.

Keep product and supplier references linked

An interior board is a shopping list in disguise. DarkRef lets you paste a supplier or product link straight onto the board, where it becomes a clean preview card instead of a raw URL. So the sofa on the mood board is one click from the page you’d actually order it from, and a sticky note beside it can carry the lead time, dimensions, or price.

You can also crop a product shot down to just the piece you want (non-destructively, so the original stays intact) or knock a busy catalogue image to grayscale to check how a material reads on value alone.

DarkRef vs the usual interior moodboard options

The short read: if you’re all-in on Apple hardware and want AR furniture placement and built-in spec sheets, Morpholio Board is purpose-built for that. If you need your boards (and your clients’ access to them) to work regardless of which devices are in the room, DarkRef is the cross-platform choice.

Honest note: what DarkRef is not

DarkRef is a moodboard and reference board, not a full interior-design suite. It doesn’t do CAD drawing, it doesn’t render a room in 3D, and it doesn’t place furniture in AR or auto-generate a formal spec sheet the way Morpholio Board does. Those are real features, and if they’re central to how you work, keep the tool that provides them. What DarkRef does is the concept-and-approval layer: gathering the visual direction, keeping product links live, and getting a clean board in front of a client on any device. It does that better and more openly than the Apple-locked options. Pair it with your CAD or rendering tool; don’t expect it to replace them.

FAQ

Is there an interior design moodboard app that works on Windows?

Yes. DarkRef runs natively on Windows and macOS as well as iPad and iPhone, plus a web app. This is the main practical advantage over Morpholio Board, which is Apple-only. If your studio uses Windows workstations, or your clients aren’t all on Apple devices, DarkRef works where the Apple-only tools can’t.

Can I share a moodboard with a client without them installing anything?

Yes. You can host a live board and invite a client by email as view-only. They open the link in a web browser on any device (Windows, Android, iPad), sign in with a free DarkRef account, and see the current board with nothing to install and nothing to buy. Viewing and joining a board is free for them; hosting the board is part of DarkRef Pro.

Can I keep supplier and product links on the board?

Yes. Paste a supplier or product URL onto the board and it becomes a clean preview card rather than a raw link, so a piece of furniture on your mood board is one click from the page you’d order it from. You can add a rich sticky note next to it for the SKU, dimensions, lead time, or price.

How is DarkRef different from Morpholio Board?

Both are freeform moodboard tools for interior work. The core difference is reach and price: DarkRef is cross-platform (Windows, macOS, iPad, iPhone, web) and free to use, with a single $1.99/month or $19.99/year Pro plan, while Morpholio Board is Apple-only with tiered pricing and adds specialist features like AR furniture placement and spec sheets. Choose DarkRef for cross-platform access and client sharing; choose Morpholio for its Apple-native, design-specific extras.

Is DarkRef free for interior designers?

Yes. DarkRef is free to download and use, including building boards, editing images, pasting product links, and joining shared boards. DarkRef Pro ($1.99/month or $19.99/year) adds cloud sync across all your devices and the ability to host client-facing live boards.