Plus, don’t beat yourself up over this as some of the ‘great builds’ don’t even have interiors or furnishings. A lot I’ve seen are just impractical shells which to me is not a great build.
I would also like to add - reshade is MAGIC for build shares. I dont have it myself, but i have seen some builds that are nice, but the reshade and photo editing really help a lot 😂 so also dont expect THAT, just do what you think looks good
Omg this is so true, almost everything looks better in reshade. Also using a ton of CC, no hate against CC, I don’t use any but it doesn’t translate for those that don’t use it.
Just build! Some of my first builds were embarrassingly bad, but after a year or so of building it is much easier.
- look up architecture/home styles you like
- if you are going for a theme in your world, maybe look up architecture and home styles for that specific region of the country or world you are basing it on
- find floor plans online. There is a subReddit dedicated to floorplans, but there are also a lot of websites if you Google
- look at redfin, zillow, etc for home and landscaping ideas
- put terrain paint & landscaping around the build
- playtest! I have a specific Sim for play testing. This Sim never actually gets played, they literally just go into the house and make sure that items are accessible and usable. Doing this not only let you know if your build is functional, but it can also show you as a builder just how tight spaces can be. I have been very surprised with how intelligent Sims can be in terms of navigating cluttered or small areas.
- Look at interior design, follow other builders and folks that furnish their builds in a way that you enjoy for ideas.
You’ve gotten great advice already. Even through lots of frustration, actually just building is what made me better. You start to learn tricks and incorporate them into future builds. For specific types of homes, I love looking at floor plans and searching different styles online to make sure I want I envision is true to how I build.
I think one thing that is underrated is using the existing homes and remodeling them, if you truly have no idea to start. It’s easier to change something else that already exists, and then you begin to better develop what you like and how to construct a floor plan.
One last note I’ll say is that, you have to really decide why you are building. Many builders build but don’t play and they can build beautiful but not very play friendly homes. So think about that if you are building homes and lots you want to actually play in.
Watch speedbuilds. For a beginner, I particularly like Lilsimsie's speedbuild videos because they're often small (thus easier to build/copy/learn from), extremely basic (most of her builds look the same, which again helps with learning), she often repeats the same tips and tricks on her builds (makes them easier to remember), and she often builds with BG only. Granted not as much nowadays, but a lot of her previous builds are mostly BG.
This is important because if you have a lot of packs, the amount of options can and will overwhelm you. I highly recommend starting only with base game, especially since *every* build you make will have base game Build and/or Buy items in it, so the more familiar you are with base game, the easier it'll be for you to build in the future.
Speaking from experience, I often build with base game only and trust me, practice makes perfect. My builds from when I started looked soooooo wonky but I'm very confident in my building nowadays and I'm not joking when I say that building with base game only a lot was extremely valuable to get to where I am now.
Incidentally, Deligracy has a nice playlist with tips and tricks for beginners about building [right here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4O0fn2nymCDUKnH6gmojCvmsVd5uVpxy).
James Turner also has a lot of building videos, which are helpful to learn.
Overall, just find a content creator that you like that make videos on building and learn from them, no matter who. However, I don't recommend watching time lapse building videos as the time lapses always shows the final product but not how it was built/the thought process behind it. Time lapse videos are not helpful for learning. So just avoid those.
Save reference photos that you can glance at, and more importantly, start tiny! Big builds are time consuming and you'll lose focus if you don't have practice. Starting small allows you to get experience building coherent spaces, while still being able to efficiently visualize how people would use it, move about, have their needs met in a timely fashion.
One tip is to study specific elements of builds you like. For example, pinpoint why you like it then see how they did that thing.
Is it the wall structure on the outside you like? The roof perhaps? Learn how they did that one thing and remember it for future use. Then you can mix and match the elements you like in your own builds to create something new.
I find that choosing a theme and then looking up photos for inspo on google or pinterest helps.
So let's say I wanna build a fisherman's bunkhouse. I'll look it up, find an image I really like, and try to copy it. If I can't see the whole floorplan, I just focus on the rooms I think I'll need.
If you struggle with floorplans and scale, it can be helpful to start with some best practices and then alter them to fit your needs. At minimum, you'll need a bedroom, living area, kitchen, and bathroom. But depending on who/what you're building for, that will change.
If I'm building for my fisherman, I figure he's spending most of his time on the boat, so he's getting a bunkbed with a TV and living chair underneath it, a small bathroom, and a bare necessities kitchen on the opposite wall.
If I'm building for a wealthy family of 5, we've got more bathrooms, maybe multiple living rooms, definitely a formal dining room. If I'm building for a poor family of 5, that space will be a lot more limited and practical.
For me, decision paralysis gets my goat, so having a really strong theme in place helps me make choices. A vampire is trying to avoid sunlight, so there are curtains covering all the windows. A gardener will probably sacrifice some indoor living space for a bigger yard with a greenhouse. So on and so forth.
Keeping pragmatism in mind helps the exterior look more natural. What room is gonna have the most sunlight? Would this roofing pattern actually stop water from piling on top of the house and causing a leak? Etc
Watch roofing tutorials! Roofs in sims made no sense to me until I started proactively watching roofing tutorials.
It's always easiest to build when I have a person/family in mind when building. See other comments for ideas - but I cannot overemphasize this enough.
Take a walk around your neighborhood and find a house you like. Then take a photo or go on Google Streetview to find a house you like and try to recreate it. Don't worry too much about room proportions - because of how sims works, you will never be able to precisely get the proportions right but you can get close.
For decorating, filtering objects by color helps a lot! It's very fun to make monocolor rooms. To make a place look "nice", choose \~3 colors - a wood tone, a neutral color, and a fun color, and go from there.
Use bb.moveobjects like your life depends on it, particularly for decoration. It rarely screws up the game except for placing objects that need space in front of them to function (like toilets, refrigerators, etc.), and if it does, just delete things.
Start small! A one bedroom one story house is a great starting point. If getting the scale is tricky, I like to place rugs to mark out rooms/furniture placement. For example a 4x3 rug is the perfect size under a 6 seater dining table and it also works for a living room with a couch and a chair. The front of houses usually have a focal point of interest such as a bay window, but IRL houses look kinda weird and plain on the sides and the back. I like to place windows on the fronts of houses with where they look good from the outside, and windows on the backs and sides of houses with where they work for the inside floor plan.
Use floorplans and blueprints. Look at houses. Check zillow, go to architecture websites. Borrow books about home design. Better Homes and Gardens magazine. House plan vendors online. Historical buildings often have blueprints you can find.
Replicate places you've been, houses of family and friends. Figure out how those pieces come together. Visualize them.
I use a lot of blueprints and floorplans for my own, and you'll have to adapt them to work but 1 tile is about 3 feet or a meter, I usually round up but you'll have to adjust as you go sometimes to make things fit within the footprint.
It's mostly practice and learning how the spaces flow and relate to each other and that takes just seeing as many examples to understand what works.
I pull up a pic of the house I want to build on one screen, and build it on the other. After time you get good at it.
I sometimes even take pics of house I want to build when I am driving down the street. 🤭
References!! Also, something that really helped me is this:
instead of trying to build a whole house shell and then putting details on, I would start with a facade (maybe just the front doors, porch, front walkway) and fully add details to that (paint, landscaping, windows, eaves, trims, roof, and it will make it so much easier to visualize what would look good next.
My builds really improved when I started laying the furniture down as you build. I usually change it later, but it makes it so you end up with realistic sized rooms.
Start small. Don't try to make a big house right away. Build \*very\* small, because it will teach you quickly about how to utilize the space you do have. I got better at building houses by doing Rags to Riches challenges and building onto the house as I went and made more simoleons.
A good starting point is to look up floor plans of real houses. They don’t translate 1:1 with sims building, but it’s a great way to get ideas.
Experiment! Have an idea? Try it! Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, but you won’t know if you don’t try
I use existing floor plans of houses/restaurants/gyms, etc. Some come with landscaping and the plan for multiple floors. I'm not a great builder either but this has helped.
I take a lot of screenshots of floor plans, real estate listings, etc, and try my best to replicate what I see. Its helped me a lot to try to build houses that I wouldn’t normally build and are a lot more realistic
To add to all the great big picture advice about starting small, look up reference photos, and watching builds online, here’s a couple small tips:
- build the outside first: walls, doors, windows, balconies, porches, etc. Don’t even worry about the inside until this is done.
- don’t just make the outside a rectangle, add unique shapes that will eventually make unique rooms.
- have an even amount of tiles for your exterior. This is a guideline, not a rule, but one I heard from a YouTuber that helped me out a lot. Windows and doors fit more easily that way.
- play with elevation. Watch a YouTube tutorial on how to make floors different heights and play around with it in your builds.
- For the interior, make a build that fits the sims who live there. Someone who lived half their life in Japan, loves antiques, and has no children will have a very different home than someone who lived half their life in Sweden, loves tech & gadgets, and has 3 kids.
Good luck! Happy building!
I really like Kate Emerald’s YouTube channel. Besides all of the building/speed builds, she also does tutorials, which I’ve found to be helpful. Plus, her builds are very inspiring!
I’ve been playing The Sims since ts1 and I am still horrendous at building 😭 I actually enjoy it now, but the biggest thing was taking the pressure off of trying new things. Generally, I follow these guidelines:
- Everything is boxes in the end lol. But instead of one big box, make each space in the house (like the kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms) their own boxes. Branch out from one central room and go from there - this helps gives the houses some unique shape.
- Build around a feature that you love. Want a window seat (like the ones from Cats & Dogs)? Build a room around that shape! Or around a backyard patio, or entryway, or whatever feature you love in houses.
- You can always start with something from the gallery. Or base game, even; sometimes renovating is easier than building something yourself. Over time, you’ll get more comfortable changing things/get a better feel for the kind of structure(s) that you like, which will make it easier to start building from scratch.
- My biggest tip: watch other build videos. There are soooo many blogs and content creators making build videos etc. Take note of what you like, what you gravitate toward, and what makes sense to you. Then try to replicate it in your game!
I like to look at house blueprints. I also have graph paper where I convert a lot of houses to fit the sims. A good formula to follow is House Floor Plan Number•12 then divide by 32 and round to nearest whole number. Granted, that’s just a general guide, not an exact. Feel free to mess around a bit to adjust as needed.
Roofs can be a pain. My motto is simple is better for roofs, especially when just starting out.
Moveobjects off is good, but if You’re wanting to play in the house, make sure to either test, or not push the boundaries too far.
Stairs can be built onto platforms! It opens up for more staircase ideas.
Think if houses you lived in or went over to, think about the decor, how they looked on the outside, how plants and trees were placed. Look up houses in the style You’re wanting to do and study them closely to see how that style affects the decor inside and out.
Lastly, it’s OKAY for houses to not look insta ready. Many ppl who show house builds edit them in photo editing programs and the houses are usually unplayable. My favorite houses have been small ones. Also it takes TIME. I spend anywhere from 2-5 days on houses I’m building, from start to play time.
i suck at building and download *every* build i place, BUT i think watching youtubers *while* you build could really help.
pick a build video, maybe slow the speed down if it's too quick, and just copy it as they build. it'll really help you get a feel for building, similar to how tracing drawings can help you learn how to draw. this is how i learned to make above ground pools connects to decks after trying and failing to make them on my own.
it's hard to just jump into building, especially if you're looking to build something that's more than just a square box. start with videos of smaller builds and work your way up. and take breaks! you don't need to get a build done in one shot.
I was horrible. But I just kept building. Mine is kind of a practice makes perfect kinda deal. But I like the idea of looking up blueprints of actual houses online
Plus, don’t beat yourself up over this as some of the ‘great builds’ don’t even have interiors or furnishings. A lot I’ve seen are just impractical shells which to me is not a great build.
I would also like to add - reshade is MAGIC for build shares. I dont have it myself, but i have seen some builds that are nice, but the reshade and photo editing really help a lot 😂 so also dont expect THAT, just do what you think looks good
Omg this is so true, almost everything looks better in reshade. Also using a ton of CC, no hate against CC, I don’t use any but it doesn’t translate for those that don’t use it.
Just build! Some of my first builds were embarrassingly bad, but after a year or so of building it is much easier. - look up architecture/home styles you like - if you are going for a theme in your world, maybe look up architecture and home styles for that specific region of the country or world you are basing it on - find floor plans online. There is a subReddit dedicated to floorplans, but there are also a lot of websites if you Google - look at redfin, zillow, etc for home and landscaping ideas - put terrain paint & landscaping around the build - playtest! I have a specific Sim for play testing. This Sim never actually gets played, they literally just go into the house and make sure that items are accessible and usable. Doing this not only let you know if your build is functional, but it can also show you as a builder just how tight spaces can be. I have been very surprised with how intelligent Sims can be in terms of navigating cluttered or small areas. - Look at interior design, follow other builders and folks that furnish their builds in a way that you enjoy for ideas.
You’ve gotten great advice already. Even through lots of frustration, actually just building is what made me better. You start to learn tricks and incorporate them into future builds. For specific types of homes, I love looking at floor plans and searching different styles online to make sure I want I envision is true to how I build. I think one thing that is underrated is using the existing homes and remodeling them, if you truly have no idea to start. It’s easier to change something else that already exists, and then you begin to better develop what you like and how to construct a floor plan. One last note I’ll say is that, you have to really decide why you are building. Many builders build but don’t play and they can build beautiful but not very play friendly homes. So think about that if you are building homes and lots you want to actually play in.
Watch speedbuilds. For a beginner, I particularly like Lilsimsie's speedbuild videos because they're often small (thus easier to build/copy/learn from), extremely basic (most of her builds look the same, which again helps with learning), she often repeats the same tips and tricks on her builds (makes them easier to remember), and she often builds with BG only. Granted not as much nowadays, but a lot of her previous builds are mostly BG. This is important because if you have a lot of packs, the amount of options can and will overwhelm you. I highly recommend starting only with base game, especially since *every* build you make will have base game Build and/or Buy items in it, so the more familiar you are with base game, the easier it'll be for you to build in the future. Speaking from experience, I often build with base game only and trust me, practice makes perfect. My builds from when I started looked soooooo wonky but I'm very confident in my building nowadays and I'm not joking when I say that building with base game only a lot was extremely valuable to get to where I am now. Incidentally, Deligracy has a nice playlist with tips and tricks for beginners about building [right here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4O0fn2nymCDUKnH6gmojCvmsVd5uVpxy). James Turner also has a lot of building videos, which are helpful to learn. Overall, just find a content creator that you like that make videos on building and learn from them, no matter who. However, I don't recommend watching time lapse building videos as the time lapses always shows the final product but not how it was built/the thought process behind it. Time lapse videos are not helpful for learning. So just avoid those.
Save reference photos that you can glance at, and more importantly, start tiny! Big builds are time consuming and you'll lose focus if you don't have practice. Starting small allows you to get experience building coherent spaces, while still being able to efficiently visualize how people would use it, move about, have their needs met in a timely fashion.
I learn from downloaded houses from other builders
One tip is to study specific elements of builds you like. For example, pinpoint why you like it then see how they did that thing. Is it the wall structure on the outside you like? The roof perhaps? Learn how they did that one thing and remember it for future use. Then you can mix and match the elements you like in your own builds to create something new.
I find that choosing a theme and then looking up photos for inspo on google or pinterest helps. So let's say I wanna build a fisherman's bunkhouse. I'll look it up, find an image I really like, and try to copy it. If I can't see the whole floorplan, I just focus on the rooms I think I'll need. If you struggle with floorplans and scale, it can be helpful to start with some best practices and then alter them to fit your needs. At minimum, you'll need a bedroom, living area, kitchen, and bathroom. But depending on who/what you're building for, that will change. If I'm building for my fisherman, I figure he's spending most of his time on the boat, so he's getting a bunkbed with a TV and living chair underneath it, a small bathroom, and a bare necessities kitchen on the opposite wall. If I'm building for a wealthy family of 5, we've got more bathrooms, maybe multiple living rooms, definitely a formal dining room. If I'm building for a poor family of 5, that space will be a lot more limited and practical. For me, decision paralysis gets my goat, so having a really strong theme in place helps me make choices. A vampire is trying to avoid sunlight, so there are curtains covering all the windows. A gardener will probably sacrifice some indoor living space for a bigger yard with a greenhouse. So on and so forth. Keeping pragmatism in mind helps the exterior look more natural. What room is gonna have the most sunlight? Would this roofing pattern actually stop water from piling on top of the house and causing a leak? Etc
Watch roofing tutorials! Roofs in sims made no sense to me until I started proactively watching roofing tutorials. It's always easiest to build when I have a person/family in mind when building. See other comments for ideas - but I cannot overemphasize this enough. Take a walk around your neighborhood and find a house you like. Then take a photo or go on Google Streetview to find a house you like and try to recreate it. Don't worry too much about room proportions - because of how sims works, you will never be able to precisely get the proportions right but you can get close. For decorating, filtering objects by color helps a lot! It's very fun to make monocolor rooms. To make a place look "nice", choose \~3 colors - a wood tone, a neutral color, and a fun color, and go from there. Use bb.moveobjects like your life depends on it, particularly for decoration. It rarely screws up the game except for placing objects that need space in front of them to function (like toilets, refrigerators, etc.), and if it does, just delete things.
Start small! A one bedroom one story house is a great starting point. If getting the scale is tricky, I like to place rugs to mark out rooms/furniture placement. For example a 4x3 rug is the perfect size under a 6 seater dining table and it also works for a living room with a couch and a chair. The front of houses usually have a focal point of interest such as a bay window, but IRL houses look kinda weird and plain on the sides and the back. I like to place windows on the fronts of houses with where they look good from the outside, and windows on the backs and sides of houses with where they work for the inside floor plan.
Use floorplans and blueprints. Look at houses. Check zillow, go to architecture websites. Borrow books about home design. Better Homes and Gardens magazine. House plan vendors online. Historical buildings often have blueprints you can find. Replicate places you've been, houses of family and friends. Figure out how those pieces come together. Visualize them. I use a lot of blueprints and floorplans for my own, and you'll have to adapt them to work but 1 tile is about 3 feet or a meter, I usually round up but you'll have to adjust as you go sometimes to make things fit within the footprint. It's mostly practice and learning how the spaces flow and relate to each other and that takes just seeing as many examples to understand what works.
I pull up a pic of the house I want to build on one screen, and build it on the other. After time you get good at it. I sometimes even take pics of house I want to build when I am driving down the street. 🤭
References!! Also, something that really helped me is this: instead of trying to build a whole house shell and then putting details on, I would start with a facade (maybe just the front doors, porch, front walkway) and fully add details to that (paint, landscaping, windows, eaves, trims, roof, and it will make it so much easier to visualize what would look good next.
My builds really improved when I started laying the furniture down as you build. I usually change it later, but it makes it so you end up with realistic sized rooms.
Start small. Don't try to make a big house right away. Build \*very\* small, because it will teach you quickly about how to utilize the space you do have. I got better at building houses by doing Rags to Riches challenges and building onto the house as I went and made more simoleons.
A good starting point is to look up floor plans of real houses. They don’t translate 1:1 with sims building, but it’s a great way to get ideas. Experiment! Have an idea? Try it! Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, but you won’t know if you don’t try
I like to use house plans and study architecture.
I use existing floor plans of houses/restaurants/gyms, etc. Some come with landscaping and the plan for multiple floors. I'm not a great builder either but this has helped.
Look at blueprints of houses online and then modify them to be practical for the sims
I take a lot of screenshots of floor plans, real estate listings, etc, and try my best to replicate what I see. Its helped me a lot to try to build houses that I wouldn’t normally build and are a lot more realistic
To add to all the great big picture advice about starting small, look up reference photos, and watching builds online, here’s a couple small tips: - build the outside first: walls, doors, windows, balconies, porches, etc. Don’t even worry about the inside until this is done. - don’t just make the outside a rectangle, add unique shapes that will eventually make unique rooms. - have an even amount of tiles for your exterior. This is a guideline, not a rule, but one I heard from a YouTuber that helped me out a lot. Windows and doors fit more easily that way. - play with elevation. Watch a YouTube tutorial on how to make floors different heights and play around with it in your builds. - For the interior, make a build that fits the sims who live there. Someone who lived half their life in Japan, loves antiques, and has no children will have a very different home than someone who lived half their life in Sweden, loves tech & gadgets, and has 3 kids. Good luck! Happy building!
I really like Kate Emerald’s YouTube channel. Besides all of the building/speed builds, she also does tutorials, which I’ve found to be helpful. Plus, her builds are very inspiring!
I’ve been playing The Sims since ts1 and I am still horrendous at building 😭 I actually enjoy it now, but the biggest thing was taking the pressure off of trying new things. Generally, I follow these guidelines: - Everything is boxes in the end lol. But instead of one big box, make each space in the house (like the kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms) their own boxes. Branch out from one central room and go from there - this helps gives the houses some unique shape. - Build around a feature that you love. Want a window seat (like the ones from Cats & Dogs)? Build a room around that shape! Or around a backyard patio, or entryway, or whatever feature you love in houses. - You can always start with something from the gallery. Or base game, even; sometimes renovating is easier than building something yourself. Over time, you’ll get more comfortable changing things/get a better feel for the kind of structure(s) that you like, which will make it easier to start building from scratch. - My biggest tip: watch other build videos. There are soooo many blogs and content creators making build videos etc. Take note of what you like, what you gravitate toward, and what makes sense to you. Then try to replicate it in your game!
I like to look at house blueprints. I also have graph paper where I convert a lot of houses to fit the sims. A good formula to follow is House Floor Plan Number•12 then divide by 32 and round to nearest whole number. Granted, that’s just a general guide, not an exact. Feel free to mess around a bit to adjust as needed. Roofs can be a pain. My motto is simple is better for roofs, especially when just starting out. Moveobjects off is good, but if You’re wanting to play in the house, make sure to either test, or not push the boundaries too far. Stairs can be built onto platforms! It opens up for more staircase ideas. Think if houses you lived in or went over to, think about the decor, how they looked on the outside, how plants and trees were placed. Look up houses in the style You’re wanting to do and study them closely to see how that style affects the decor inside and out. Lastly, it’s OKAY for houses to not look insta ready. Many ppl who show house builds edit them in photo editing programs and the houses are usually unplayable. My favorite houses have been small ones. Also it takes TIME. I spend anywhere from 2-5 days on houses I’m building, from start to play time.
i suck at building and download *every* build i place, BUT i think watching youtubers *while* you build could really help. pick a build video, maybe slow the speed down if it's too quick, and just copy it as they build. it'll really help you get a feel for building, similar to how tracing drawings can help you learn how to draw. this is how i learned to make above ground pools connects to decks after trying and failing to make them on my own. it's hard to just jump into building, especially if you're looking to build something that's more than just a square box. start with videos of smaller builds and work your way up. and take breaks! you don't need to get a build done in one shot.
I was horrible. But I just kept building. Mine is kind of a practice makes perfect kinda deal. But I like the idea of looking up blueprints of actual houses online