How To Build A House in The Sims 4

Let’s build a house together in The Sims!

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I think building in The Sims can be kind of 
intimidating for people a lot of the time. Especially if you don’t build very often, it’s kind of difficult to build an 
entire house and make it look nice   and make sense and also be functional 
for your Sims and fit all of your needs. I really enjoy building 
now, but when I was younger,   like way before I had a YouTube channel, I 
never really built full exteriors myself. Mostly I would download houses 
built by other people and then   renovate them or refurnish 
or redecorate the inside. Because I didn’t think I was very good at building 
the exteriors, so I just kind of wouldn’t try. And I know a lot of you watch my videos to 
try and learn about building in this game. I really don’t think I’m an expert and my 
builds are not like, amazing by any means,   but I think I’m a decent 
enough builder in The Sims. And I really do try to give like tips and 
tricks, I’ve made tutorial videos in the past. And today the intention of this video is 
to make something that’s really easy to follow along if you wanted to build along with me. So I’m going to try to go kind of slow 
and explain what I’m doing and walk you through the process so that you can also 
try to create this build in your game. And then hopefully maybe you can learn something 
from it and try to apply it to future builds. So I have made quite a few tutorial 
videos in the past where I talk about   tips and give you like all of the hot 
keys and cheats and things like that. I will link that down below for you if 
you want to go back and watch those. This video is more of a build along, 
so you don’t have to build with me, but if you want to, I’m going to be on this lot, 
this Optimist Outlook 40 x 30 lot in Newcrest. I’m also going to use just the base game 
today so that everybody can copy it easily. I’m also playing on PC so I can’t provide a 
ton of insight on like, console specifics for the console tools, but you should be able to 
copy what I’m doing on your console as well. We all have the same game, we just 
have different controls for it. Okay, so first things first, we have 
to pick what we’re going to build. I’m kind of thinking that I want 
to make a big-ish family house. I’m imagining something that could be used   for like a legacy challenge or 
like, sort of big Sims gameplay. We’re building this for function 
and less so like just to build. I imagine if you’re watching this you 
probably mostly only build when you need something for your Sims so we’re 
trying to make something like that. So at this point I usually try and 
think okay, so my Sims have three kids, I want an office, we’ll need a bedroom 
for the adults, so I’m thinking okay,   maybe we need four or five rooms in this house. Maybe grandma lives there and you need to 
have like a granny suite for her in the   backyard, it’s always good to start 
thinking about what your needs are. And then, if you’re not really a builder I think   it can be really helpful to 
find reference photos online. All of the builds that I do now mostly 
come from just like inside my head,   but I also often look at reference photos and 
try and like, mash them together to get an idea. But for those of you that are just starting 
out, finding a picture of a house that   you like in real life and then trying to 
recreate it is a really good way to start. So for example, I found this kind of cool 
house on this random floor plan website. It looks a little bit intimidating, but I’m going to walk you through all of the roofing 
pieces and how to lay all of this out. And it’s nice because they give 
me quite a few angles of what this house looks like and then and 
it also has the floor plan on here. And I think that having the floor 
plan is probably the biggest aid to someone who is a newer builder 
because often times people in my   comments will talk about how hard they 
find it to lay out their Sims house. They look at this big empty box and really 
struggle with where to put all of the rooms,   so looking at a real life house and kind 
of just seeing generally how it’s laid out. In this case they’ve got like 
all the bedrooms on one side,   they’ve got a kind of interesting shape, almost 
like an L shape for the main living space. A lot of times in real life, in these 
new build houses you’ll see like an   entryway with like a study and then 
like a living room on either side, in this case there’s a study and a bedroom, 
but it’s always nice to just look at these   floor plans and kind of see what they’re 
doing and then try to mimic it in your game. Even if you don’t copy it exactly,   it’s nice to maybe have this as a starting 
point to figure out where stuff should go. Especially if you find a house that you like,   you may as well just do what they did 
because they already figured it out. The main concern here though is just that 
real life doesn’t really apply to The Sims, the scale of real life stuff doesn’t 
really really fit in exactly in The Sims 4. We’ve got a weird grid system that doesn’t really 
make as much sense as often times this stuff does. So just be prepared to pivot when the scale isn’t 
really working out exactly as you expect it to. So this house is also quite wide and it has a 
garage, and we don’t really need to have a garage. You could totally add one if you want 
to, I often find that garage spaces   in The Sims are nice to have like — 
well, pretend garages, to be clear. There’s no real garages, but it’s nice to have 
this sort of thing because you can put like,   the giant microscope or like the cupcake 
machine, all these big items that don’t really fit anywhere, it can be nice to have a fake 
garage to just shove all that stuff in there. But we’re going to start now by 
building a decent sized box and that’s going to be like the 
main shell of our building. Don’t worry about where on the lot you put it,   just put it like kind of in the middle because 
you can always move stuff if you need to. You can always scoot it closer or 
further back or whatever you need. Actually, scratch that box idea, I want you to 
try and recreate all of these boxes in this order. This is not how I would recommend 
you build a house normally,   but I just want you to see this so that you have 
the shape and then I’ll explain what I’ve done. So over here on the right, start with a 
box that’s 5 tiles wide and 17 tiles long. That’s going to cost 1,020 
simoleons to build that wall. It’s like 1,020 x 300, which is kind 
of a weird way of describing it, but you can hook that box up together. And then in set by one, put a 3 
by something, I don’t even know. This is 720 x 180 simoleons. The next box is 420 simoleons wide. That 
is such a weird way of describing it, and that goes down three units 
from the one it’s right from. And then you put a 4 x 3 box right in front of it. Offset by one next to that we’re 
going to get a 240 x 480 simoleon box. When I say that, draw the box like this,   draw the walls and then draw the 
walls, and just connect them together. Then there’s a 2 x 6 box, that is about 120 x 360 
next to that, kind of like right in the middle. This part is going to be basically our fake garage   area, it’s a 240 x 480 box and then 
there’s 120 x 420 right next to that. Okay, weird way of getting us at this 
point, but hopefully by now maybe you   could pause the video and you can 
try and copy these boxes exactly. This is not normally how I would have drawn 
it, I just wanted to get you to a point where   you had the same thing as me because 
like, looking at this is really weird. This is very confusing and not helpful. So I did the lines so that 
you could figure it out. What I’ve done here and what I recommend that you do in the future is start with 
one big box and then add to it. So what I did was start with this big box 
and then I drew this big box through it   and I just kept going adding basically 
like little bumpouts around the place. I knew I wanted to have a weird connection 
hallway right here, I knew I wanted to have   the garage be kind of an interesting shape, and 
so this is kind of how I would actually build it. It’s just harder to like figure this 
out and copy it, but that’s always   the tip that I give is just build boxes 
and then add to them, but I always like my houses to have one like central core 
rectangle, in this case it’s right here. And that’s also where your main roof 
goes, but we’ll get to that later. Now I want to walk you through how to do 
the floor plan, and if you ever want to  delete walls like this where 
you like draw it to delete it, you can hold control and then 
redraw the wall and it deletes it. I do this all the time, it’s way easier than like, individually bulldozing stuff and 
it’s less room for error as well. Now we’re going to kind of 
copy a little bit with the general floor plan of that original house, right? So we know that we want most of 
this right side to be the bedrooms, so I might even just draw a big 
wall all the way through there. I’m thinking this room in the 
back is going to be the biggest. I might make it about this 
size, so that’s like 360 x 300. And then I think that this room right 
here could be a good bathroom for it, we can have it be attached so 
this becomes the primary bedroom,   and a lot of times when you’re looking 
at floor plans they’ll have closets. I don’t like to add those in my Sims game. I just don’t find it that useful. It’s 
nice for realism, but if you’re building   on a budget or like, trying to build 
something functional for your Sims, I don’t really think it’s worth 
worrying about adding closets in. This next room is going to be a little bit 
smaller, we’re going to make it like 240 x 300. This is like a 4 x 5 sized room. And then I’m going to go forward two tiles, this 
is going to become kind of like a hallway for us, and then this room in the front that 
ends up being 5 x 5 is the next bedroom. So I want you to delete this wall in the hallway 
and then draw like a little bathroom in too. So now we have two kids bedrooms and 
a bathroom right here on this side and   then this area kind of serves as like 
a little hallway entrance for them. So you can put the doors in anywhere you’d like,   I think it’s nice to have the three doors 
kind of off in a little nook like that. Sometimes I like to do that with my other 
bedrooms too, we could even make a little   nook for the primary bedroom as well, 
then we can put their door in there. That also saves us a nice big wall right 
here in case we wanted to maybe put the   TV on there or something, but we’ll 
get there too, we’re not there yet. So next step, we have to add in the study. So we want this to be kind of a small 
space filling in this little bumpout, I think it could be like a 4 x 4. That’s 
where the office is going to go and this   is kind of giving us a nice space to work with 
because we can have this area be the front door. I might just put in this nice base game one. I always like this door the best, but you can 
see they’ve now got a formal entryway right here, you’ve got access to the bedrooms 
and access to that study area. Sometimes in these sort of rooms I 
like to put an archway for the study, I think it’s always nice to 
have some nice open space. And then you have a tiny bit of room 
right here if you wanted to put a   table and like put your Sims keys and 
like a lamp or something right there. And now we have to worry about 
the entire rest of the house,   so we’ve got a whole bunch 
of weird space going on. I’m picturing that we draw a big wall right 
here and kind of block off the garage. And I want this living space to be 
kind of wide open, I want like one big kitchen/living/dining 
room all together in here. And I think that this little bumpout makes 
for a really nice spot for the kitchen, that’s why I pushed this wall out a tiny 
bit is so I could put the kitchen in there. We don’t have to lay out the exact kitchen 
just yet, I never furnish at this stage, I kind of just go through and figure 
out where stuff is going to go. I’ll put like filler furniture in basically. So right now I already know I 
want to have the kitchen here,   so I’ll just put some generic base game 
cheap counters there as like placeholders. And I also know that I want to have 
the living room in this section so   I’m going to try and get a big rug and 
then just use that as a placeholder too. Sometimes at this stage I’ll put a couple 
couches down, maybe the fireplace, maybe a TV,   I don’t really intend on keeping this 
stuff and like putting it exactly here, but it helps me to lay out where I want it to go 
and then kind of visualize the size of the space. It’s always hard to look at a box 
and then like know how big it is. I always find that rugs are 
a good tool for that too. This rug in particular is a good size to like, 
have adequate walking space around a bed, so sometimes when I’m trying to 
figure out the size of a room,   I’ll just put that rug down and then I 
know that it’s going to fit a bed nicely. So you can use that kind of 
as like a tester in all of   those rooms to know that it’s going to work. And then if I were you, I would put 
the dining table somewhere in here, sometimes it’s nice to put them in 
kind of like a little nook like this. You can sort of put it wherever works 
when you’re actually furnishing. You could even like, steal 
a bit of of space from the   study so that we have more room for 
the dining table if you wanted to. And now we have to think about the rest 
of the floor plan, this garage area. So what we’re going to do is delete this 
wall right here, we want to have like a little two tile wide hallway again, and I’m 
going to turn this area into a bathroom. So we’ve got a small bathroom, 
it could be a laundry room. In total, this is a three bed and three 
bathroom house so you don’t really need   this extra bathroom, but we have the 
space so you might as well include it. And then if you did want, you could have this 
area become that fake garage that we talked about. In real life the garage is on the side 
of this house so the driveway would be like up here and then you would turn 
in and go into the garage this way,   so you could do that if you wanted 
to, you could keep it like a garage. I keep moving the lot so we can have 
more space and like see everything,   but you could also turn this into 
more bedrooms if you would like to. If you’re going to do that, I 
would almost encourage you to like,   keep most of this hallway and split it 
up like this because you could get two more bedrooms and then have them share a bathroom. This is called a Jack and Jill bathroom, 
you put like a door into each and then you could have two more bedrooms and 
in total it’s a five-bedroom house,   it could pass as a six bedroom house if 
we wanted this office to be a bedroom too. So it’s kind of just up to you and how you 
want to lay it out, I’m just trying to give   you some options and like give you some 
ideas of how you might split things up. Real quick, I’m going to go through and 
just put some tile down in the rooms that   I’m classing as bathrooms and then I’m going 
to put carpet down in all of the bedrooms just because I think it makes it a little 
bit more obvious what we’re working with. And now we have to start thinking about the roof. So in this case, we’ve got a 
very complicated roof to do. I want to remind you again of that 
original box that we talked about, this was like that main 
original box on the building. And we want to find that again and 
use that as our roof starting point, that’s going to be like our biggest main roof. So when you’re looking at that up here, 
that big main roof — oh, that’s weird. That big main roof is like this area, 
this is that main starting point. I’m going to take one of these just plain gabled roofs and put that all the 
way across the top there. I’m going to take another one 
of those gabled roofs and I’m   going to put it here on this little 
front front bumpout over the study, and then copy that again and use it 
over here on top of the bedrooms. This is a good point also for you to raise 
the house up onto a foundation if you want to. You totally don’t have to, but if you’d 
like it to be on one, now’s a good time. We’ll come back to this front part, I want 
to move over to the side again for a second. So we’re going to take another big one of 
these gabled roofs and we’re going to find   the main section here too, which will be like 
— why does it not let me draw these here? We want to have the main roof be in 
like this section, right, like this. So we’re going to copy this 
roof and then just fill this whole area in and cover that whole 
big giant section we talked about. This is a very wide house, 
it’s very like long and wide. And then we’ll use one of those gabled 
roofs again right here in the middle. Now in the back we’re going 
to do some very similar stuff, I’m going to take this roof and I’m 
going to make it all the way across here. And you kind of have some options,   if you wanted to you could totally have this 
be like, visible from the front, those gables. Then there’s like a proper 
roof above the whole garage. I will often just leave them all at 
the default height and I always want all of the gables that are facing the 
same direction to be the same angle. So I wouldn’t like make this 
one low and this one tall, I think it looks better if they all 
match if the angles are all the same,   but I do think it’s fine and I often times 
will raise up the gable on opposite sides. So maybe on the side I’ll make the 
gable be like two tiles taller,   so these two are the same angle and they’re 
the same angle, but all of these are a different side and still the same angle, but 
different from that one, does that make sense? I’m making this very confusing. As you’re doing this, you might find some things 
like this where like, oh, the roof was too big and now it’s poking through, I like to just make 
sure I’ve tucked them all into the main roof. I want to have them all kind of hidden 
like that. A good example of like a weird part where things are not so hidden is 
like over here, we’ve got a weird gap. I’ll just drag this out so we can fill it in completely and it’s all the 
way covering the whole side. If you don’t like that and you don’t want to have   this roof piece right here, 
there are ways to fix that. What you’re going to do is drag the roof 
all the way to the end and then hold shift   and then take this little triangle so you can 
do just this side at a time and drag that in, that way it kind of lines up at the corner. You can do the same thing over here. And then if you copy the roof again because 
we’re going to want to fill in this gap next, you can copy that roof piece 
and then delete the sides. And that way you can kind of hide it from 
view on the side of the building here. A lot of times roofing in The Sims and 
like, trying to make roofing look good   requires using a lot of the same 
roof piece over and over again. Like basically just copying and pasting, 
so this roof right here is two roofs,   this roof right here is three roofs, so 
you’re going to have to do a lot of roofing and just a lot of manipulating 
of pieces to make it look nice. But in the end it looks kind 
of cool like that I think, but it’s also easier to just 
drag it all the way across. In this case they match up so you could 
totally do it that way if you wanted to. You could also if you wanted to 
maybe extend this a little bit,   that saves you the roof stress and it 
makes it a little bit wider right there. That does also give you a little bit 
of extra room in all of the bedrooms. I don’t really think that I want to do that, but if you wanted the wall to be less flat 
here you could try something like that too. Sometimes you just got to play around 
and like mess around with bumpouts. Half of Sims building is just adding bumpouts. Okay, but now we’ve got kind 
of a weird looking front so we want to try and do something 
on top of this porch right here. Sometimes I like to make porches only 
two wide, in this case a three wide porch fits really nicely with like, the 
edges of the walls so we could try that. Sometimes I’ll determine the size of a porch base 
somewhere the columns can go which maybe isn’t a good idea, but oftentimes I’ll take a column and 
like, figure out where I’m going to put them. And then if they don’t like line up nicely, 
like this where there’s kind of a weird space, I might even just make it smaller on 
purpose and just like commit to it. Just so I can have the columns looking 
better from the front of the building. I can’t say if that’s good advice 
or not, but that’s what I do a lot. I was planning on putting the staircase 
right here directly in front of the door and then you can have a really nice little 
walkway up to the front door from here. It’s looking a bit long so I might even 
want to scoot this closer to the front of the lot and we can scoot it like, 
way far into the front corner because   that gives us a huge backyard to work 
with and also gives you a bit more room in case you wanted to have a little 
driveway to go into your fake garage. If you’re going to do a fake garage, I’d maybe encourage you to just 
not bother with a foundation. You can still make the front 
look nice by putting in fences, but this way you don’t have to 
worry about terrain manipulation. I don’t worry about terrain manipulation,   I barely ever use terrain tools like 
this to like raise and lower the ground. This video is meant to be 
like, beginner followable,   and I think that terrain tools 
are maybe not so beginner. If you wanted to, you could also try and make 
the garage maybe look a little bit flatter. It might be interesting to try and do something 
like this and have the garage be like this wide because then you can have the garage door 
be in the front of the building which might   fit better on the lot, I’m just trying 
to give you some options to work with. But I think for now I might keep the 
garage door in the front here, so what   I just did is like delete the fanciness 
and make this into a plain rectangle. So that’s about 480 wide by 360 long. Did I say that backwards? Whatever, 480 x 360, 
you can see the tiles, you can count the squares. Sorry for changing the build 
again, that was mean of me,   but if you wanted to to make this into a 
garage, sometimes what I’ll do especially if you just have the base game is take a couple 
of columns and like, put them on the sides. Then I’ll take like maybe a panel texture 
and use it in the middle and then sometimes I’ll put little tiny windows, like these 
windows up at the top because it almost,   almost kind of looks like 
it could be a garage door. Obviously it’s not, it’s just paint, it’s not 
really a garage door, but I’ll use that at times. If you happen to have any packs, there’s 
a door from Snowy Escape — you’re   going to have to make the walls 
medium height just to place it, but I think that this Snowy Escape door 
looks a lot like it could be a garage door. And if you have bb.MoveObjects on, you can 
place medium wall height doors on short wall height and as you can see, it only clips a 
tiny bit so often times when I’m doing garages,   I’ll use that door as like a fake garage 
door because then it’s still a door, but it has like, the appropriate 
width to look like a garage door. There’s also a couple debug garage 
doors that might work for you. To get these, we’re going to need a few cheats. The first is TestingCheats on 
and then bb.ShowHiddenObjects, that’s the first debug cheat. And then bb.ShowLiveEditObjects, 
that’s the second debug cheat. And then if you search debug in your little 
build catalog, you can see a lot of stuff. It’s a little bit overwhelming at 
times, but if you scroll through here,   you can find some really cool things like 
fake cars that you can put in your driveway. My game is really lagging 
now that I just did that so   I’m kind of scaring myself a little bit right now. I might quickly save so I don’t lose this. That doesn’t normally happen, that’s not normal. You’re going to have to scroll down quite far, I 
just scrolled past these weird fake cats, a couple rows down from there you’ll see this little debug 
item, this is like a proper debug garage door. So if you wanted to, you could use 
this, it has a couple colors too. You could always put this down and 
then have that be your garage door. It’s not functional, it won’t open, 
but it does look like a garage door. This might even actually fit better if we 
had like a skinnier garage door section, so if you wanted to you could add that back. It’s really up to you, sometimes 
building is a lot of experimenting. We could get like a little section back 
and then put the garage door on there. You’re going to want to like alt place it 
back because it looks like it’s not really fitting properly, but that could be kind 
of cool, you could get a garage that way. All right, back to the roof for a 
second because I’m very distracted. We want to do the roof here on 
our little porch now, so first,   click on that floor that 
you’ve placed on the room. I’ve just got like a plain floor tile 
placed there, it’s one of these things,   these flat squares and I 
fit it to fit in this area. When you go up a level, you 
can see this weird yellow line. You can build a ceiling there, it just 
covers the whole thing with a flat roof. So next take one of these hipped 
roofs, different type this time,   and put it in the left corner 
here of our little flat area, and drag that out just so it like just about maybe 
a little bit more than covers our empty space. And then make it like, basically completely flat. Drag it all the way down. You might want 
to drag it a little bit back further, I just don’t want to see this line. I want to see the front line here, but 
I don’t want to see it in the back,   I want it to like blend in in this corner nicely. You can drag out the edge pieces so it gets a 
little bit wider and has a bit of an overhang. And then I would take one of these half 
gabled roofs and put it just right in the front and line it up so it basically 
exactly matches what we just did. I want to like cover up this whole area, 
I’m going to take that half gabled roof and just drag it all the way back because 
I don’t want to see those weird lines. I want it to look flat back here. I kind of like the line in the corner, 
but I don’t want to see it on this half. If you don’t like this piece, you could 
just use that half gabled roof all the   way across and that would be 
totally fine, it looks good. That’s kind of a personal preference thing, 
again roofing in The Sims often times just   requires a lot of trial and error and a lot of 
different pieces and dragging and moving them. The front of our reference picture actually 
has like a little dormer right here. I didn’t include a second floor on this 
house because I thought it was maybe a little bit small for that, but we can still put 
a fake dormer to be decorative if we wanted to. If you don’t like how this looks, 
you can even make the fake dormer bigger and like drag it all the 
way across if you’d like to. You have a lot of options for this, you 
can kind of do whatever you’d like with it. I like it being a little bit 
small and if I’m being honest,   I don’t really love how this is looking. I had a vision in my head as we were 
building it, but now that I’m like,   executing it, I don’t like it as much so I’m kind 
of curious to maybe try a couple other options. We could always if we wanted 
to move that dormer over and   then maybe try a different roof shape right here. Eugh, at that point that looks bad, 
okay, maybe we should make it flat. Maybe it should be flat, maybe this is better. You could also if you wanted to do 
like three small dormers like this. Okay, in hindsight, mine don’t 
really fit how I want them to, it’s kind of a weird width of a house. You could do like two small 
two tile dormers perhaps. That makes me want to raise 
this roof up a little bit,   and like make it a little bit taller 
so these roofs have some more room. I also kind of want a foundation again, I know 
I just had this whole thing about a garage,   but I kind of want the foundation back. I am ever so slightly tempted 
to do it with just one dormer,   so my final recommendation is to do 
just a half gabled roof like this, just one big one flat across the top, put a 
tiny two tile dormer up here in the middle, and then have an extra big roof kind 
of filling in some of the open space. I realize I have not made 
this very easy to follow, but what I’m trying to do 
is just give you options. I want you to have a lot of options 
for things that might look nice. At this point, you can kind of do 
whatever color scheme you like,   I’m not going to try and tell 
you how to paint the house. What I would suggest is using a 
nice roof trim on the outside. My favorite one is this square roof 
trim, but often this beveled out one   is better because if you’ve got 
like interior stuff going on, if you’re trying to have like an open 
stair landing, this one doesn’t clip. This one is too wide, so it does clip. I explain that more in like my proper build 
tutorial that I linked down below for you,   we don’t have to worry about that in this 
build because there’s nothing to clip, but just something to keep in mind. Try out different trims if you’re 
seeing some weird clipping issues. I really like this fancy picket 
fence the best so I’m going to use that to fill in all of our 
empty holes here on our balcony. And I’m going to get a nice plain white 
staircase and use the matching stair railing. We have a little bit more to do in the back, 
but I actually want to have less of a cover   back here so I’m imagining us putting a 
back door inside of this little bumpout. I would probably encourage you 
to use like something simple,   maybe like the sliding glass door because you 
see that kind of thing a lot in real life. And the only place that I want to put roof 
on here is just over this tiny bumpout,   so I’m going to take our little tiny, tiny, 
tiny half gabled roof, I’m going to push it all the way down so it’s flat, kind of 
drag it out so it covers all the space,   and then I’m actually going 
to get rid of the overhang. I don’t really want the overhang here, 
I just want it to cover the entrance. So one teeny, teeny, tiny little roof piece 
and that I think is the whole back done. I might use that same matching 
fence and staircase back here,   but that’s pretty much all 
I would do with the roof. For windows, I want to use my 
favorite base game shuttered windows. These are really nice because there’s 
a whole bunch of size variants of them. We’ve got big ones, we’ve got tiny ones, 
they’ve got shutterless windows that match, so it’s a nice big set and we can use 
it to kind of cover the whole building. I want to have these big clapper 
windows in the biggest open sections, so this big triangle area in the front 
of the house, I want a big window there. This one over here I’m actually 
going to put two windows on. At the top in our dormer 
I want a shuttered window. Around the side I might put 
a shuttered window up here, that’s a window to nothing, there’s no room 
up there, but it looks kind of nice to have. I’m going to do two matching big windows in that 
primary bedroom, just like we did in the front, but I’m going to be a little bit more careful 
about windows in the back here because I know   that a lot of these areas are bathrooms, like 
for example this room right here is a bathroom. I don’t want to have the most giant window there,   so I might do a slightly smaller 
one and then put curtains on it. Not that it matters, Sims 
don’t care about privacy, but sometimes it’s fun for realism to pretend. I’m going to use that same smaller 
shuttered window here by the dining table. I might do it again in the kitchen like this. And we have this huge big kind of generic looking 
garage, if you wanted you could like extend the space again, just like copy that roof over to 
the back and then copy the windows as well. Then in some of these middle smaller spaces, 
I’m going to use this octopane window, it’s basically the same window that we 
have with shutters just without them. And I’m going to put that in some of 
the tinier areas, like right here. So we can get that over here in the front, and 
then here in the study, I might use the same   big window again. If you wanted to, you could 
try and do a different like special window, maybe like one of these ones that have kind 
of like a cool windowsill on the inside. This version of the basic bay 
window has matching shutters, so you could always put 
that there on that big area. I would probably not put windows on this left 
side, but this big one has a lot of space so I might put a small window up there, maybe like 
the little square one up in that top area. You might notice that I haven’t put any 
windows on the sides of the house yet and that’s because I usually do the front windows 
first because I think the front windows,   I care more about how it looks from the outside. On the sides of the building, I usually care 
more about how it looks from the inside. So for example, over here I’m not 
too worried about having windows that are like nicely spaced out 
throughout most of the building. What I’m more worried about is having windows 
that are functional for the inside of the house. So I might put one window in 
the corner of the bathroom. I realized I have to fix this roof piece 
again because I added an extra one. And this doesn’t look that good,   like let’s be honest with ourselves, 
that looks like not cute at all. And we could like maybe try something 
different to like center some windows over here, I feel like it just looks 
kind of sad from the inside though. So even if I add like a random 
window in the bathroom here, I’m not that worried about it looking kind of bad. You could always do a small window in the 
bathroom because that’s kind of realistic. It’s really up to you and how 
you want to furnish the house. You can always add more windows as 
you’re doing the furnishings too. We did talk earlier about making 
the garage into extra bedrooms,   so if you did want to go that route I’d 
probably keep this section as a hallway. I might get like a little tiny 2 x 1 
bathroom with just like a toilet and a sink,   and then you have space for two more 
bedrooms and an extra bathroom over here. So depending on how you want to split 
it up, you could do it like that too. Again, I’m just trying to give you options 
so that you can try and recreate this nicely. This is currently what I have 
as the floor plan if you want   to take a screenshot and try and 
recreate it if you lost track. Now I want to do some painting 
outside so one of the things that   I liked the most about this house 
was kind of the mix of textures. I don’t know if you can tell, but 
they have some vertical paneling,   some horizontal paneling, 
and some really nice stone. So I want to try to do that too. In our case, I want to grab this really beautiful   country field stone in like a nice 
grayish color from the base game. And I’m going to put that only on the two really 
fancy bumpouts in the front of the building. So this big main one over here on the side 
and then one on the left side as well. I don’t always really like to have 
that cover like entire big vast spaces, what I would do instead is have this just 
go up to the very end of that roof piece,   and then I might put like a column there on 
the side to kind of mark the end of it as well. If you don’t like the bathroom 
window, you can just delete it,   bathrooms don’t need to have windows. And then you can do the same thing 
on the back where it kind of matches, but you see how I’ve sort of ended it 
here where like this little part starts? I only have the stone in a small space. That happens a lot in real life too because 
obviously doing the stone is really expensive, so they often times will have the 
stone only in the front facade. In real life, there might be 
no stone on the side at all, they would just have it in the front, 
just for like looks from the front. You don’t have to do that in The Sims 
because money is not really a concern. This wallpaper costs 5 dollars versus like 
maybe a paneling that cost 4 dollars so   it’s not really a problem, you can 
do whatever you want in The Sims. But I think it’s nice to try 
mimic real life just a little bit. They also had kind of a mix of 
vertical and horizontal paneling. We have a couple options here. Number one is this pinstripe grains panel. The only problem with this, and 
I don’t know if you can tell, but it doesn’t line up right 
across a wall and a roof piece. The roof piece gets it kind 
of like, off a little bit, so I don’t like to do vertical paneling 
when there’s roofs that are visible. I would put the vertical paneling more 
in areas like this where it’s hidden. Or like only on the roof where you don’t have 
to worry about it lining up with anything. So you maybe could put the vertical paneling up there and then have horizontal 
paneling in most of the other areas. What I think I’m going to do is put vertical 
paneling on this front bumpout and then also in this middle section, and then I 
like this kind of wide paneling as   well so I’ll use that in the other 
areas that we haven’t painted yet. There’s not really an exact science to 
this, it’s kind of up to you, you don’t   really have to do this at all if you don’t want 
to, you could also paint it all the same color. The other wallpaper that I think 
is really good for this is actually   underneath the masonry category, 
it’s this industrial interest wall. It’s quite expensive, it’s 12 simoleons each,   but it has a perfectly matching horizontal and 
vertical wallpaper, they’re like the same texture. So if you wanted to use that instead, the 
colors would match a little bit better   across them, you wouldn’t have like a weird 
disparity of white swatches not matching. I know that kind of always 
bothers me so it’s really   just up to you and how you want to decorate it. You also don’t have to paint it white, you could paint it whatever color, I’m 
just trying to give you some ideas. For the foundation on this,   I might actually use this nice black brick 
because it kind of matches our shutters. This is just a nice plain 
base game brick foundation. And then if I were you, I would go through and   kind of try to mimic whatever 
paneling you did on the front. I would just do it again in the back, just 
kind of go through and take it and match it,   just kind of fill in all those empty 
wallpaper spaces that you’ve got. If you’re seeing any weird 
places that seem kind of empty,   you could maybe add another window up there. And then the last thing that I always like 
to do is use a column, I’m going to use this base game mega basic column here because 
I only have the base game to work with,   but if you have other packs, specifically 
this experienced pillar from Get Together, honestly this op-ed column from Cats and Dogs, 
Snowy Escape has a nice plain white square column. Any sort of simple plain white square 
column, I like to use that on the edges. I’m basically trying to mimic 
like this edging that pops up, but the auto placement of it is terrible in this 
game, you see how it only does it on one side? So I’m trying to mimic that 
except by using a column and doing it myself because I don’t trust the game. The game does it in kind of a weird way, 
so I just do it myself with columns. I would go through and place 
those on all of the edges,   just to have like kind of a 
finishing touch on the sides. It does look kind of busy with this base game one, but this is my favorite of 
the base game columns for it. Some of the others are a little bit too 
much, I always hated how this one was round. If it were a square, I’d like it better,   but that one could work too, just a 
nice round plain edge piece there. That kind of comes down to personal preference,   you don’t have to do the same columns 
as me, you can do whatever you’d like. But we’re basically done with most of the 
exterior, I want now to go pick a roof shingle. I would probably use just 
like a plain black shingle   on this house to match all of our black accents. You don’t have to, you can do whatever you want, 
but that would probably be my pick for this. The reference picture that we had originally 
had like a nice metal roof that they were using, so you could do a metal roof if you wanted to. It really comes down to 
whatever texture you prefer. I don’t often use the metal roof so maybe I’ll 
do that one today, I don’t know. It’s up to you. Do whatever you’d like. I would probably put some sort of 
deck on the front porch as well. I quite like this eco craft 
hardwood as a flooring to use. Sometimes I’ll use a wood color 
just to have like some variation   in color and then use the same on 
both the front and the back decks. Make sure you don’t forget to paint 
like the little tiny pieces on these   half gabled roofs by the way, you 
don’t want to leave that blank. I was going to say you don’t want to 
leave it bald, I guess it is bald,   but you don’t want to leave it bald. And then once you’ve put roof trim in, sometimes you can see pieces like 
this that kind of get messed up. There’s like a little tiny gap right there,   I’ll hold shift and then drag this 
corner out just so I can blend it in. And I’ll go through and paint all the 
roof pieces everywhere all the same color. And this is sort of what our 
exterior is looking like so far. If you’re not doing a garage, you can put 
this anywhere on the lot that you want. I might try and center it. And then I like to use this cheap base game fence,   it’s just called a simple fence, it’s 
one of the cheapest ones in the game. I might use that and just fence in a really huge 
backyard because we have a ton of space back here. Oops. You can make it however 
big you want it to be, but you can just fence in a whole bunch of space. This one annoyingly does not have a 
matching gate for whatever reason, and the only gate that kind 
of matches is not plain white. It comes in blue, which I don’t really like. So sometimes I’ll just delete 
part of this and then leave it   open instead of having an actual closed off gate. Most times those floor plan websites don’t really 
give you a lot of ideas to work with for the backyard because a lot of times in real life the 
houses are just just plain flat in the backyard. We don’t really want that, so we had 
to kind of make our own thing up. If I were you, I might try and get a big 
patio area in like, part of the backyard. You can sort of space this out however you want,   it depends what you need and like 
what kind of money your Sims have. This might be a good spot to get a pool 
and kind of put that in the corner. If you did that, you could maybe put 
a bar and grill over in this section. This area right here is actually a good 
spot for a built-in bar, I would say. I probably wouldn’t use these counters, 
but just to kind of show you what I’m   talking about, sometimes it can be fun 
to like, build a built-in in the back. I’ll often times like kind of blend it into this 
grill and like scoot the grill backwards a little   bit, and then you could get a matching 
bar, it could be a smaller bar than this, but you could do something like that 
and have a cool built-in cooktop area,   put a small table here, there 
could be lounge chairs here. It really depends what your Sims 
need and what they like to do. If you’ve got other packs, 
there’s a huge backyard, there’s space to put things like maybe the 
treehouse, you could have a cool garden area. I’m going to build something small just 
to give you sort of a layout concept. Sometimes I’ll even shrink the 
backyard if I’ve got too much   space because you can always extend 
it if your Sims get more money later, but sometimes it’s nice to have like 
a slightly smaller one to work with. We’ll come back to landscaping,   but I’m going to leave a little bit 
of grass here to put some flowers in. And like I mentioned, if I were you 
I might put a small pool back here,   I might do it just like in this area. It can be however big you want, 
however big your Sims can afford,   but this way you’ve got a little bit of space 
for a couple of lounge chairs right here. Sometimes it’s nice to just have like two of them, 
if you’ve got packs, a lot of the packs have nice   big umbrellas that you could put down in between 
them so you can have a little bit of shade. Might want to do something like that. 
Ooh, scratch the original idea I had,   you could always put the bar down 
here, like in front of the pool. This is a significantly 
cooler spot to have the bar. I don’t know which one you’d want to use, 
it depends how you’re trying to decorate it, but you could have like a 
cool bar and grill combo here. And then also space for a pretty big 
dining table maybe here in the center. I might put like some monkey bars and some   other kids stuff over here in 
the grass space that we have. There is a lot of space on 
the patio so if you wanted, you could try and put maybe like some really 
cute planter boxes sort of tied in here. There’s a bunch of really nice 
gardening sort of clutter too, like this hose you could put on the wall. So that’s probably how I would try to 
fill out and lay out this backyard. Often times I’ll end up putting things 
like chess tables, maybe like a telescope,   I don’t know, this video is 
not really about furnishing, today’s video is more about layouts 
and like how to build an exterior. So the last thing I want to talk 
to you about is landscaping. The first thing we’re going to 
do is put some really big trees. My favorite are these giant oak trees. I like to kind of pepper these 
around the corners of the lot,   while being careful to make sure it’s 
not clipping with the house too much. But I’m going to put some really big 
oak trees just kind of around like this. Sometimes I’ll size down landscaping as well, you can press the left bracket key to size it 
down and get a little bit of size variation. I’m just going to put those kind 
of around most of the house. I may also scoot the house back 
just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit. I want a little bit more front 
yard up here. So I’m going to put a mailbox right now before I forget, 
just right on the edge of this path. I’m also going to put a trash can back 
here kind of by the edge of the patio. My favorite plant to landscape with is this hedge 
row, it’s really simple, it’s nice and wide,   but it’s nice to just go through and 
like, fill in some spaces with this. So I’m going to wrap it 
around a couple of the areas,   I might have it go all the way up to 
the very edge of the house back here. It does kind of pose a problem 
sometimes when you have all these   weird bump outs because like 
the regular size is too big. You could try and size it down, you could also just like wrap it around 
the edge too over here if you wanted to. Sometimes I also like getting a couple 
smaller trees to like put in the front of the building and block off parts of the house. I might get a couple of these and 
have one sized down next to it. And this is one of those things also that 
really comes down to personal preference,   I won’t tell you what plants to use, 
it really depends what you like to do, but for me a lot of times I like to try 
and layer my landscaping a lot so I’ll   take those bushes in the back and then I’ll 
get some of these like low-lying flowers and I’ll try and fill in a bit of an area 
that I want a landscape with flowers. And I’ll use those as like the 
front lining of the landscaping. So you can kind of just put those anywhere, 
the thing about this is that you’re trying to   make it look natural so it’s okay if it’s not 
perfectly even, you can really do whatever. And then I might pick another bush 
that’s like a good filler size,   so like this one might be good as a filler bush. This is the unkempt shrubbery wide. I also like this green fern as a filler bush. If you have other packs, I have recently 
been very interested in one of the bushes   from Cats and Dogs, this one’s 
kind of cool as a filler bush, it’s got like some different 
color and texture to it. And what I would do is just 
take that and kind of like,   layer it in for some extra greenery 
depending on what you want to use. For the sake of this build being base game, I’m 
going to use this plain one instead, but I just   try and fill that in in some of the like bigger 
wider spaces, and then you can pick any flower. My favorite one, I use it all 
the time, are these hydrangeas. You totally don’t have to use this, but 
I would take these or some other flower. You can like kind of size 
them down different ways,   um, you can rotate them around a 
little bit to try and make them look like they’re different bushes because 
the problem is they’re all the same. They’re like little clones of each other so 
by doing like the size variations and like various rotating, you try and make it look a 
bit more like they’re unique different flowers. They’re not, but you can try 
and make them look like that. I did a whole video on landscaping once so I can   link that down below for you 
too if you want to watch it. Or you can just Google it. I don’t 
really remember what it’s called   right now, but like ‘lilsimsie landscaping 
tutorial’ or something, it might come up. I was trying mostly to focus 
on floor plans in this build. So anyway, if I were you I’d probably 
try and do some similar things back in the back of the lot as well, just get 
some bushes, layer some stuff together. I left this part here open 
to maybe put some flowers in so we could try and line it up a little bit. I like to rotate those around all different   directions too to try and 
make them look more unique. And then you could maybe line that 
somehow with a fence we have these   cute little metal ones that kind of fit our 
black color scheme, we could always use that. I might put some terrain paint under it 
so it all blends in a little bit nicer,   and you can put as many flowers as you want to. I think it’s always nice to have them 
kind of like lining up against the house. And then the other tip that I often 
go for and you don’t have to do this, it’s kind of just my style I guess, is that 
I like to have the flowers match in color. If I’m going to do a variety of styles 
of flower like I’m doing over here, I like to have them all be the same color, 
but that really depends on your personal   preference and like, what you like to build 
and the style of house you’re trying to build. There’s no like easy obvious answer for what the 
best way to landscape is, it really depends on   what you like to do, but I think it looks kind of 
cool with all the same color flowers everywhere. In this case, I have obviously 
chosen a kind of purple theme. I might just go through and get 
a couple extra flowers back here, and then the last thing I would do is 
go in and add terrain paint everywhere. I like to use this smart starter soil and I get 
like a kind of light brush, light and small. So like really soft, I like to just go through 
and softly add in a little bit of dirt down. And this is kind of a personal 
style choice too because you might like a darker dirt or like, more dirt. I kind of like it to be soft like this, and I 
just go go through and put a little bit of dirt underneath all of the landscaping and sometimes 
kind of like surrounding the edges of the house. I’m almost trying to give it dimension and like, paint the edges a little bit darker, 
so I go through and do that everywhere. If I were you, I would probably 
encourage you to do terrain paint last. Like last last last, absolute last thing 
you do because this game is really glitchy   and annoying and there’s a really common 
bug where terrain paint deletes itself, so just do it last so you don’t have 
to worry about that happening to you. I won’t tell you how to furnish the inside of the 
house because that really comes down to personal preference too, I mostly just wanted to give 
you some ideas of where you could put things,   but this is kind of what I was picturing 
for the main layout of the house. I’d be really curious if you all 
wanted to like, share your builds,   if you did something like this and you wanted 
to share it, I’d love to see what you make. Maybe we could use like #lilsimsieTutorial or   something so we can see what everybody 
builds if we try and follow this. You don’t have to do that, 
but if you want to share it,   you’re welcome to do it, I’d love to see. I’m also going to put this 
up on the gallery for you if you want to use mine as like a starting point. I’m not here to force you to build something,   so if you get overwhelmed and you don’t want to 
use your version, I will upload mine for you. I’m also going to put a couple little   lights outside just so we have 
some light around the porches. Perhaps I’ll get a gnome, just like 
one little tiny gnome, just right here. The only decor I add is the Grim Reaper. So this ended up being a five bed, three 
bathroom house the way that I have uploaded it, but I’ve given you some options 
for different things you could try. So it is officially up on the gallery with 
that #lilsimsieTutorial if you want to use it, and I think on that note, I’m 
going to end this video right here. Hopefully this was helpful to you, I’m 
going to give you one last look at the full floor plan in case you want to screenshot 
it with the grid so you can try and copy it. And if you like this sort of content, 
let me know because I can try to do some more helpful sort of tutorial 
style content more if you like it. We can also try and do stuff 
that maybe has one or two packs, we could do like a Cats and Dogs only build or 
something together if you wanted to try that,   so just, give me some feedback in the comments. Is it even helpful? Is it interesting? 
I don’t know, I don’t know. And I am going to catch you all 
tomorrow, okay? Bye everybody. The fact that I spent so long on this and it’s 
not even furnished is kind of embarrassing,   but I was going slow on purpose because 
I was trying to show you how to do it. I was trying to walk you through all the steps,   but it’s like hours of recording 
and it’s not even furnished. [ JAZZY OUTRO MUSIC ]