I entered this twice and I got a reply. I need to work on the following.

- A more attractive roof (which I can do)
- Give the house more 'Oomph' instead of it just being a block.
- Add landscaping. At the moment it looks like it has just been plunked down.

I'm not really very creative so any help with the last two would be much appreciated. Please post below on this thread and I will try and improve it based on what is said.

Images are below:





















Thanks :D

It's way too big, meaning wasted space in all of the rooms.

Is there only one (albeit huge) bathroom? I would say one less bathroom then there is bedrooms, and you could use bathrooms to fill in the space in the house better.

MOAR WINDOWS! The upstairs hallway is very dark. And nicer colours, to brighten up the very dark house.

And is that a section of UNPAINTED WALL I see on the back there?

I *like* big rooms; too many houses I see have insufficient space to put all the junk my Sims bring home from shopping at other Sims` stores, and I *try* to make it fit, not always successfully. Small rooms make it more difficult. Space in rooms in my neighborhood is never "wasted" for long.

That said, I agree with Sparklycookie regarding the window count, and while bricks are ok, lighter colors tend to carry an airer, more open feeling.

I second the above suggestions. It's very weird that the front of the house has almost no windows (as in your pic). And the upstairs definitely needs more than one bathroom... remember, you have enough beds for six people.

You can like big rooms, but most of the rooms in this house go beyond that into a lot of wasted space. Depending on the family size, big houses can be wonderful, but I'm a big fan of having more, smaller rooms. Some of this is to curb annoying sim behavior--while you might put a TV, stereo, or computer in your own bedroom, I tend to keep them out of sim bedrooms or their housemates will inevitably wake them up when sleeping. Desks are nice, but they can present an annoying problem with kids and their homework. You either need to place one singular desk so they can have a homework dump, or get a mod that lets you assign desks.

The only reasonably sized rooms in your floorplan, in my opinion, are the living room, and the two bedrooms on the lower portion of the top floor plan. Everything is just enormous, including the first floor hallway. For instance, in my experience, for optimum sim navigation, you need a hallway about two tiles wide. Three is fine, but can start to look large for the scale. More than that's ridiculous if you're not building a castle. Most of the time, 3x2 bathrooms are sufficient, especially if you have a few of them. Otherwise, 3x3, 3x4 is about the max size unless you're making something fancy with the toilet cordoned off, etc.

Basically, since it takes the sims a good while to walk anywhere, if you're going to make a house that large, you need to make it worth the hassle. You could probably cut down the size of your rooms by half and have a similarly designed, more playable space for your family.

You don't have to just take my word for it. I play legacy style mostly, and I put houses on 4x4 lots that need to house up to 14 sims at times, depending on the situation with elder generations, double heirs, surprise multiple births, etc. I happened to put the two most recent iterations of houses up for display.

First house: Floor 1, Floor 2
Second house: Floor 1, Floor 2

The only problem I ever have with house navigation is the occasional issue on the landing of the staircase, a sacrifice I made to stay true to the real life floorplans they were based on. Notice there's plenty of room for stuff, and even more opportunity for a themed room like a library or nursery. A place to stash a bar.

Any further advice from here depends on how you intend to change the floorplan. If you keep the house in the same size footprint, you'll have to reduce the slope of the roof quite a bit. You'll also be best off using the cheat mentioned above to do each piece of roof manually--the bits that cover the largest area are going to naturally have a higher pitch because of the area involved. If you want to keep the same amount of rooms, I'd advise to make the house itself smaller. With a smaller house, the roof pitches aren't going to start out being as awkward and ugly as they are with larger houses.

Even if you don't want to work directly off a floor plan, I might browse a site with plans and try and find a house that has a similar shaped/styled roof. The best thing about making houses based on floorplans is having those exterior views helping me with making roofs on my house.

In terms of the exterior, I think making the front door covered with a little roof bit and some thin columns would help break up the solid line of the front wall. In the back, I'd rather a bedroom than a bath in the direct center, and then moving that balcony to cover the patio (in full or in part) works better aesthetically. I'm not a fan of diagonal walls on that balcony with it being fairly narrow. One idea would be, underneath the centered balcony, to actually make a covered patio with either greenhouse walls (if you have them) or an approximation of it with the nicest full length windows that you have. But these are more suggestions to spruce up the shape. I still think the interior needs an overhaul, and plans for the exterior should be made after that's sorted.

Thanks for all the help. I understand what you're saying Quinctia, but I need to get a balance between my sizes and yours. And GeneralOperationsDirector (lol GOD), do you mean lighter bricks on the outside walls?

I think you need to try to get the windows and doors to match. You have 3 different exterior doors, and one of them (On and below the balcony) doesn't look like an exterior door to me. And is the back door the shop door? I think those really need to be changed. Also, I don't like how the one back door opens onto the grass, with the patio just one tile away. Why not extend the patio to the door? Also, add more bathrooms! Just downsize the rooms a bit to open up space for them

Yes, I meant a lighter-colored brick.

I agree about the patio not connecting to that back door; you should add *at least* a half-tile floor-piece between the door and the patio. I also agree that the roof angles are too steep for a structure of that size that isn`t a steeple.

Speaking of doors, that door *does* look like an interior door, and the double doors to the patio look like they belong in a retail establishment, not a home.

...and my Packrat Sims will fill up even the biggest of rooms soon enough. Some people prefer smaller rooms, but some people actually prefer the huge ones.

I have MogHughson`s assignable desk and Christianlov`s Sim Controll II mirror in my game, so homework isn`t an issue for me, and if a Sim insists on playing with a computer in someone else`s room, I can just lock the door, so that`s not a major problem for me either.

I have no issues with the huge upstairs bathroom, either; I also have a NoBathroomPrivacy hack in my game, so I`d just add more plumbing to that room.

I`d probably use the "secondary bedroom" as the Master Bedroom and vice-versa, though.