I've been wondering this for a while now. When you build houses for your Sims, how do you build them? Are you the type of person who builds them big with all the extras (two dozen bathrooms and an Olympic sized swimming pool), someone who builds them with just enough space for a family to live comfortably but grow, or someone who builds them small?

I like to build them at just the right size for a family, maybe a little on the small side. I don't tend to lavish my Sims with space and I hate using EA houses with ridiculously large rooms. I've never given my Sims anything like a pool.

I like small and functional. I always make sure there is room to expand, if need be. I'm with you - the premade EA's are just too spacious. I have never given my Sims a pool, I like sending them to go socialize. Actually, I can't remember the last time I even gave a Sim exercise equipment for the same reason. I'm trying to come out of my comfort zone, and make my families a little larger, so I have to deviate from the way I would normally build.

I love my homes to be small but still fit for a family. Nice and snug essentially. I use to just love giant houses (I still enjoy the occasional mansion on a 64x64) but for normal play, I don't like having too much space. I end up making extra space into another a bedroom, throwing in a bunk bed, and, whoops, more babies are on the way.

I usually build either ridiculously huge or laughably tiny. I was getting a bit tired of one of my saves so I took my sim from his mega mansion to a shitty tiny apartment I made in Bridgeport. He could basically take a dump and cook his dinner at the same time it's so cramped.

This is what happened to my current family. They started out in a one bedroom house in Riverview, as in the beginning it was just my Sim and his cat. After child numbers 4 and 5 with his wife, they decided to move to a larger house. But even so, it's not large and isn't quite big enough for them. The kids are all teens and above now (two teens, three young adults - with one about to become an adult) so hopefully they'll start to move out soon as they find their partners.

When I build, I tend to place furniture as I go and then build the walls around that. That's why my rooms are always the perfect size to start with but as my Sims gather extra belongings they quickly run out of space. I never learn though!

I usually stick to 40x40 or smaller. I've played larger but try no to. My current family is on using a EA made house I've updated thats a 40X40 that is actually very nicely made (color choice and decorating aside). But I ship the kids off as soon as I can and use bunk beds, basement rooms, rooms over the garage.

My issue is that the pre-made houses are too big but there are never enough bedrooms. It's always an enormous house with 8 foyers and 3 tiny bedrooms. I feel like I make better small houses, but I always tend to make houses way too big, so I really have to focus on keeping things small, and even then, I always end up with one awkward room that doesn't serve any purpose.

I tend to find the pre-made EA houses are too small, with often with not enough bedrooms. The living spaces are so that you can cook dinner, eat, and watch TV all at the same time. When I build, I like the keep the houses comfortably small, but big enough to have different rooms for each activity (seperate dining, kitchen and living rooms), as well as enough room for the family to expand. I like to have roughly 3 or 4 bedrooms and maybe 1.5 - 2 bathrooms

Most of my homes have 2 beds and one bath until the couple wish for children and then I will expand to a basement, with an extra bedroom and bath. Usually the 2nd bedroom serves as a skill room until the first baby comes or their wealth makes living in that house look odd. Well, most of my homes have either a foundation basement dug out and ready to finish or room to make stairs to a WA basement. I build to expand and when I feel expanding more looks ridiculous or want the lot ready for another family to move in, I will build a new house. I never keep EA houses the same as they are shipped in the world, always edit to add walls for another bedroom or if the lot is too confusing I delete it and plop down one of mine. I play with Twallan's SP set with inspection for double beds and cribs so I have to edit EA houses before I play.

Impeccable Manor 40x30 premade lot, came with the Generations xpac, its pretty nice imo with some modifications, paint, decorating, things like that its my go to when I start a new hood with a new family. Its what I'm using now on a 40x40 lot. But like I said I usually do a bit of remodeling too. Take out a bathroom knock down some walls.

I have issues building houses in the 25 000 - 100 000 range. So most of my houses end up really small and functional which translates to anything from one room plus bathroom for a family of eight (for poor sims in historical challenges) to a cramped 2/3/4 bedroom house for a small to large modern family. I prefer building small houses so I can see everything. To me a big house has two bathrooms and a bedroom for each kid (I generally play big families). On the other hand I do build some mansions for rich historical games which are overkill but even they have most of their wealth split up (extra houses, businesses, holiday homes).

Largest house I build might have been a bit too large.. it was a mansion for six young adult sims who won the lottery together and quit their education. (at least thats my backstory for it.)

It did give an interesting premise to create a house on though.. I mean they are young, not looking to start a family and have lots of cash. Which means they'd get all kinds of crazy things in their mansion!
They have a snowboard halfpipe in their backyard, a large pool with an island in the centre, the daredevil girl has a fireman's pole in her bedroom that goes down into the game room, the goth boy has an art studio to paint and sculpt in, theres a disco in the mansion, but also a small library and pool room. Kind of the posh area in case they are receiving fancy visitors. They also have an indoors pool, and of course each of them has a fancy car.

I play with aging off, so they dont age and just do whatever they want to do. They visit the festivals, go on trips, have parties, work on their skills at times.. Which reminds me that I should go back to playing this household again! haven't done that since a few expansions. Theres still some university and into the future stuff they might want to have in their house.

Nice house idea! I also like your gameplay, and cool backstory. You should give them the University Life bonfire, that'd make for some cool parties!

I build affordable starter homes because starter homes are hard to find online. Most starter homes are not.

I think many home builders are unclear on what a starter home is. In my view, a starter home is what a family fresh out of create a a family can afford. If one has to use cheats or play the game for days and weeks before their sims can move in, then it is not a starter. A home costing 100,000, 50,000, or even 25,000 simpletons is not a starter home.

Actually I'm building houses in 30x30 size, sometimes in 40x40 in max. The one I'm building now is on a 20x20 lot, has 3 bedrooms and 2 baths, I like to build 2 or more baths if I had 3 or more sims living in the house, just to avoid confusion before going to school/job... And I'm happy that it getting pretty costing less than 50,000 simoleons

I like medium houses, like villas and modern houses. I'm not good making those cute small houses nor giant mansions.

I have yet to build a house that I like. You could say I am Construction Disabled. The houses I prefer to play with, for a family, are three bedroom, 2.5 bath, living room, family room, mud room (for laundry), dining room separate from, but next to, the spacious kitchen ( I hate small kitchens, and what is with floor plans where the dining room is on the opposite side of the house from the kitchen?) and a two car garage.

Single sims I usually put in a one or two bedroom, and apartments are fine for them.

When I was playing bandsuck, I had all the band members live together in a four bedroom. I really only needed two bedrooms because they started hooking up with each other.

Basements seem to be a great thing to have in smaller houses.. can have an extra room that way without having to move. Maybe one of the kids wants to sleep there, maybe its a game room or laundry room.. or secret laboratory.

I actually did make a full laboratory recently, with six scientists. A geeky electronics guy, an engineer, a doctor, a biologist, an indiana jones type of teacher and an alchemist.
They'll experiment with anything. So far they made a plumbot, cloned an alien, went into the future to learn tech there, are making inventions, etc.

Considering theres plenty of stuff to put into a lab such as an alchemy set, science station, diamond cutter, plumbot station, inventors workbench, computers, whiteboards, skeleton, treadmill, hybernation chamber, etc. It really is a lot of fun to do this. And in the meanwhile the indiana jones of the group wants to gather artifacts to display in the small museum they have, and the biologist is working on all kinds of plants in the garden.

I love making apartment buildings, with tiny cramped tenements for my poor Sims to squeeze into. I find it's a more realistic way to play because they don't have the space or money (I have a mod which drastically increases frequency and price of bills) to have all these massive luxurious items so they have to go out on the town to skill or find entertainment, and they make a lot of new friends in the process.

I make small family houses that are in the 1000 - 1500 square foot range IRL. I use eplans.com and use their narrow lot collection when I build. I usually turn large closets into bathrooms and sometimes turn large bathrooms into extra bedrooms. I can fit all my houses on 2x3 lots.

I am also building a 12000 sq ft legacy house. Right now, they are first generation and living in some rooms in the basement. It will be crazy big with everything.

I find EA's houses are either too large and spacious, or if they're small, they're really badly designed from a space efficiency perspective... They've built massive mansions with huge swaths of wasted space, and tiny houses that can't fit a double bed in their bedrooms... (Yeah EA... That makes total sense...). Why can't they have more nicely designed midranged houses...

I once had to make 7 20x10 houses for an island because the ones I found at the exchange were over decorated and after spending as much time as building one from scratch would to fix the house I decided to build the rest. I have to say that I like bigger houses. I usually put in 5 or 6 bedrooms and a tiny foyer and kitchen dinning room. I like EA houses even if I don't use them because they give me build ideas. I usually do play with them but end up editing them. My goal with each house encountered seems to be, start with a nice house and render it into a rectangle 2 spaces in from the edge of the lot by the time I am finished tweaking it perfect. I know this is very wrong but those wall sliders are so nice and I am pretty good with the rectangular hipped roofing tool. It works for foundations too, but I do like it when someone has put in a nice stairwell through the foundation in so I don't have to use the elevator to make basement rooms. I grew up in a perfectly rectangular brick box and I feel its the perfect way to live.

I run the gamut, but of late I've been leaning to moderate size homes, usually with 3 BR and a nursery (I hate rearranging a nursery into a kid's BR when they age up, and another kid suddenly appears on the horizon). As my sims are typically self employed, or one is and one is in a RH career, I have to give them space for painting, sculpting, bot building, and, if in the right type of town, and I'm into a witch scenario, an alchemy station. I rely heavily on big basements for that stuff,as well as my underground parking (I hate taking up outdoor real estate space/first floor interior space for parking). I also like them to have outdoor activities, so a pool, entertainment stuff, and a fenced garden, even if small, are required. I also like an exercise room, rather than sending them off to the gym, so that's another basement activity room.

I tend towards larger rooms, even if I end up with a larger footprint for the house, as I can't stand routing bottlenecks. So I try for 2 fridges in the kitchen, or 2 food stations if I'm using ITF type stuff, to eliminate route failures when they're dying of hunger. Same for bathrooms. I tend to add at least 1 extra bathroom, at least a half bath, so if everyone needs to use the toilet, you don't have them tripping over each other. Halls are typically 2 tiles wide, rather than 1, to help avoid routing issues. Same for stairs whenever possible. So while the homes could be a bit smaller, especially with only 3 BR, I'd rather "over-engineer" the space for the brain dead to navigate, than design more aesthetically pleasing smaller, intimate spaces that will result in a lot of unnecessary foot stamping.

I used to do large lots, either 50X50 or 60X60 to have plenty of room for a large house footprint and plenty of outdoor space, but unless it's going to be a horse farm (which I haven't done in a REALLY long time), I've found I can get just about everything I need on a typical 40X40 or 40X30 lot. At 30X30, I get a bit squeezed on the outdoor stuff I like to be able to add, but I have pulled it off with some tradeoffs. Starters at 20X20, though, can work just fine. The10X10 starters, though, never worked for me, as there are too many tradeoffs to get such a tiny footprint and still end up with something that 2 sims can navigate without getting all pissed off at each other.

Also, as my play is typically over at least several generations, if not a "full" 10 gen legacy, I prefer to have the space generously allotted to start, so I'm not stuck moving them too soon, and have enough room to flesh out the decor over time to keep it visually appealing to play for the relatively long time I'll play that scenario through.

It depends on the family. I guess I mainly stick to the middle class families and give them just a nice, typical suburban house. Usually two storeys, around four bedrooms, two bathrooms. Not always like that though, it's good to have a variety of houses.

Living in Brisbane, there's a really nice mix of residential architecture you can see find in just one suburb. These beautiful old Queenslanders, with large verandas, bay windows and sunrooms. The brick family homes build a couple of decades ago, usually with four or five bedrooms and a rumpus room. More modern homes, some nice, some simply boxy and uninspired tombs. Other ones you see less of stand out as well, like tudor homes, craftsmans, cape cods, the sprawling one storey manors you'd commonly see in Melbourne. It's funny, like a thousand architects from all over the world descended on the city at once.

What's also good is that on real estate websites they'll give a floor plan that shows the layout of the rooms to give you some idea. So I guess I'd say I try to stick to normal, typical home/room sizes. I hate the compact ones, homes where the living room looks like they forgot to add it in and just shoved it into the hallway or bedrooms that are 2x3. On the other hand, I dislike those massive homes where you can place as much furniture as you want but the room still looks empty, where there are things like bowling alleys in the basement.

Oh, another influence of mine is Manhattan. I love the row house mansions, probably only 7 squares wide in game but they stretch back and have about five or six storeys. Also the older style apartments which always had a library and a servant's area. In a way it's like two apartments in one which join at the butler's pantry, the parlour and dining room and bedrooms and library on one side, the kitchen, servants' eating area and their bedrooms on the other. So with apartments/town houses I try to keep things smaller, especially with cheaper apartments.

And I also agree with everyone on those mansions where you would think there would be at least four bedrooms, likely more but there's only one or two. Always annoyed me.

I rarely make big families, usually there are small ones (parents with 1-3 kids or one parent with 1-3 kids), or childless couples, or single sims, so, I don't really need large houses; I build them to fit the family's needs.The roms are not very large, but not really tiny, too (otherwise it is hard to make screenshots), and I don't make any unneeded rooms, like some EA houses have. There's usually a kitchen, a dining room, sometimes a study, and usually a half-bathroom on the first floor; bedrroms for all the family members, guest bedrooms, bathrooms (a master bathroom, a kids' bathroom and a guest bathroom) on the 2nd floor, and sometimes some specific rooms, like art sturio, conservatory, a lab, depending on my sims' hobbies and/or careers. Richer houses can have big lawns, patios, pools or hot tubs, filthy rich mansions are complete with a room for the butler; but more affordable ones usually have a bbq zone and some little space for landscaping. I almost never give my sims things like pool tables, ping-pong tables, exercize equipment, dj booths or karaoke - they need to go out to community lots to use these objects, otherwise they'd stay at home all the time because everything would ba available there. Sims'personalities are also taken into consideration: party-loving sims need some big space for partying, childish or family sims need playground objects, green-thums need a lot of space to expand their gardens, etc.