The latest DLC for The Sims 4 is the Tiny Living Stuff Pack and with its release simmers have been embracing the micro home. The pack offers some great boosts for those who live in smaller houses so there are now significant advantages to downsizing.
While some builders have micro homes down to a fine art, others may be venturing into this area for the first time. If you're more about the mansion than the mini home, then these tiny living building hacks are for you. Here we take a look at some tricks and tips that can help you embrace building your very own really tiny house.
Utilize Build Cheats
When space is short, using build cheats will enable you to get the most out of your space. The main cheat you'll need is bb.moveobjects on. Typing this into the message box, after enabling cheats with testingcheats on, will mean you can more freely place items, without being constrained by the grid.
On the PC you can then hold down the alt key while placing items to give smoother movement and stop them snapping to the grid, allowing you to recreate more of these other tiny home hacks. You can also use other build cheats to move items up and down, allowing them to be stacked up. Show hidden objects cheats will also allow you to obtain cheap and small clutter items to make your tiny home feel more lived in.
Leave A Gap
When it comes to rooms, then leaving a gap will help you out. If you build a room and leave one side free you can trick the game into thinking it isn't a room. Instead of dragging rooms out, simply build the last wall separately.
The fourth wall should be a simple line and built in a different area to the rest of the room and then moved over afterward and dropped into the gap, so all 4 walls are still considered separate entities. Now you have a complete room, or do you? You can tell if it's registered as a room by the floor. If there are no automatically placed floor tiles then the structure doesn't register as a room.
Roofs Make Great Walls
If you want to make a larger home but still take advantage of the tiny home boosts then using glass roofs as large windows and walls is another way forward. You can make massive roofs and add a door before building inside, a-frame style or use glass roofs in place of windows.
Using roofs as walls can be fiddly but luckily talented builder Simproved has these tricks very well covered with an in-depth video tutorial of these fantastic build hacks she discovered remarkably quickly.
Learn To Landscape
When your house is small what you do outside it makes a huge difference to its appearance. If you've never landscaped before then now is the time to learn. One great way to look at how landscapes come together is by downloading some tiny homes from the gallery. Maxis themselves have uploaded several from the trailer and the landscaping contains some really great ideas.
Plants around trees, surrounding a fountain and outlining a path are all great tricks to copy. You can learn a large amount just by seeing how others place items together. Go into builds and explore the landscaping, take note of which plants look good together and use move objects to fit them around foundations, steps or trees more easily.
Embrace The Outdoor Room
You can create rooftop gardens and outdoor rooms by using the same room tricks that you used to make the house itself. Fences with gaps for paths or stairs help make the roof and decks usable without adding to your tile count. This means that gazebos, conservatories, and other similar areas can also be added easily, just don't use foundation tiles. Instead, place flooring directly onto the ground or roof.
An outdoor room, especially one without walls, creates more usable space without making the tiny house a ridiculously large house for those who want their cheats to match their aesthetic. You should also note that pools and fountains do not count towards the total either.
Make Use Of The New Combination Items
The Tiny Living pack came with some great space-saving items. The combination TV unit will give your sims a tv, bookcase, and stereo all in one handy (and small) space, while the (slightly lethal) Murphy Bed gives you a double bed and sofa all together.
Even those who don't have the pack can enjoy the benefits of space-saving as bookend items will also act as bookcases and all beds can be upgraded, so you can reliably use that space-saving single with a terrible comfort rating.
Stack Items Together
Many items in the game can actually be stacked up together to save space. While some, like the washer and dryer, come pre-stacked, others are slightly less obvious. Experiment with different combinations to make things work for you, especially when it comes to placing items both on and under tables. Using 0 and 9 to raise and lower items will help with this.
One of the easiest space-saving combinations is the new minifridge from Discover University, which has a space on top perfect for a microwave, meaning one tile can give you the ability to produce a reasonable amount of meals.
Ditch The Kitchen Sink
A tiny house doesn't need a kitchen sink as there are two equally good alternatives. One is simply to just have a sink in the bathroom. As many simmers will know, sims like to wash their dishes in the bathroom anyway, so let them live their dream.
For those who hate this lack of immersion, we present the dishwasher. There is an in-built option for dishwashers and the counter you place them into remains usable. This means you can build a 3 tile kitchen that comprises a fridge, cooker, worktop, and dishwasher and still have space for a microwave or coffee machine. Perfect.
Playtest New Combinations
Many items have shortcuts that mean they will work if the whole object isn't accessible. For instance, baths just need a sim to be able to reach the end with the taps and beds the sims need to get to the pillow end.
Many small builds stack items together using this knowledge, putting desks over the base of beds, sinks next to baths and other more complex tricks. Just make sure you have a sim on the lot to playtest each item, so you know it's usable. Sometimes just shifting an item slightly with alt can make a difference in accessibility.
Behold The One Tile Bathroom
Our final item is an extreme and amazing example of streamer Simarchy using all these cheats to create a fully functioning bathroom in just one tile. This sink, toilet, and shower all work and give your sims cleanliness in a bathroom the size of a shower cubicle.
When building on this scale always remember that the game is flexible and with enough careful application of these hacks and ideas you too can create your dream home with the world's smallest bathroom.