The Sims 4 House Building Guide For Tiny Living

Building a house as tiny and compact as possible has been a popular challenge among Sims players almost since the release of the first game. But there've been no game mechanics to support this goal for decades — well, until recently. The new expansion pack for Sims 4 is entirely dedicated to inspiring, motivating, and overall helping you with building especially tiny homes for your sims. It seems like it's the most community-influenced of all the Sims 4 expansion packs.

Tiny Living is the most recent Sims 4 add-on that features a completely innovative lot type. This lot type is called Tiny Home Residential, and it comes with a couple of restrictions, but there are many possible bonuses, too. Your attention to detail and determination to keep things modest will be noted and rewarded by this new system designed especially for small housing types. So let's look at these possible benefits and their interconnections with some of the Sims 4 packs a little bit closer.

Limits And Restrictions

There have been almost no restrictions for building on Residential lots until recently, and these Tiny Home lots feel almost revolutionary. The thing is, they allow only a hundred tiles of space in houses you build on such lots, and this amount includes all floors. This limit feels quite severe at first since your houses have to be tiny, indeed — but as you get used to it, it inspires you to use every single tile in the most useful way, creating wonderful and unique layouts.

However, your Tiny Home Residential lots do not limit your outdoor space, so you can use even a rather huge lot for your creations. Every lot in the game can be converted into the new lot type, just enter Build Mode and choose the corresponding options in the Lot Info Panel. This makes your lot a very important place — since you can't expand your house infinitely, you'll probably want to create a garden around your main building. On Mac, Sims 4 allows you to do that, too.

The indoor space limit includes not only indoor floors themselves, but also balconies, porches, and so on. However, staircases don't count towards your tile limit, so you can experiment with them as a small cheat for the Sims 4 Tiny Living expansion. The game does not enforce the limit, so you will be able to save your creation and exit Build Mode even with a house exceeding 100 tiles of space. A warning will be the only reminder, but your lot will be marked as Incomplete.

This status means your sims can still use such lot, but they won't get any bonuses — at least until you lower the number of tiles. Just don't lower it too much — the game needs at least four connected tiles to recognize your building as a house. But there's no sense to restricting your sims this much. While the Tiny Living add-on offers additional bonuses for houses with a 64 or 32 tile limit, you won't get anything for pressing that amount further down.

Additional Challenge

Building a house with only 100 tiles of available space sounds difficult enough, but the Tiny Living restrictions system does not end here. Overall, there are three levels of challenge, with Small House under the hundred-tiles limit being just the first one. The second level is Tiny Home — it has 64 tiles or less. Finally, there are Micro Homes that do not exceed the 32 tile limit. You don't need to choose these house types yourself: the game will count tiles automatically, assigning you appropriate rank.

Every level of this system gives you a couple of so-called Lot Perks, and the smaller your house, the more bonuses you get. These perks are similar to Lot Traits that were added to the game to make the gameplay a bit deeper, adding a personality to every lot. However, they affect only the Tiny Living lots, and the player doesn't choose them – instead, the game applies them automatically once a limit of a corresponding level reached.

Lot Perks of the previous level (they are called Tiers in the add-on) do not disappear when the next one is reached — instead, they accumulate, making it even more comfortable for sims to live in more crowded houses. Tier 3 perks are not too great: your sims get slightly smaller bills, and their moods are boosted while on the lot. However, Tier 2 perks are notable already: skills build faster on the lot, and Comfortable lot furniture doubles its buff.

And Tier 1 perks allow you to make your lot a truly nice place for your sims to live, doubling every relationship gain and making plants on the lot grow twice as fast. Every perk gets equally applied to every sim on the lot, and there's no difference between owners or visitors here. That means you can send your sims to neighboring Tiny Homes to make them level up their skills faster. And if your sim needs to build a relationship quickly, be sure to invite another sim over to your Micro Home.

You don't need to keep all those perks in your head all the time — your sims receive special moodlets that do not provide any bonuses but serve as reminders about what perks are applied to a sim. It's an important thing because it allows you to focus on building your Tiny Living houses and catering to the needs of your sims without having to think about perks. And there are a lot of ways to do that in the add-on, indeed. Let's look at some of the most interesting ideas for your Tiny Home.

New Ideas

The Tiny Living add-on includes not only these new Lot Perks mechanics but two new object types that you can use to make some additional room in your Micro Home. The first is Media Marathoner that serves as an all-in-one decoration that can store a TV and a lot of other things, taking two tiles of floor space. And the other is Murphy Bed that can be stored away during the day — but it has its own ways to kill your sims, so be careful with it.

Making Room

There are really many ways to expand the functionality of your sims' house without actually making it larger, and the Tiny Living add-on gives you a perfect opportunity to explore them. Be sure to add your own ways in the comments, and don't forget to share the article.