Discover Online Game Interiors That Inspire Home Makeovers

When I was planning the kitchen in my third house, the reference image I kept returning to was not from a magazine. It was a screenshot of a kitchen from an online game, a warm room with open shelves, a big wooden table and a window over the sink. I had built it in Animal Crossing months earlier during a wet weekend, and I could not stop thinking about it. The real kitchen ended up close to it, with a few compromises the game never asked me to make.

Game interiors have become a genuine source of design ideas. Players share virtual rooms by the thousand, and some are better composed than show homes. But a room that works on screen does not always work in a real house. As someone who has renovated three, I want to look at what game interiors can teach about a makeover, and how to translate a virtual room into a real one without wasting money.

Why game interiors are so appealing

Game designers and players compose rooms with a freedom real homeowners rarely have. Several features make their interiors look so good:

• Controlled lighting. Light is placed exactly where it flatters the room.
• No clutter. Nobody's post, shoes or charging cables.
• Strong themes. A cottage room commits to being a cottage. Real rooms often mix five styles by accident.
• Fixed camera angles. Rooms are designed to be seen from one direction.

None of those advantages exist in a real home. Two of them, strong themes and deliberate lighting, can be borrowed. The other two have to be designed around.

Where to find good interior ideas in games

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Players have built millions of rooms, and the community shares them widely online. The furniture is cartoonish, but the layouts and colour combinations often translate well. It is especially good for small rooms, because the game's houses are compact.

The Sims 4

The Sims has a vast library of builds shared by players, many based on real architectural styles. Because the game uses roughly realistic proportions, its rooms translate more directly into real layouts.

Final Fantasy XIV housing

Players in this online game create remarkably detailed interiors in limited spaces, including cafés, libraries and bedrooms. Many use clever tricks with layering and lighting that inspire real decorating.

Unpacking and cozy games

Games like Unpacking show lived-in rooms rather than perfect ones, which is refreshing. They are good reminders that real homes have stuff, and that stuff can look good when it has a place.

Translating a game room into a real one

Here is the method I used for my kitchen, and later for a living room. It takes the appeal of a game room and tests it against a real space and budget.

1. Name what you love. Look at the game room and write down three specific things that attract you. For my kitchen, it was the warm wood, the open shelving and the window over the sink.
2. Measure the real room. Note windows, doors, radiators, sockets and plumbing. Those are the things that cost most to move.
3. Keep the features, not the layout. You rarely need to copy a game room's layout. My real kitchen had the sink on a different wall, but I still got a window above it by moving the sink, which was cheaper than moving the window.
4. Check maintenance. Open shelves look lovely and gather dust and grease. I limited them to one wall away from the hob.
5. Price the three features separately. Often one feature costs most of the budget. Know which before committing.

Where game interiors mislead

Everything is easy to move

In games, you can put a sink anywhere. In a real house, moving plumbing or a soil pipe can cost thousands, and moving a toilet across a bathroom sometimes means raising the floor. Before falling for a layout, check what it would mean for pipes and wiring.

Furniture has no weight or cost

Game rooms are often packed with furniture that would cost a fortune and fill the space uncomfortably in reality. Count how many pieces your game room has, then halve it for the real room. Real rooms need space for people to walk.

Light is free

Game interiors are often lit by hidden light sources that do not exist in real life. A real room depends on its windows and the lamps you can afford and wire in. Plan lighting early. It is cheap to add during a renovation and expensive to add afterwards.

Taste is not resale value

A strongly themed room you love may put off buyers when you sell. If you plan to move within a few years, keep expensive fixed elements like kitchens, bathrooms and flooring fairly neutral, and express the theme through paint, furniture and textiles, which are cheap to change. We go into this in How not to over capitalize on your home renovation.

A budget comparison from my kitchen

For anyone curious, here is roughly how my game-inspired kitchen broke down. The total was around 14,000, which was about 3,000 more than I planned.

The big wooden table from the game room came from a second-hand shop for 120. It is the piece visitors comment on most.

Use games for courage, not for plans

The best thing game interiors gave me was not a plan but confidence. Building a warm, bold kitchen in a game showed me I liked it before I spent a penny. If you are planning a makeover, play around with your ideas in a game first, then bring three clear features to a real designer or builder. For the bigger picture on renovation games, see our piece on online games that let players renovate old houses, and more real projects are in our Renovation section.