Animal Crossing: New Horizons — Tips for decorating your home

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been out for a few months now, and you've probably developed a daily routine for your island already. Your island is home for you and your villagers, so you want to make sure that you decorate your island well enough until you get that coveted 5-star rating.

But what about your house? This is your safe space, your little corner of the island that is all about you. With all of the furniture items that you can place in your home, it can be a little overwhelming figuring out how you should decorate. Here are some tips to help you create your dream house by unleashing your inner interior designer!

• Think about the theme for each room
• Be cohesive with furniture sets
• Try to stick with a color scheme
• Create zones for each room
• Accentuate the room with rugs
• Make use of Lucky Items and Feng Shui in room themes
• Find inspiration online

Think about the theme for each room

When you first upgrade your tent into a house in ACNH, you may just have a few items placed around the single main room, and that's entirely fine. When you begin to expand your house and have multiple rooms, it can feel a little much. One of the best tips I can offer you is to come up with a theme for each room.

In New Horizons, you'll end up with a total of six rooms: one main room, three smaller rooms, an upstairs, and a basement. For example, my main room is kind of like the living room, and I have a bathroom, kitchen, and office set up in the three small room extensions. I'm working on turning my upstairs into a master bedroom area, and my basement is my whiskey room where I would want to go to relax after a long day (and Isabelle could share her whiskey stash with me).

Having an idea of what I wanted each room to be gave me a solid plan on how to decorate them, as well as what furniture items to look for every day in my Nook's Cranny (and asking friends to keep an eye out for things too).

Be cohesive with furniture sets

When you think of a room theme, you'll have a lot of options on how to decorate it, since there are hundreds of different items to choose from in the game. However, if you want to stick with the theme and have a particular item in mind, it's best if you get the rest of the furniture set as well.

Not all items are part of a set, but if you have something like "Imperial Bed," "Antique Table," or "Cute Vanity," then you should realize that those are part of their respective sets (Imperial set, Antique set, or Cute set). These furniture series sets usually have about 10 items total, along with matching wallpaper and flooring.

If you are interested in seeing what furniture sets are available, check out the full list. Not every set may be available in New Horizons, however, so you'll want to double check.

Sticking with a set of furniture not only makes your room look more put together (instead of having clashing aesthetics), but you can earn more points on your Happy Home Academy (HHA) score every Sunday.

Try to stick with a color scheme

This is similar to the furniture sets, except with color. If you have a room with a lot of different colored items, it can clash or just not look great. If you don't have the items that you want, try to substitute them for other items that work with the overall color scheme in your room.

I would also recommend going for colors that work well together, or just a single color if possible. No one wants a room with a million different colors that just don't mesh together — ouch, my eyes!

Create zones for each room

You may think that putting all of your furniture items up against the wall helps make a room feel more spacious, but that's not always the case. I mean, you wouldn't actually just put all of your real life furniture against the wall, right? So why do that in Animal Crossing?

Instead, you should try to create zones in each room, if possible — the first three room additions are a little small, so it's more cramped. Making a zone in every room helps make the home feel more cozy instead of cramped, similar to a studio apartment.

In order to create zones, you'll definitely want to "float" furniture away from the walls to maximize space. To create a zone, just arrange some furniture for different purposes. For example, have a zone for a couch with a TV, another for a place to sit and work or eat, another area for a pet, etc.

Accentuate the room with rugs

Speaking of setting up zones in your house, rugs are a great way to get those set up, and they are a great way to accent your house. In ACNH, you can get rugs in three sizes: large, medium, and small. You'll probably get rugs most often from Sahara, but some can be found in the Nook Stop by redeeming Nook Miles, in Nook's Cranny once you upgrade it, and you can also find several different DIY recipes for various rugs (bamboo, shell, fruits, etc.)

You'll want to make sure that you use rugs that are proportional to the furniture that you're putting on top of it. But don't be afraid to try setting up multiple rugs in a room either.

Make use of Lucky Items and Feng Shui in room themes

If you're trying to decorate your house to get the most points possible when the HHA visits Sundays, then you should incorporate Lucky Items into your rooms, as well as add Feng Shui.

Lucky Items are used to also contribute to your luck in the game, such as finding more Bells or better Items, but that hasn't yet been confirmed in New Horizons. However, Lucky Items help raise your HHA score, regardless of where they are placed in your home. Some lucky items include Golden Candlestick, Lucky Gold Cat, Ring, Gold bug/fish/HHA trophies, villager photos, and more. These are items are usually small, and can be a great addition to a room's aesthetic.

Feng Shui is another mechanic that's used to improve your luck in the game, but that seems to have been removed in New Horizons. However, Feng Shui still helps improve your HHA score, so you can try it out to boost your score for HHA rewards.

With Feng Shui, the basic concept is to place your red items along the right/east wall, green items along the bottom/south wall, and yellow items along the left/west wall. The two tiles closest to these sections work for Feng Shui, and everything else in the center and top does not. If you have items that feature two of those Feng Shui colors, then you'll want to put them in the bottom southwest and southeast corners for maximum impact.

Both Lucky Items and Feng Shui items are completely optional, and should only be used if you want to get the highest HHA score possible. Since it doesn't appear to affect player luck, you don't necessarily need to stick with these items once you obtain the Gold HHA Trophy.

Find inspiration online

If you're still feeling very overwhelmed with what you want to do with your ACNH home, then it's time to go online. I find that Reddit is a fantastic place to get inspiration from because the community there often goes all-in with decorating the home as well as the rest of the island.

We also have some designs from our own staff that could give you ideas too, and there's just a ton of other communities on other social networks that can give you that creative nudge. The point is that the Animal Crossing community is rather passionate about interior (and exterior) design, and there are a ton of places to get some inspiration from.

Unleash your inner interior designer

These are just a few of the tips I have to offer if you're needing some help with decorating your ACNH home. But one last thing that I can say is decorate with things that make you happy. It's no fun if you're just decorating to impress others, but secretly hate everything in your house.

If you have any tips you want to share, make sure to leave a comment below! And don't forget to check out our other Animal Crossing: New Horizons guides.