Animal Crossing Ideas and Inspiration

You’ve finally done it. You’ve completed the beginning of Animal Crossing and unlocked all the features. Now you are free to decorate your island to your heart’s desire.

You look out over the sparse expanse and imagine all the possibilities, but there’s one problem. What exactly do you want to do? Where should you start?

Between cliffs, rivers, plants, buildings, and hundreds upon hundreds of furniture options, starting the grand plan of your island is daunting. You may be overwhelmed with ideas and not know how to begin, or your brain may be drawing a huge blank.

A good place to get out of those debilitating headspaces is just to look for some inspiration. Let’s look at some together; I’ve included pictures from around my island and some of my Happy Home Paradise creations.

Getting Started

Before we look at any ideas, I wanted to share some tips for avoiding analysis paralysis and decorating stress. Animal Crossing is supposed to be a fun, relaxing game, and succumbing to pressure can ruin the experience.

Tips for a Better Mindset

1. My most important tip is don’t take it too seriously. You can make your plans as grand or as simple as you want. Just ensure you are excited to play the game and aren’t forcing yourself into anything.
2. Be willing to have your island be a work in progress. You can change anything anytime you want to. I’ve been playing consistently since the game came out, and I’m still finding parts of my island I could make better.
3. Don’t compare your island to others. There are lots of pictures of stunning islands online. Remember that you probably see only a small portion meant to be presented. The rest of the island may be barren, and the picture may be altered. Enjoy the pictures but don’t worry if your island doesn’t look the same.

Tips for Decorating

1. I like to decorate slowly. I only focus on one section at a time, whether making something new or improving something old. It keeps me from feeling overwhelmed, burnt out, or running out of things to do.
2. Start small. If you feel overwhelmed, pick one part of your island to decorate. Keep in mind that it doesn’t need to be perfect right away and start there. Then you can work your way out or pick a completely new section.
3. Work from a theme. Choose the look you want your island to have and use items and placement to match. This tip doesn’t help me as I don’t like that kind of restriction, but for some people, it does help by focusing their creativity.

Interior Designs

I find the easiest spot to decorate is the inside of my house. Since I don’t have to run around manually and place everything, it’s much easier to mess around with ideas and find something I like. The limited space also makes sure I don’t feel the need to do something huge.

If you fully upgrade your house, you’ll have six rooms in total. The main room is 8X8. Branching off from that room are three more rooms, each 6X6.

The final two rooms are the upper floor and the basement, which are 10X6. You can choose one theme to match each of your rooms and have a beautifully unified home, or you could diversify them and use each room to display different ideas.

Individual Room Ideas

There are plenty of rooms commonly found in homes that you can emulate in your house. This is the route that I went when decorating my house. Each room is something you could find in any home, but there’s no unifying theme between them.

Each of these ideas can be executed in a variety of ways. There are lots of aesthetics that can be applied to any of them. The list gives an idea of what can be accomplished with the furniture available.

Living Room

This may be one of the most open-ended ideas in this entire article. There isn’t really any strict definition of a living room other than a common space for people in a house to hang out. Even so, we can still give some ideas on how to design a living room.

Furniture Ideas:

• Couches and chairs
• Music Player
• Tv or games
• Tables
• Trinkets
• Lamp

Bedroom

Bedrooms are about as varied as living rooms are, but they at least have the requirements of beds.

When designing the bedroom, remember that this is more of a private space where one person makes all the decisions, mostly for themselves. It can still look nice but won’t be as much of a presentation as a public house space.

Furniture Ideas:

• Bed
• Wardrobe or dresser
• Personal decorations
• Lamp
• Desk

Kitchen

You can only go so far in making a house a home without a kitchen. Everyone needs food, and even though your in-game character doesn’t need to eat, not having a kitchen feels wrong.

• Oven
• Stove
• Sink
• Fridge
• Counters
• Appliances and Tools
• Kitchen Mat
• Food

Dining Room

If you want to conserve space, you can put a place to eat in the kitchen. However, having the dining room be a separate area gives the home a sense of class and luxury. Plus, you can add more tables and chairs to make it look like you host huge dinner parties.

Furniture Ideas:

• Table
• Chairs
• Food
• Trophy Case
• Serving Cart
• Trinkets
• Chandelier

Bathroom

I’ll be honest. I laughed at the people that dedicated one of their rooms to a bathroom. Yet as I kept playing, I eventually made my back room into an ocean-themed bathroom and laundry room. Sometimes the desire to emulate domestic life is just too strong to resist.

Furniture Ideas:

• Toilet
• Sink
• Shower
• Tub
• Rubber Duck
• Soap
• Washer and Dryer
• Toothbrush Cup
• Cleaning Equipment

Old Style Study

A permanent fixture in all of my Animal Crossing homes has been a study. I just love the look of tons of books against dark wood furnishings.

There are plenty of strange little items that you can use to make it look like you’re studying a specific thing. You could also throw books and papers on every available surface to make it look generally academic.

Furniture Ideas:

• Bookcase
• Desk
• Chair
• Books
• Scattered Papers
• Old Looking Items

Nursery

Plenty of cute, pastel furniture and various toys would make a great addition to a children’s bedroom or nursery. It can move your house from feeling large and empty to more inhabited, like a family home, even though you’re the only one that lives there.

Furniture Ideas

• Single bed
• Baby Bed
• Stroller
• Toys
• Colorful Wallpaper
• Dreamy Set
• Rocking Chair
• Baby Chair

Craft Room

As someone from a creative family where every house has a messy craft room, this is one of my favorite rooms to put together. You can make it nice and organized, but I like tossing items haphazardly around the room because that’s what my real-life craft room looks like.

Furniture Ideas

• Painting Set
• Clay Set
• Crafting Table
• Sewing Machine
• Chairs
• Tables
• Mom’s Furniture
• Wreaths

Home Office

In the past couple of years, home offices have become a much more common experience and thus are found in a lot more homes. Having somewhere dedicated to your work is good for keeping you focused and productive. So what better way to celebrate that productivity than creating a home office in a video game?

Furniture Ideas

• Desk
• Wheeled chair
• Computer
• Shelves
• Filing Cabinets
• Phone
• Bulletin Board

Home Gym

Want the jock villagers on your island to think you’re cool? Set up some workout equipment, and you’ll be just like them! Adding a home gym is a good way to express a hobby you might actually have or wish you had.

Furniture Ideas

• Treadmill
• Barbell
• Kettlebell
• Sports Equipment
• Yoga Mat
• Drinks
• Cooler
• Mirror

Walk-in Closet

Nothing says decadence and style like having an entire room dedicated to clothes. Reserving a whole room in your house for clothing would give the entire home a sense of being smaller, but not in a bad way. It would make it feel like a penthouse suite in a big city.

Furniture Ideas

• Clothing on the ground or on the walls
• Shoebox
• Stool
• Clothing rack
• Stack of clothes
• Changing room
• Partition

Indoor Pool

Some of the most creative uses of items inside have been making indoor pools. You can just place one of the pools or tub items inside or use a combination of water flooring and rugs to make an awesome full-size pool.

Furniture Ideas

• Pool
• Tub
• Water Flooring
• Wooden-deck Rugs
• Lifeguard Chair
• Life Ring
• Toys that look like they can float

Indoor Garden

I don’t use them much, but wallpaper and flooring meant to look like the outdoors are some of my favorites. An indoor garden gives you an excuse to use them without making your house too unrealistic.

Furniture Ideas

• Flowers
• Outdoor flooring and wallpaper
• Plants
• Garden Stones
• Fountain
• Planters
• Watering Can

House Theme Ideas

It can be a fun challenge to make your home have a unified theme while keeping each room somewhat unique. You can make your house look like it’s from a specific region or lived in by someone with a very strong sense of style. 

Cabin

Want to live out your dream of living in a cozy cottage in the middle of the woods? This theme makes it easy to imagine yourself cuddling up with a cocoa mug while it snows outside. 

Furniture Ideas

• Log Series
• Tree’s Bounty Series
• Leaf Series
• Cabin Wall
• Phonograph
• Sauna Heater
• Simple DIY Workbench
• Brick Oven
• Wood Burning Stove
• Spinning Wheel
• Butter Churn
• Bread
• Old-Fashioned Washtub
• Firewood
• Dried Flower Garland
• Spider Web

Elegant

Want to make your character classy, surrounded by expensive-looking furniture, and looking like they live in a Victorian mansion? Decking out your whole house in gorgeous flourishes and fancy furniture will let you live that fantasy. 

Furniture Ideas

• Elegant Series
• Antique Series
• Crown Wall
• Floral Wallpaper
• Iron-Parquet Flooring
• Herringbone Flooring
• Chandelier
• Fancy Frame
• Phonograph
• Grand Piano
• Fine Vase
• Typewriter
• Candelabra
• Elegant Rug

Messy

While making a huge impressive-looking house is fun, making one that looks like a believable mess can be just as fun and maybe even more challenging.

It’s difficult to put things the right things where they would end up and not just random items in random spots. You need to put just as much thought into making a messy house as a clean one.

Furniture Ideas

• Sloppy Series
• Simple Series
• Cardboard Series
• Common Wall
• Dirt-clod Wall
• Old-stone Tile Flooring
• Wooden-Knot Flooring
• Spider Web
• Cushion
• Instant Noodles
• Snack
• Tangled Cords
• Trash Bags
• Scattered Papers
• Sloppy Rug

Modern

Maybe your style is sleek and smooth, and you want something modern. You could make your house look like a chic apartment in the big city where you can retire after a long day of hustling the stalk market.

This might also look good if you don’t have a fully upgraded house and want to stick with something small. However, the exterior won’t match the interior very well.

Furniture Ideas

• Cool Series
• Ironwood Series
• Cityscape Wall
• Molded Panel Wall
• Tankless Toilet
• Upright Vaccum
• Fan Palm
• Standard Umbrella Stand
• High-End Stereo
• Whirlpool Bath
• T.V.
• Tablet Device
• Magnetic Knife Rack

Vintage

In a world of rapidly evolving technology, it can be nice to celebrate the old-fashioned stuff once in a while. Luckily, Animal Crossing understands this and has added furniture that I swear used to fill my grandparent’s house.

Furniture Ideas

• Vintage Series
• Throwback Series (for a more childish nostalgia feel)
• Retro Set
• Ranch Series
• Floral Wallpaper
• Painted-wood Wall
• Stripe Flooring
• Old Sewing Machine
• Wooden Bookcase
• Cool Globe
• Fireplace
• Pendulum Clock

Cute

People that like relaxing life-sim and decorating games tend to like making cute aesthetics. If you are one of them, you could make your house as pastel and soft as your heart desires. You could cover our house in cute shapes in a rainbow of colors to feel like you are living in a lovely dream.

Furniture Ideas

• Dreamy Series
• Wood-Block Series
• Cute Series
• Heart-pattern Wall
• Quilt Wall
• Paint Flooring
• Cute Tile Flooring
• Heart Rug
• Toys
• Froggy Chair
• Flower Tabletop Mirror
• Sweets
• Starry garland
• Glow-in-the-dark Stickers
• Paper-chain Ceiling Garland

Historical

This theme allows you to have differences in each room, as you can pull off a few different eras. You have the options of Medival Europe, Ancient Rome, Viking Ages, Pioneer Times, Age of Piracy, Prehistoric, and Imperial Japan.

There isn’t a lot of furniture for each individual option. Still, you can get creative with other furniture to make the atmosphere coherent.

Furniture Ideas

• Pirate Series
• Gulliver’s Rewards
• Castle Set
• Ruined Set
• Stone Set
• Stone Wall
• Stately Wall
• Straw Wall
• Palace Tile
• Dirt Flooring
• Wooden-Knot Flooring
• Shanty Mat
• Storefront
• Stonework Kitchen
• Spinning Wheel
• Butter Churn
• Samurai suit
• Weapons
• Covered Wagon
• Plate Armor

Fantastical

My favorite items have always been furniture that looks like it’s made out of impossible material, like flowers, mushrooms, or ice. You can still make a house with all the standard amenities, but it looks like it came out of a fantastical fairy world.

Furniture Ideas

• Flower Series
• Ice Series
• Mush Series
• Mermaid Series
• Shell Series
• Star Series
• Fruit Series
• Bunny Day Series (if you can look at them without getting horrible flashbacks)
• Froggy Chair
• Lily-pad Table
• Chocolate Walls and Flooring

Non-Home Buildings

You don’t need to decorate your house to look like a home. A plethora of furniture, wallpaper, and flooring lets you create more creative settings.

If you feel there’s a building that your island is missing, then you can dress up your house to fill its place. This works especially well if you create a second switch account to get another player house on your island.

These ideas can also be used to decorate your island too. You simply need to put down some wood or stone paths to look like flooring, then find a tall item to serve as a wall, and you can make a fake building outside.

Hotel

Pretty much any aesthetic you can apply to a house, specifically a bedroom, can be used in a hotel. The only real requirements to making a hotel are multiple rooms with beds and a lobby. You can make your hotel high-class or very simple.

All the rooms could be identical, or you could have one as a luxurious suite. It’s fun to see how differently you design a room when considering it as a temporary residence rather than a permanent one.

Furniture Ideas

• Bed
• Chair
• Dresser
• Reception Desk
• Filing Cabinet
• Cash Register
• House Plants
• Framed Poster
• Snack Machine
• Drink Machine

Restaurant

The first big project I set out to do on my island was making a restaurant. While we have the Roost and you can unlock a restaurant in Happy Home Paradise, someplace to eat and hang out is still something we want to replicate on our islands.

Especially since we can cook so many different dishes, we can make various restaurants with diverse menus and environments.

Furniture Ideas

• Imperial Dining Set
• Diner Series
• European Style Wall
• Blackboard Wall
• Tables and Chairs
• Food type of your choice
• Drinks
• Kitchen Amenities
• Hanging Monitor
• Busing Station
• Salad Bar
• Serving Cart
• Menu Chalkboard
• Sample case

Grocery Store

Nook’s Cranny may fulfill the role of selling nearly anything you need. Still, maybe you want something closer to the convenience and grocery stores you know. Like the restaurant, you have a wide selection of items to ‘sell’ at your store, so you can change the vibe if you want to.

Furniture Ideas

• Tile Wall
• Frozen-foods Freezer Wall
• Tile Flooring
• Cash Register
• Merchandise Table
• Food
• Cardboard Boxes
• Stacked Shopping Baskets
• Checkout counter
• Tabletop POP Display
• Sturdy Paper Bag
• Shopping Bag

School

When I was in college Animal Crossing was my escape from the stresses of school. Yet there’s still something fun about recreating my lecture halls and classrooms.

School is a large part of life, and when decorating in a life-sim, most people tend to create places they spend a lot of time in.

You can choose what kind of school to put on your island if you go this route, elementary, high school, or college. You could even do it all at once in different rooms using a house.

Furniture Ideas

• Desks
• Chairs
• Chalkboard Set
• Lecture Set
• Hallway Wall
• Playroom Wall
• Whiteboard
• Books
• Study Poster
• Wall Clock
• Essay Set
• Homework Set
• Toys
• Reception desk
• School Locker

Library

I spent a long time ordering from Nook Shopping to get enough books to craft all the bookcases I wanted for my library. My library is one of the earliest additions to my island that has seen the least change. Simply covering a space in books is satisfying, and I think other bookworms would agree.

Furniture Ideas

• Classic Library Wall
• Tables
• Chairs
• Den Desk
• Wooden Bookcase
• Wooden-Block Bookcases
• Book
• Book Stack
• Magazine
• Magazine Rack
• Book Stands
• Banker’s Lamp

Club

Listening to K.K. Slider on Saturday nights and the occasional D.J. K.K. shows at Happy Home Paradise aren’t enough to satiate the need to jam out.

That’s why I like the idea of adding a dance club to my island. I’ve put mine on the beach for a tropical resort feel, but you could easily dedicate a house to dancing. Each room could have different music, and you could have an area to sit with some drinks and a little coat check spot.

Furniture Ideas

• Club Wall
• Club Flooring
• Festivale Stage
• D.J.’s Turntable
• PA Speaker
• Bubble Machine
• Confetti Blower
• Karaoke System
• Floor Light
• Stage Light
• Rocket Lamp
• Box Seats
• Hanging Stage Lights
• Disco Ball

Spa

It’s fitting to create a spot for pampering and relaxation in one of the most popular relaxing games. You could do anything from a sauna to hot baths to massages in your little spa.

Furniture Ideas

• Rattan Series
• Cherry Blossom Series
• Shoji Screen
• Bathhouse Wall
• Cloud Flooring
  • Put Wooden rugs on it to make a steam effect
• Mossy Garden Flooring
• Floral Rush-mat Flooring
• Cypress Bathtub
• Outdoor Bath
• Sauna Heater
• Noodle Slide
• Incense Burner
• Shell Music Box

Laboratory

Not every building you make has to be a cute recreation of someplace you can find in any little town. You can make something imposing and technical. The 2.0 update gave us a ton of machinery we can put into a laboratory of questionable ethics.

Furniture Ideas

• Future Tech Wall and Flooring
• Sci-Fi Wall and Flooring
• Gear Tower
• Meter and Pipes
• Gear apparatus
• Inspection Equipment
• Robot Arm
• Conveyer Belt
• Amazing Machine
• Unknown Machine
• Science Pod
• Spaceship Control Panel
• Lab-experiments Set
• Microscope

Arcade

While you can’t play with any games, making a space where it looks fun to sit and play is still fun. I went for more of a board game route on my island, but there are plenty of directions you could go to make an entertaining space for games.

Furniture Ideas

• Party Wall
• Perforated Board Wall
• Lobby Flooring
• Dot Flooring
• Arcade Seat
• Jukebox
• Arcade Combat Game
• Arcade Fighting Game
• Arcade Mahjong Game
• Pinball Machine
• Capsule Toy Machine
• Candy Machine
• Crane Game
• Board Game
• Chessboard

Clothing Store

I love the Able sisters, and their store is so cozy, but you might want to expand or make your own clothing store with different vibes. There’s so much clothing to choose from, and you can make a store full of high-end fashion, comfy styles, or cute outfits.

Furniture Ideas

• Clothes
• Apparel-shop Wall
• Mirror
• Clothing Rack
• Mannequin
• Glass Showcase
• Stool
• Changing Room
• Shoeboxes
• Accessories Stand
• Stack of Clothes
• Checkout Counter
• Register

Exterior Ideas

The hardest decision you’ll face in Animal Crossing is how to decorate your island. You’ve got so much space and so many options. How do you decide what to make, much less how to make it look good together?

Outdoor Spaces

I’ve decorated my island with several different areas separated by cliffs and rivers. This lets me use all the items I like, even if they don’t go together. You can also just put some of these spaces beside each other without a problem.

Garden

There are many ways to make a garden, and you could call anything a garden as long as you’ve got a few plants. A bunch of flowers is a great way to make a bug-hunting spot and looks very nice. You can make some paths through the plants and terraform cliffs, rivers, and waterfalls to make it look fancy and natural.

Furniture Ideas

• Flowers
• Trees
• Fountain
• Hedge
• Topiary
• Garden Rocks
• Garden Lantern
• Benches
• Birdbath

Sport Field

Creating a space for your favorite game is a great idea if you like sports and want a large area without clutter. You can choose sports like football, soccer, volleyball, and basketball. You need to do is clear out a rectangular area with the appropriate flooring and add some equipment. If you’re feeling ambitious, you could also make custom designs to make the marking found on the court or field.

Furniture Ideas

• Basketball Hoop
• Ball
• Ball Catcher
• Baseball Set
• Football
• Volleyball Net
• Soccer Goal
• Stadium Lights
• Plastic bench
• Scoreboard

Picnic Spot

It’s easy to over-decorate and lose some of the appeal of a natural island, but leaving areas completely undecorated makes the island feel unfinished.

One solution is to add little hang-out spots as evidence of spending time in the wild spaces of your island. A picnic spot is perfect for squeezing in between some trees to make it look nice and cozy.

Furniture Ideas

• Picnic Basket
• Outdoor Picnic Set
• Ant
• Wild Log Bench
• Outdoor Folding Chair
• Outdoor Folding Table
• Campfire
• Food and Drink
• Flowers
• A custom design to make a picnic blanket

Farm

If you want to keep vegetables on your island, it’s hard to find a good spot for them without having a farm. You could do a little vegetable patch by your house or make them look like they grow wild, but I prefer the rustic feel of orderly crops surrounded by farm equipment.

Furniture Ideas

• Fruit Trees
• Crops
• Tractor
• Silo
• Wheat Field
• Milk Can
• Scarecrow
• Hay Bed
• Windmill
• Country Fence
• Brick Well
• Beekeeper’s Hive

Ruins

I like decorating my island in a way that tells a story. We may arrive on a deserted island, but what if it wasn’t always deserted? Adding some ancient and mysterious ruins to your island gives it a history beyond you and Tom Nook.

Furniture Ideas

• Ruins Set
• Cave
• Decayed Tree
• Forbidden Altar
• Glowing Moss Statue
• Double-edged Sword
• Rocks
• Glowing Moss Boulder
• Glowing Moss Pond
• Golden Casket
• Stonehedge

Resort

All your villagers wander around your island without a care in the world. Some even comment about how much living there is like a vacation. Why not lean into that idea and make a tropical island resort? I would definitely recommend putting this one near a beach more maximum vibes.

Furniture Ideas

• Rattan Series
• Stall
• Beach Chair
• Beach Towel
• Coconut Juice
• Hula Doll
• Pool
• Inflatable Bird Ring
• Palm Tree Lamp
• Poolside Bed

Construction Site

We’ve all got works-in-progress on your island. Might as well embrace it. If you’ve got a more urban-looking island, you could add a spot that looks like a large construction project.

Furniture Ideas

• Excavator
• Bulldozer
• Cement Mixer
• Chainsaw
• Construction Sign
• Construction Scaffolding
• Iron Frame
• Jackhammer
• Safety Barrier

Fae Hideaway

As I’ve already discussed, my favorite furniture is the sets that don’t look like traditional furniture. I see a rose bed or mushroom table and can’t resist the urge to make a little fairy garden. It’s fun to make a little hidden spot toward the back of your island with all the fantastical furniture you can find.

Furniture Ideas

• Flower Series
• Mush Series
• Fruit Series
• Cherry Blossom Series
• Star Series
• Garden Gnome
• Pond Stone
• Bug Models
• Moon
• Pine Tree

Playground

Adding a playground to your island is a great way to make it feel more fun-loving and fancy-free. Sure, no one on the island actually works, but there’s a difference between an island of relaxation and an island of child-like play.

Furniture Ideas

• Elephant Slide
• Playground Gym
• Sandbox
• Tire Toy
• Springy Ride-on
• Kid’s Tent
• Toys
• Climbing Wall

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Mika Zans

Mika has been a gamer for as long as he can remember, with Pokemon being his gateway game that has created a lifelong addiction. Since then Mika has gravitated towards the more chilled-out and relaxed games out there like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, and Harvest Moon to name a few. Outside of his love for gaming, Mika is an avid collector and spends an extortionate amount of cash on Build-a-Bears, plushies and action figures!

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