Games like The Sims for home design and decorating

If your favorite part of The Sims is Build Mode, you’re in good company: plenty of players spend hours laying out walls, matching wallpapers and nudging chairs into place, and barely let their Sims live in the result. The games that scratch the same itch fall into three groups: renovation sims (fix up and furnish), room-styling games (decorate empty rooms, often with community feedback) and sandbox and life sims (build anything, with a world around it). Below is what makes Build Mode so satisfying, then a list by platform with who each game suits.

What Build Mode gets right

It helps to know which part of Build Mode you actually love, because different games do different parts well.

• Starting from nothing. An empty lot or a bare room is a blank canvas. There’s real joy in the first sofa going in.
• Total control over placement. Move, rotate, and (with the right cheat) place items freely off the grid.
• A huge catalog. You can build a cottage on Monday and a glass modernist box on Tuesday.
• No pressure. Nothing is timed, nobody judges you, and you can undo everything.
• Telling a story with a space. A messy artist’s loft, a grandmother’s cottage, a minimalist bachelor pad. Decor is characterization.
• Sharing. Many players love posting their builds and browsing other people’s.

Write down which two or three of these matter most to you, then use them to pick from the list below.

Games and apps by platform

Platforms listed are the ones each game is best known for. Games get updated, ported and sometimes retired, so check the store page for current details.

On mobile (iPhone and Android)

Cozee (our game). An interior design game where every room, called a Space, starts empty: snowy cabins, jungle balconies, a café, a reading nook. You furnish it with real 3D furniture and decor, then other players rate your design 1–5 stars and you earn a Bronze, Silver or Gold medal. At level 5 you unlock pro tools to resize, tilt, swap, mirror and use material options, and the Sofa Workshop lets you build your own sofa. Good for: Build Mode fans who mostly love the furnishing part, and like seeing how other people style the exact same room. It’s about interiors, so there’s no wall-building or characters.

The Sims FreePlay. EA’s long-running mobile Sims game, with houses to build and decorate alongside Sims to look after. Good for: people who want the full Sims mix, characters included, on a phone.

House Flipper (mobile). A mobile take on the renovation sim. Good for: players who love the makeover moment.

Minecraft. On almost every platform, phones included. Building is block-based, but many players design detailed homes and furniture out of blocks. Good for: builders who enjoy architecture and creative problem-solving more than catalog shopping.

On PC and Mac

The Sims 4. If you haven’t explored it in a while, the official Build Mode has grown a lot through updates and packs, and the online gallery of player builds is a design reference in its own right. Good for: the original experience, obviously.

House Flipper and House Flipper 2. Known for buying neglected houses, cleaning, repairing, painting and furnishing them, then selling for a profit. The sequel, on PC and consoles, adds more freedom to build your own houses. Good for: people who find renovation as satisfying as decorating.

inZOI. A newer life sim, still in early access, known for its realistic look and detailed building and customization tools. Good for: players who want a modern, realistic life sim with a strong build side.

Tiny Glade. A calm building toy where you shape little castles and cottages with no goals or currency. Good for: anyone who loves the architecture side of Build Mode and wants zero pressure.

On console

The Sims 4 on PlayStation and Xbox. Build Mode with a controller takes some getting used to, but it’s all there.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons on Nintendo Switch. Known for decorating your house room by room and shaping a whole island, with a cozy, collect-everything rhythm. Good for: decorators who also want a charming world and a slow daily routine.

Disney Dreamlight Valley. A life sim with Disney characters, known for its house and village decorating. Good for: Disney fans who like decorating mixed with quests.

House Flipper and House Flipper 2 on consoles. The same renovation loop as on PC.

Quick comparison

Taking Build Mode habits into any design game

If you’ve built hundreds of Sims houses, you already have good instincts. A few that transfer well, and a few to unlearn:

Keep:

• Zoning. Sims players naturally split open-plan spaces into living, dining and kitchen zones with rugs and furniture groupings. That’s exactly what real designers do.
• Telling a story. Deciding who lives in a room before you decorate it gives your choices a direction. “A retired sailor’s cottage” leads you toward coastal colors and worn wood.
• Lighting in layers. Good builders add lamps, not just ceiling lights.

Unlearn:

• Filling every tile. Sims rooms are often packed because there’s space on the grid. Real rooms, and rooms judged by other players, usually look better with breathing room.
• Matching everything. Build Mode makes it easy to grab one whole furniture set. Mixing woods, fabrics and eras looks more lived-in. Our eclectic style guide explains how to mix without chaos.
• Tiny rugs. A rug should usually be large enough that at least the front legs of the sofa and chairs sit on it.

What decorating games can’t give you (and what they can)

Unlike The Sims, most decorating games don’t simulate people moving through your rooms, so nothing “breaks” if you forget a bathroom door. In exchange, they often put more care into the furniture and the room itself. A room-styling game can feel closer to an interior design portfolio than a dollhouse.

If you want to go from playing to planning your actual home, a game is a great place to practise palettes and layouts, but use a room planner with real measurements before buying anything.

Before

After

Try it in Cozee

If your favorite moment in Build Mode is standing in an empty room deciding where the sofa goes, Cozee is built around exactly that. It’s free on iPhone and Android, there are no timers, and you never have to buy anything to design. You can even create your own Space: pick a room, describe its mood, style and story, and Cozee generates looks for it, which will feel familiar to anyone who loves building a house around a character.

Start with how Cozee works, then the beginner’s guide. For your first room, the guide to furnishing an empty room is a good companion, and the living room with a view guide suits big-window Spaces like the loft above.