As more time passes since the release of Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream, the limited decorative options have started to become even more apparent as one of its biggest weaknesses. Thankfully, much like a growing number of Nintendo releases, Living the Dream offers an almost unprecedented level of player freedom when it comes to its in-game creations that can elevate the experience even more than official items.
From creating any of your favorite characters with face paint, structures, clothes, and just about everything else you can think of, one of the best uses for Living the Dream‘s Palette House creations is personalizing your island with creative custom designs to help reach its full potential, with plenty of fantastic fan-made options that are a fantastic fit for just about any island.
10
Stars For Pathways Make Excellent Nighttime Decor
If you’ve ever thought that your beaches were looking a bit bland or simply want to add more light sources without relying on the limited options offered by Living the Dream, then patches of glowing stars like the ones created by poxamarquinhos on X is one of the best and easiest ways to spruce up your island.
Created using simple shapes on a transparent flat surface, you can even choose a sand-like tone and set the stars to only glow during nighttime to make your beaches pop in the dark, while almost entirely disappearing during the day. Whether used to sprinkle a bit of whimsy across your island or to make glowing pathways to light up the night, these fallen stars are a worthwhile addition.
9
Writing In The Sand Has Plenty Of Romance Potential
Speaking of sand, another excellent way to add more texture to your beaches for any time of day are sand paintings like the ones created by user eins_jeyling on TikTok. By choosing a darker shading tone on a similarly transparent background, you can draw simple shapes that fit perfectly onto just about any beach with plenty of ways to personalize it to your island.
Whether you want to add more generic designs like tic-tac-toe boards or custom messages like hearts with the initials of your Miis, similar to the ones created by eins_jeyling, sand designs have endless potential for temporary decorations by the seaside.
8
A Custom Picnic Area Is Perfect For An Island Getaway
Taking full advantage of Living the Dream‘s tropical setting, plenty of users have shared their own versions of a classic picnic setup, but Siisora on Reddit managed to recreate the 3DS version within Living the Dream. While the basket can be a bit trickier to make, making use of stamps can turn a complex design into a fairly quick creation that pairs excellently with a blanket in an area with plenty of greenery.
Given that the romance options in Tomodachi Life even let you pick out love confession spots, a picnic area with at least 2×4 blocks of free space can not only be the perfect spot for your Miis to hang out, but also share a few romantic moments outdoors.
7
Hand-Drawn Chalk Adds More Life To Basic Roads
While asphalt roads are a common choice for their urban aesthetic or visual contrast with your island’s surroundings, they come at the cost of being somewhat bland for large intersections. Thankfully, players like Son_of_Overmorrow on Reddit already have the perfect solution to this problem by simply placing chalk-style drawings over top of them.
Using bright colors and thin brush strokes, the chalk drawings look great against the dark grey of the Asphalt pathways, adding plenty of personality and color that fit even better if you have either child Miis around or anyone artistically inclined who could have drawn them, with plenty of options for design sharing online.
6
Simple Leaves Can Make A World Of Difference
Although Living the Dream has built-in flooring for cherry blossoms, snow, and leaves, depending on what season you’re currently playing in, the harsh shapes are hard to compare to the scattering of various colored leaves created by users like izamaji on X. Allowing you to overlay the objects on top of pre-existing tiles like grass or concrete, it adds even more depth to your islands surface that is hard to achieve elsewhere.
Including their own detailed tutorial on how to create the leaf design using flat surfaces, all that you really need is the stamp tool and a bit of patience to replicate the effect, which can even be altered to match the colors of your trees or nearby foliage for a more immersive effect, regardless of the season.
5
Fairy Lights Add A Great Touch To Any Island
While there are plenty of different takes on adding in custom light sources to Living the Dream, the fairy lights made by KisahriVT on X are easily some of the most stunning when it comes to adding a splash of whimsy to your island. From detailed stars like these, simple shapes, or more realistic styles like light bulbs, like the ones created by yuckyGAMEworld on X, there are plenty of creations to draw inspiration from.
With virtually limitless possibilities for the kinds of lights you can string between two poles, how long you want them, or what kinds of lighting settings to use, fairy lights are an easy pick for adding more color and lights to your island’s pathways with plenty of customizability to suit your style.
4
No Beach Is Complete Without A Volleyball Game
While it might be one of the simpler designs you can add to our island, a Volleyball net like the one made by CrispyMiner on Reddit is a great way to add even more decorations to your large open beaches, especially if they’re around interactive objects so that your Miis are more likely to hang out beside them.
Even if they unfortunately won’t be able to play an actual match, just having a simple net like this is a great addition to any drab beach that you want to make even more inviting, especially when combined with lines to draw either side, or additional decorations like beach towels scattered about.
3
Skyscrapers Make For An Excellent Island Backdrop
While it might not seem like a perfect fit depending on the vibe of your particular island, it’s hard to resist adding in tall structures like the skyscrapers created by GGalactigal on X to add more depth to the home of your beloved Miis. If you want to make the buildings pop even more, you can replicate the billboards or windows on their own to make only certain parts of the building glow as well.
Given that you’re fairly limited on the kinds of shapes you can make for building designs, skyscrapers like these are one of the easiest options to make, but if you still want to keep a less industrial island style, having them off in the distance can create a visually striking backdrop during cutscenes or when interacting with Miis.
2
Customized Flowers Have Endless Decoration Potential
Even if you’re willing to wait several months for the new seasonal flower items to release, there’s no reason not to start decorating your island with a plethora of creative flowers like the ones designed by eins_Jey on TikTok
While the 2D style of Living the Dream‘s designs lend themselves heavily to pixel art like eins_Jey’s Minecraft flowers, there are plenty of other options to take inspiration from as well. From domed flower bushes, iconic flowers like the Silent Princess from The Legend of Zelda, or even drawing from real-world inspirations, there’s plenty of variety out there to choose from, or if you want to start your own plant-growing garden as well.
1
A Functional Stage Is A Temporary Concert Hall Replacement
The painful absence of classic features from previous entries, such as the Concert Hall and raising Miis, is easily the hardest to overlook in Living the Dream, but thankfully, you can still get some of the same functionality thanks to a discovery by tacobocchi on TikTok and their custom concert stage.
By placing down lights with enough space around them, any Mii that stumbles across or gets dragged to them will stand atop of them and start singing, allowing you to build your own personalized concert hall to hear your Miis sing their hearts out. Even if it’s not functionally the same, incredibly creative designs like this help fill in the feature gap while we wait for more updates for Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream.
- Released
-
April 16, 2026
- ESRB
-
Everyone / Comic Mischief, Mild Fantasy Violence
- Developer(s)
-
Nintendo
- Publisher(s)
-
Nintendo
- Prequel(s)
-
Tomodachi Life
- Franchise
-
Tomodachi
- Number of Players
-
Single-player
