The Sims 4 House Design Tool

I don't mean to brag, but I have just bought a new apartment!

Well I say "bought"; it's a flat that I own 35% of on a shared ownership scheme. And I say "I"; it's a joint purchase between me and my partner.

But to own anything in London is a blessing, even if it is just 35% of a property. But it's still ours. However, it's a new build in an apartment block, and while it's very nice, like most newly-built properties, it's rather bland and neutral.

The first thing me and my fiancé want to do when we move in is spruce it up. And while shopping for various homewares is fun enough, it's hard to imagine the space without being in it, even with the estate agent's dimensions and our own pictures.

So we had an idea: one that was built right into our PC. We'd use The Sims 4. Arguably the best interior design tool that anybody can access.

We started off by recreating a floor plan, as accurately as we could, of our flat, including all doors and windows.

You can see we have a great amount of space, but it's not very individual. Floors and walls are pretty plain, but now we have a working 3D model in The Sims 4, we can play around with colours and furniture models and see what works best with the space.

Here's one of the bedrooms, with a big built-in wardrobe. It's not much to start off with at the moment, but adding a nice feature wall on the left will add a bit of colour and identity to the place.

Okay, this isn'tquitewhat the River Thames looks like, but I just wanted to show off our overlook of the river. If only it did look like this.

We thought about knocking through every wall to create a huge open space, but decided against it.

This space here, which forms a corner of the main living area and leads out onto the balcony, has proved to be most tricky. We have tried different carpets and rugs, different feature walls and even hanging a disco ball. Nothing has worked for us just yet.

Here's our kitchen space, which arguably doesn't need much work done to it thanks to the modern units.

We still have a lot of decisions to make as to how we want our new home to look. We'll definitely be returning to theseSims 4blueprints whenever we need to check if something's going to work.

Designing your own home to scale inThe Sims 4 is quite a time-consuming task, but if you're undertaking a DIY or renovation project, I'd recommend taking the time to do it – even if it's just one room. Sure, the Sims is a game designed for entertainment purposes, but it has a very powerful set of design tools. While your dimensions might not be exactly accurate down to the last centimetre, it's the best you're going to get outside of super expensive design tools that professionals use. Who'd have known a video game could have such have such a useful function outside of simply being fun?