Do you enjoy building in Sims 4? If you do, then you must try some of the build challenges! Jump in to learn all the fun ways you can challenge your construction skills!
350 CC Items! Time to celebrate! 🎉
Before we begin: Thank you! We’re celebrating 3 years and 350+ CC items. As a gift, supporters can get all our free CC at once here: ALL IN ONE DOWNLOAD
Sims 4 Build Challenges: Have Fun In The Build Mode!
Hey there, builders! Ready to push some limits? The Sims 4 build challenges are here to inspire you and bring more fun to how you build and design your homes. They are called build challenges because they are specifically focused on the build/buy, although there are somewhere you need to build as you play. There are a bunch of these in the Sims 4 community, but we have selected a few to ignite the spark and motivate you to experiment with building. Some are more extensive than others, but all are equally fun. Let’s begin!
More on SNOOTYSIMS: The Decades Challenge will help you experience history through the Sims 4 lens. Discover how to play it to accurately replicate different eras in your favorite game!
1. 30 Days Of Building Challenge
Let’s start with the big one! 30 Days Of Building is one of the most extensive build challenges out there, and your job is to build new homes continuously every day, for a whole month. There are 30 days and 30 build themes.
To complete it, you’ll also be using the Spin the Wheel challenge by Lilsimsie to complete some builds. If you don’t feel like building from scratch, you are allowed to renovate existing EA builds, under the condition you use the same budget, object count, and the same packs used for the original build. Although it’s called the April Build Challenge, every month can be a building month!
2. Backward Build Challenge
This one challenges you to reverse the order of building your Sims 4 homes. Instead of building the foundation, exterior walls, and roof first, you’ll be doing this last. This means you’ll start your building adventure by placing furniture first, then placing floors and walls, and moving to exterior, roof, and foundations last. Making pretty homes is a task even when you have a nice shell to work with, let alone when you build without knowing where exactly the walls will be.
- A little hint: the grid will be your best friend for this one, but you can go the extra mile and turn it off to play the challenge in savage mode!
3. The Sims 4 Block Party Challenge
Are you up for giving one Sims 4 world a total makeover? The Block Party Challenge invites you to completely bulldoze old, and build new homes in either Willow Creek or Oasis Springs. If you don’t feel like demolishing homes, you can choose to build in Newcrest. You will need to have two starter homes that cost less than $20,000, one park of any size, four community lots of any type, and one huge mansion that costs at least $200,000.
How you want your town and homes to look is completely up to you! Cheats, mods, and CC are all allowed, and if you are proud of your builds, share your fabulous creations with other simmers in the Gallery by using #Sims4BlockParty! It takes time, but it’s worth it.
4. Tiny House Build Challenge
Our fellow simmer James Turner has created a very special Tiny Home Challenge. To start, head to his page, hit the generate button to get rules for the challenge, and start building accordingly! All homes will be super small and have less than 100 tiles. The generator will tell you exactly how many tiles you’ll be working with, and what the build style and your budget are. Have fun making your cute micro home!
5. 20 Minute Build Challenge
Can you finish building a house in 20 minutes in Sims 4? Well, now is the time to shoot your best shot and give this speedy build challenge a go. Your goal is to build a fully functional house in 20 minutes. By fully functional, we mean a house that has a room, floors, wallpapers, doors, windows, and all essential furniture Sims need to live a comfy life. Impossible? Who knows, you may surprise yourself! The size and the building style are up to you. To go the extra mile, you can also try the 10-Minute Build Challenge!
6. Plumbella’s Build Challenge
Plumbella, our fellow Simmer and lovely YouTuber, has created a special build generator that challenges our building skills beyond all limits – and it’s super fun! To start the challenge, use her Perchance Generator to randomize building rules. You’ll need to use money cheats to set the exact amount of simoleons. As you can see in the image above, we have got some horrendous rules, but that’s what makes this challenge so great. Randomize, and make the most of what the roller gives you!
7. Inherited Manor Challenge
This is one of those ‘build as you play’ challenges. Your Sim is left homeless and broke, forced to seek help. Their rich grandmother offered them a manor to live in, under the condition to save it. Infuriated by this news, your Sim’s cousin tried to burn and trash the place, leaving it in a mess. Your job is to unlock all rooms, one by one, tidy up the space, replace or restore furniture, and renovate all rooms to turn the house into a functional home. You must earn money to unlock and clean rooms.
To find out more about rules regarding how to earn money, unlock, clean, and renovate rooms, or meet room requirements, head to this post! And, you can download your trashed inherited manor here.
8. Shell Challenge
This one leaves a lot of space for improvisation. When you play the Shell Challenge, you are confined to building within a shell or plain exterior walls. You need to work with the exterior elements given and make the most of it. What you do with the interior is up to you, but the shell must be intact! To start, you can search for an empty shell in the Gallery, pick the one you like, and just start building!
9. Dollhouse Challenge
This build challenge will make your Sims look like controllable dolls. The goal of the Dollhouse Challenge is simple: just build a house that has two floors or more, leave the front part of it open, and give the other side of the house a stunning facade, so it looks like a dollhouse. This way you will be able to see everything that’s going on in the house once you go in the live mode! To find some inspiration, check out what fellow simmers made here!
10. Black And White Challenge
The Black and White Challenge is not about choosing black and white objects – it’s about building without seeing color in your game. Yep! To play this challenge, you need to eliminate color and play Sims 4 in grayscale. Turn your computer’s color filters ON in PC Settings, and choose grayscale filter, to turn your screen black and white.
Your game screen will turn monochrome, and now all you need to do is start building as usual, except you’ll have no clue if the colors in your home match. Once you are done, turn the colors back on to see how it all looks in color. You better be ready for some aesthetic shocks.
11. Solid Color Challenge
Ever tried to make an all-blue house? Now is a good time to try the Solid Color Challenge! Pick one color and make everything in your house, from exteriors to fine interior details be that color: appliances, decor, big furniture pieces, bathroom objects, beds, chairs, etc…You are allowed to use multicolored items if their main color is the solid color you picked for the challenge. There are many ways to choose a color: pick your favorite, spin the color wheel, or just choose the first color that pops into your mind!
12. Love It Or List It Challenge
‘Love it? Or list it?’ is a renovation challenge, inspired by a home design TV show. Have your Sims live in a rundown home and hire a realtor to help them find three new homes and a designer who can try to fix their old home. Your task is to make the most of your active family’s budget based on the difficulty level you choose. Once you are done with the renovation, roll the dice and let the numbers decide your luck!
13. Ugly House Challenge
Let’s make a house so ugly it’s painful to even look at it, let alone have someone live there! The Ugly House Challenge is pretty self-explanatory – build the most hideous house you can. Use a minimum of 10 different colors for the exterior, use weirdly-shaped rooms, depressing plants, mismatched furniture, over-the-top decor, and whatever else you come up with. You know your type of ugly, so there is really no way you can go wrong with this one, and that’s the magic of it.
14. ‘House Shaped Like…’ Challenges
The ‘House Shaped Like…’ challenges ask you to build a house shaped like an object, a number, or a letter. Flowers, a horse, a letter P, a guitar, a heart, and a ghost are just some of the creative ideas Simmers came up with. You can try to create your own versions of this, use a random object generator for crazy ideas, or try to create something crazy yourself. Any object around you can be a source of inspiration!
15. Default Swatch Challenge
Say goodbye to choosing swatches, and say hello to default swatches as your only choice. The Default Swatch Challenge lets you build whatever home style you want, except you have to use ONLY the default swatches for every object used. These are the first swatches you see in the build/buy, and your task will be to make it all look pretty.
16. Puzzle Build Challenge
Rooms are puzzle pieces, and your home is the puzzle! For this challenge, you need to build your own weirdly shaped rooms separately, and then move and fit them together to create a home. There is no wrong way to go about this. You can look for puzzle pieces (room shells) in the Gallery in-game and have as many pieces (rooms) as you want, but the end goal is to fit them together on your grid and make a home out of them. You are allowed to make a one-level home or a house with two or more floors.
17. ‘Every Room Is A Different…’ Challenges
There are a bunch of these challenges in the Sims 4 community. The goal for all of them is to make every room unique based on a specific theme. Here are just some to spark your imagination:
- Every Room Is A Different Pack,
- Every Room Is A Different Budget,
- Every Room Is A Different Rainbow Color
- Every Room Is A Different Decade
- Every Room Is A Different Time Limit
- Every Room Is A Different Movie
- Every Room Is A Different Holiday
- Every Room Is One Tile Bigger
You can also look for inspiration here, or come up with your unique ‘Every Room is a Different…’ mini-challenge. Have fun!
18. No Mistakes Challenge
The ‘No Mistakes’ Challenge leaves no space for building mistakes! The rules are simple: once you build something or place an object, it can’t be undone.
- Walls can’t be erased or moved.
- Roofs can’t be moved along the grid, only widened or shortened.
- Objects can only be rotated and you can change their color but not move them once placed.
- Wallpapers and floors can be previewed with the Shift key, but once placed there is no going back.
- You can use terrain paint, but not terrain-erase tools.
Have fun, and think twice before you place an object!
19. Pinterest To Sims Challenge
If you never used Pinterest to find building inspiration, now is the perfect time to do so! To play this challenge, you will need to copy a room style from Pinterest. Type in the keyword in the Pinterest search bar, and the first image that pops up will be your reference image. For instance, to build a living room, search for living rooms and copy the aesthetic of the first living room that pops up. Simply recreate that real-life image in Sims 4, and do so for every segment of your build – every room, the exterior, and the backyard. To see how it’s played, go here!
20. 10k Starter Home Challenge
Let’s build on a budget! The objective of the 10K Challenge is to have a lot that costs below 10,000 simoleons. You need to have at least one separate bedroom and a separate bathroom. Make it as functional and as gorgeous as you can, and enjoy the ride! Monitor your funds, and pick a small and cheap lot to build on, because every simoleon counts!
Wrapping It Up!
These were the build challenges! Play by the rules, or give each challenge your unique twist. And, if you are happy with your builds, don’t shy away from sharing your masterpieces with other simmers in the Gallery! As Buttonsginger said on the Sims Forum, building challenges are not competitions. There are no prizes, no winners, just simmers….creating together and having fun! Happy simming!