If your island looks plain in comparison, don’t feel discouraged. With a little hard work and attention to detail, you can create an island paradise. Today we're going to run through some unique building tips to create lovely islands in Animal Crossing New Horizons for 2022.

Top 15 Build Tips For Island Decorating In Animal Crossing New Horizons - Best Ways To Create A Welcoming Island

1. Bridge Alternative

Not to rely on in-game bridges. These can be big, chunky and can totally change up your water terraforming, there is nothing worse than creating a really cute river, come to try and place a bridge down and you have to totally redo it. Why not step out of your comfort zone use stepping stones or even a land bridge? These are great if you have smaller areas and you don't want to sacrifice lots and lots of space. 

2. Stack Items

Do not forget to add smaller items on top of your larger furniture pieces. This is a great way to add depth and layer to your builds and also a great way to utilize these cute small items. Some of them may surprise you when you're trying to test out which ACNH items you can place down, but these items do tend to look better when they have something on top of them, for example the wooden box, the bottle crate, they're all just a little bit basic without something on top of them. So get creative and think about what can fit and what doesn't. 

3. Weeds + Moss 

If you are looking to make a supernatural and overgrown island, using weeds and glowing moss as an accompaniment to your natural elements, so like your flowers and things, these work really nicely on alongside and really help to achieve that look. If there are over 150 or more weeds present in the town, no more weeds will spawn and your weeds will stop growing. The different seasons and the different types of weeds that you will have, some of them are prettier than others cough autumn weeds, they are stunning, so if you're doing an autumn island, please use the weeds, they will look amazing and really enhance your island.

4. Plan Your Theme

Before you place an item of furniture, think about pre-planning your theme, this can really help you decide what builds you're gonna do, what furniture to look out for which custom designs you pick. The best way to do this is to create a mood board, for example, you can place down your custom design, the flower choices you're going to go for some of the furniture items and this will give you a visual representation of what you're thinking in your head. 

5. Get Furniture

Think about what kind of furniture you will need for a particular build, there's websites out there that you can use to plan out what furniture items you're going to use and think about how many you're going to need as well. So take a trip to a treasure island or stock up on items from nook's cranny or pre-order some because having the items in your storage will make it so much easier when it comes to actually doing the build. I

6. Tree Stump Seats

Are you running low on chairs? Maybe you're doing a really natural island, so you want something to fit that aesthetic. Don't forget that you can use tree stumps as little stools, these are so adorable, they are the perfect height for little tables and they're nice to do something different once in a while. You can't put anything on top of them which is a bit of a downside because these would look so cute with the cushion on top.

7. Simple Beaches

Beaches do help finish off an island and it's fair enough if you don't want to decorate on them because they are hard and they do take some getting used to, but adding a scatter of flowers, maybe some weeds, even some stunted flowers with out any blooms do help make it feel like a little bit lived in like you've paid some attention to the area, but it's really simple and really effective. So maybe if you've got a spare five minutes, just run around your beaches and drop some flowers.

8. Alternative Fences

Animal Crossing definitely upped its fence game with the release of 2.0, some of those are so cute. The grid system on your island, you can struggle to get items up close to them, so you do get a bit of a weird gap between them. So in some cases, you can use alternative to fencing, this means that you can get your furniture items super close together, make sure that you've got lots of items in an area. There are lots of alternatives you can use, for example, log stakes, steel fences, rape partitions or wood partitions, but there are lots of different ways out there that you can do this.

9. Add Depth To Panels

Simple panels are great for making fake buildings. Don't just place down two simple panels and call it a day. There's a fake building, but you need to add depth to it to make it more believable and more interesting to the eye. When you're using layers, try and add something behind them to give them more height and also more depth. It really will make a lot of difference.

10. Different Trees 

If you're looking for tips for making forests or natural areas, using different trees in different growth, stages. This adds a lot of dimension, a lot of height, a lot of variation in something that can just look like a big blob of green that is not what you want. So one way to do it is mix up the different heights the different areas and just try and play around with it and get that look right.

11. Cliff Details 

The cliff faces themselves are pretty boring and bland. Now with the 2.0 update, we can obviously change this because we can add vines and cute little ladders up on those cliffs. Not only are these practical, so you don't have to whip out your wooden ladder every five minutes, but they are also cute and really aesthetic looking. So remember to use these when you're staring at a blank cliff face. 

12. Flatten First

If you struggle with terraforming and you want to create something magical, create yourself a blank canvas first of all. When terraforming or tackling a big terraforming job, that it is easier to have a flattened area first of all, it may take a little bit of extra work but sometimes we don't like the areas that come with the in-game maps anyways. So definitely having it nice and flat so that you can create something beautiful helps.

13. Use Maths For Builds 

When it comes to planning larger builds, using this to your advantage, planning or mapping out the area that you want your build to be and then they pay close attention to whether you need the number of tiles to be an odd or an even number. Do these builds and not pay attention and end up having to have a door that you do not want, for example in the middle of a build where you want two doors, but in fact you only are able to have one, it can be painful. So just pay attention to the size of the items that you're using, where you're going to place them and just plan out, custom designs are great for doing this.

14. Layers

Builds have layers and this is something crucial when creating your builds, some examples of this maybe layering custom designs and then putting furniture items on top, putting down a pillow and putting something on top, but if you're thinking about the backdrops, adding something behind some fencing or adding something amongst the trees just to give the build depth and height and it will make a difference. There's a very fine line between clutter and layers, that is a very important thing to remember when coming up with a cute build. 

15. Mix Paths

There are so many different ways that you can deal with paths on your island. However, it is important to mix it up. Having a few different paths on your island or mixing up a custom design path with an in-game path is really nice, it adds up some contrast between areas and also helps when you're transitioning into a different section of your island if you don't want it to all be the same.