Animal Crossing Happy Home Paradise guide: How to get started, invite villagers & design the best houses

❘ Published: 2024-03-21T16:24:23

Bob from Animal Crossing in their Happy Home Paradise vacation home

Nintendo

Animal Crossing‘s Happy Home Paradise DLC for New Horizons offers a creative outlet for players to design holiday homes. This guide explains how to start the DLC, invite villagers, and decorate interiors effectively in the game.

The DLC presents numerous design opportunities in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, challenging players with various themes to create the ultimate vacation homes for diverse clients.

From neon gaming rooms to muted, relaxing reading rooms, your talents will be put to the test as you try to create the perfect escape.

If you’re looking for a guide on how to get started with the franchise’s Happy Home Paradise DLC in Animal Crossing, you’ve come to the right place – and we’ve got some interior design tips to create the best vacation houses for clients and your own villagers as you invite them to escape their everyday life.

Contents

How to start Happy Home Paradise
Designing the best houses and rooms
Interior design tips for Happy Home Paradise
How to invite villagers to Happy Home Paradise

Lottie and Tom Nook in the player island airport to start the Happy Home Paradise DLC

Lottie and Tom Nook are your first port of call for getting to work at Paradise Planning in the Happy Home Paradise DLC.

How to start Happy Home Paradise in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Getting started with Happy Home Paradise in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is incredibly easy, as it mostly starts without you needing to lift a finger:

After loading up the game with the DLC installed, your NookPhone will ring – it’ll be Tom Nook.
Once speaking to him, you’ll automatically end up at Dodo Airlines, where you’ll be greeted by both Tom Nook and Lottie.
You’ll have a brief chat and be introduced to Lottie, and she’ll then head off to Paradise Planning through the airport gates.
After this cutscene, you’ll need to talk to Orville, and select ‘I want to go to work.‘
That’s it! You’ll now take to the skies before landing at Paradise Planning.

A player asking Orville to go to Happy Home Paradisein Dodo Airlines in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Before whisking off to work at Paradise Planning, you’ll need to tell Orville you want to go to work.

Designing the best Happy Home Paradise rooms and houses in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Once you’ve arrived on the island and have been introduced to Niko and Wardell, you’ll have the opportunity to challenge your interior design skills and design the best vacation house for your first client – Eloise.

Tasked with sticking to her theme of ‘My Relaxing Reading Room‘, you’ll need to pull out all the stops to create something truly memorable.

Each client will have varying themes you need to adhere to, along with a select few items that must be included in the overall design. Here’s how to get started:

A screenshot showing Eloise in her Reading Room, with the interior design UI in Happy Home Paradise

Make sure to utilize items listed under the ‘Order’ tab to make sure your client loves the end result.

Interior design tips for Happy Home Paradise

Unbox the red boxes located on the floor of the house – these are the items your room design must include.
Press down on the D-pad to change the camera view, and then right on the D-pad to open up the interior design UI.
When designing a room, make sure to heavily utilize items listed under the ‘Order‘ tab.
There are plenty of other tabs to use, too, but these should be your first port of call.

While the items listed under the ‘Order‘ tab are most likely to be loved by your client, this is not always guaranteed. To check whether or not they love a particular item, place it down by them near the front door.

They’ll smile if they like it, but if something’s really up their alley, they’ll nod, clap or have a heart or an exclamation point appear above their head. Make sure to use this before deciding what to go with in your design to get the perfect idea of what it is that they love.

Claude's Home Game Hideaway room in Animal Crossing's Happy Home Paradise DLC

There’s no limit to what you can place down, but make sure your client loves it!

As you progress through your Paradise Planning career, you’ll also be able to take your designs even further by unlocking even more ways to impress your clients, such as accent walls, changing room sizes, creating counters, partition walls, polishing furniture, and even the option to hang lights from the ceiling and add a soundscape to the room.

It’s also worth noting that, with each client that you take on, the available furniture you have to use in decorating will grow – so pick clients that lean towards your own particular tastes or a specific villager you have in mind.

Make sure to apply these methods to the outside of a home, too, as some clients, like Stu, for example, really wants trees in their vacation escape – and lots of them.

Stu on the beach in Paradise Planning in Animal Crossing

Want to bring your own Villagers to Paradise Planning to get their own vacation home? It’s super simple to do.

How to invite Villagers to Happy Home Paradise in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

If you want to give the likes of Beau, Midge, or Merengue their home away from home on your own island, it’s as easy as pie… er, chocolate.

After completing your first client, Eloise’s, design, you’ll be rewarded with Poki – the island’s own currency.
Inside the Paradise Planning building, head to the bottom left of the ground floor and you’ll see a collection of souvenir chocolates.
Purchase a few boxes with the Poki you made earlier.
Return home to your island and strike up a conversation with the villager you want to create a vacation home for.
Gift one of the chocolates to them, and they’ll ask to visit Paradise Planning. Select ‘I’ll take you‘.

From here, you’ll both be whisked away to Happy Home Paradise’s island, where you can speak to Lottie in the office to start work and then head back outside to talk to your villager. From there, the process is exactly the same as any other client.

Souvenir chocolates in Animal Crossing Happy Home Paradise

Chocolates are a villager’s best friend.

So, there you have it – our guide on everything you need to know about Happy Home Paradise in Animal Crossing, from designing the best rooms to getting started.