Different colour items - customizing? shop? your town's airport colour?

[Plum Pudding]

Hi, I play ACNH mainly because I like to collect the different items and decorate.

I find it hard and I'm constantly reading online guides to find out if you obtain a certain colour by customizing, or you have to wait for it to turn up in your shop, or in a balloon, or if it's determined by your town's airport.

For example, the plant pots, the simple panel, etc.

My monstera came in a yellow planter, I thought I could get a different colour planter by customizing. Wrong

My simple panel is light wood, I want the dark wood version. Customize? Wrong.

My jail bars were steel coloured. I wanted them dark. Customize? YESSSSS!

I also discovered the 'variations' in the 'Nook shopping' catalogue in Resident Services. But I don's seem to have all the options, or none at all for most items.

How do I figure this out? Do I have to read online guides for every item? Thank you for sharing your best tips!!!!

 

[Serabee]

So, the general rule is, items from the shop cannot be customized to other versions. Occasionally, parts of them can be customized, but not the "main" color as stated in the catalog. For instance- you can customize, say, the tray part of a Vintage Tv Tray. But the coloring of the legs? Those are pre-determined as to what you'll have in your shop (it will always be the same, as far as I know). You can get other color options by either trading/buying them from other players or, rarely, finding them in trees. For instance- I had a silver Tv Tray in my shop today. While island hopping for villagers, I shook a gold one from a tree. For both of them, I can customize the tray part all I want, though. Other examples would be the Bunk Bed or Loft Bed with Desk- you can change the bedding freely, but not the frame color. The Simple Panel is another one- you can customize the actual panel. But not the framework.
I HIGHLY recommend shaking trees regularly for extra free colors (as well as wasps, which sell for a solid price, especially to Flick, and can help a lot early on).

The items that can ALWAYS be customized, every part of them, are the ones you MAKE. Jail bars can be customized because you need to make them (though early on a villager or two may gift you some craftable furniture, but only once or twice, if I recall)

 

[RollingAntony]

If you want to check online, I recommend Nook Plaza. The filters are excellent, for example, you can filter by "Variations" and cross "Customizable" and you'll only get the furniture that has colored variations that need to be bought/obtained separately.

Ingame, you can check at any workbench to see what can be customised (even if you don't have the kits with you). It'll show which of your 40 items can be customised and what can be, for example the desktop computer will show you that the screen can be changed but the hardware will stay the same color.

You can also check your catalog, items with variations will have a little tag at the bottom left. For example, the Baby Bear will have one or more tags that say "Caramel Mocha/Chocolate/Cream/Floral/Tweed/Checkered", depending on the variations you have acquired.

The only things you'd be missing from checking in game are going to be non-catalog items like the Pocket Camp collabs.

 

[Tiffany]

what color of the monstera are you wanting? i can get u that and the simple panel

 

[SpaceTokki77]

Certain items are customizable and not customizable. Usually, the crafted items are the customizable ones, it should say which diys are in the app. A lot of items in the game aren’t customizable though, and i also remember having trouble with that as the beginning of the game.

 

[moon_child]

Agree with the one who posted above. More often than not, craftable items are the customizable ones. Readily bought items are not customizable or if they rarely are, just a part of them is customizable like say a fabric or something but the base of the item won’t be.

Honestly, I think Nintendo did this deliberately to encourage trading (hence, forcing everyone to a nintendo online membership) since you’ll really need this feature if you want to decorate your home and your island the way you want to. Waiting for a very slim chance of completing an entire furniture set in another colorway through balloons, Redd and shaking trees will take you literally FOREVER if at all since it’s all RNG and there’s so many possible colors and combinations.

 

[Mu~]

This depends on your airport color.

 

[JellyBeans]

Everyone above has covered a lot of it! Generally if it's craftable it's customisable, at least to an extent - whether that be the wood colour, or the pattern on it. The majority of orderable items e.g. the items found in Nooks aren't customisable, and the colour you get in Nooks will always be the same as it's tied to your island and to obtain the other colours you need to trade, or they are occasionally dropped from balloons/trees. Some orderable items have some degree of customisation e.g. t shirt on a bear, screen of a laptop but the base of the item cannot be changed. And like the image above items you order using nook miles are in one set colour that is tied to your airport colour, and these cannot be customised - again, you have to trade to obtain other colours.

 

[Plum Pudding]

Thank you all for your very helpful answers.

I knew some items were dictacted by the airport colour but I couldn't understand the logic behind the DIYs and the shop items.

Off I go to the trading forum.....