Why do people like landscaping more than interior design?

[Bilaz]

Genuine question
I've just always been curious about this. Since the house has always been your main creative area in the game I didn't really understand why when new leaf was released, everyone was always talking about 'landscaping' :O
Like yes, it was fun to place PWPs, but they went all out, and often they thought of their house as an afterthought
So Nintendo responded and gave us even more landscaping tools, which is really cool! But yeah I'm just curious... Why?
I'm not really sure what's wrong with living in the animal forest and decorating your own little house? You can even hang stuff on the walls now and the rugs are really cute!!!

Is there something special about sculpting your town that I don't see?
Please don't take this as a complaint, more creative options are great! And I'm having a lot of fun decorating my island. I still just see my house as my main area, and it's interesting to me that a lot of people skip it.

 

[Baroque]

Interior design is still cool and, since we can't use wall-mounted furniture outdoors (yet...) it still has a lot of potential for cool things, but the fact that we can decorate our entire island means we aren't just limited to 8 x 8 rooms anymore: we can do the biggest, wackiest stuff we want. What's more, the multiple layers can give the illusion of depth much better than we ever could with indoor rooms so that has an insane amount of potential that people are already using.

 

[visibleghost]

in New Leaf, I had a few ideas for interiors but mostly worked on my exterior. I made an inside farm with crops and animals and a house. I really liked making interiors but I always gravitated towards exterior decoration.

Now, in New Horizons, I haven't decorated even one room in my house fully. I just put things out and leave them and it doesn't look good at all. I don't know why but I just don't have the inspiration or know what to do, so I just work on my island instead.

 

[Rosch]

I believe landscaping has become more prominent with NH because of terraforming and the ability of putting furniture outside. Lots of items are still missing and the new items, especially DIYs, are primarily focused for outdoor display.

In New Leaf, I was more concerned with my house. Landscaping options were limited to custom designs, plants and PWPs. And the fact that villager plots were placed randomly.

 

[Pyoopi]

I would say because it's what your friends and visitors will first see when visiting your town in acnl and now island. My town in acnl was more natural since I found placing paths to be clunky and more tedious. People have different visions of what they want their environment to reflect either based on the name of their island or if they have a story in mind.

I've always liked environment design mainly because I'm a 3D artist, so it's more natural to me and fun. Though Nintendo's controls for terraforming is equivalent to those senior mobile phones. lol

I like interiors since my house is decorated, but it's nice to be creative outside too.

 

[Mick]

I think it's a lot easier to create something unique with the terraforming options than it is to nicely fill 6 rooms of a house! There are only so many ways to make a living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen & library in this game, so personally I find a lot harder to find inspiration and motivation to go put stuff inside. For me it takes so much more effort to find combinations of items that work in the house & put them around in a way that works with the space available than it does to dig some cliffs and rivers and put some plants around.

Also @Pyoopi that is unfair, at least the senior mobile phones make it easy to achieve what you want to do :')

 

[Junalt]

IMO it might be because the player spends the most time outdoor. Most activities like catching bugs, fishing, finding NPCs and talking to villagers are on the outside so naturally you want to make a place that’s comfortable for you to run around in. Nowadays I barely go inside my house, mostly only to put or take things out from the storage. Also, there’s a much larger space outside to decorate compared to the few rooms in the house (which are even smaller in ACNH).

 

[Coach]

Since the outdoor aspect is such a cool features, and is new as well, it makes sense that people are more interested in that. Especially since all the games have had indoor decorating (especially Happy Home Designer obviously), and as you said this system is a step up from the Public Works Projects which were received well so outdoor stuff is popular. Considering everyone has the same size rooms, expanding outside to make more unique areas to your personal island (like lookout spots, digging sites, waterfalls) is pretty fun! Plus feels less overwhelming to change around season to season, since you go past these areas more so feel a bit more motivation.

 

[niko@kamogawa]

I am an oddity here. I prefer interior design over landscaping. The reason is obvious. I really don't like the responsibility of designing an entire island. It's just too much work. I am more of a collector than an architect.

 

[Bilaz]

This is fascinating guys thank you so much for sharing!!!!!

 

[lucyhannahg]

i have decorated my house! and its all fancy and cool! BUT without the home showcase that was in new leaf ( and the dreams are basically of your exterior) i don't have motivation to make em extra fancy as they are just not seen by anyone?

and on an island! you get to make loads of small areas with styles, rather than rooms, so it is basically just one big house! haha

 

[JellyBeans]

I think landscaping accounts for a larger part of your island than your house interior, and as people have said it's what people see when they visit your island first so it sets up the whole island! and with landscaping you have such a huge area to work with so you can design so many different things. personally although I like interior design and making a cute house, I don't actually spend tons of time in my house as opposed to running around my island so if I had to pick one thing to dedicate more time to it'd be my island

 

[Bilaz]

That moment when you spend just as much time inside in game as you do irl

 

[michealsmells]

I really enjoy both the interior and exterior aspects of designing in this game. Honestly, the biggest reason why I like the exterior design is because there were always so many ideas that I had but just couldn't confine to the rooms of the house. In my current house in NH I've got a main room (currently serving as a dining area), kitchen, office, back-room for The Council, the upstairs being my bedroom, and downstairs being the seasonal room. That is nowhere NEAR all of the ideas I have for rooms and decor. On top of that, I really see an appeal in giving villagers their own little areas to stay at. While I have a neighborhood, four animals have their own places: Judy, Marina, Tia, and Lucky. With the exception of Marina, everyone has a done-up area that suits their personality and theme. Judy lives in a magic forest, Tia in a cafe by the shops, and Lucky has his own graveyard.

I still have plenty more space on my island (for example, below my plaza is a bit desolate, its just that im quite lost on what exactly to do with it) but Im not short on ideas, Im just rarely ever satisfied with what I lay out. Things are constantly changing, being moved, and thats with me playing with a minimally terraformed island!

TL;DR I like having options and being able to customize around the houses of my animals!

 

[Manah]

No idea. I absolutely loved HHD because it was all about interior design.

 

[Romaki]

I feel like small spaces are hard to work with, even though the result of being limited is usually better.

 

[Imbri]

I enjoy decorating my house and put a lot of thought into creating cozy, realistic rooms. I also am enjoying decorating outdoors, although that I find a little harder.

I think it may be that all the outdoor abilities are the new shiny things. We can now do so much, it's probably natural people will gravitate to that.

Personally, I like more natural settings, so I did minimal terraforming, and I don't like clutter, so keeping things simple but interesting presents a challenge. Interior design comes a lot easier, for me.

 

[JKDOS]

I would say because 99% of my time is spent running around outside, and not inside.

 

[river]

besides all the reasons people have already pointed out, I just haven't been very inspired by most of the indoor furniture options I think...

I really miss all the unique sets and the fact that you can't customize a lot of the pieces you can buy on Nooks (like the cute or the antique sets) made me really lazy about having to catalog them from someone else...

I feel like I would totally have started working on my kitchen or my bathroom by now but the color options for the fridge and the bathtub on my Nooks are awful so I keep postponing actually working on them!

 

[meggiewes]

Another reason that nobody has really mentioned is that this is the first game you can really landscape with cliffs and water along with trees, flowers, and outside decorations. It is the new thing, so people are going to focus on that the most.