The Sims 4: How to Add Primers

The Sims 4 offers you more tools than ever before to customize your virtual life experience. With the foundation and highly intuitive tools that come with it, you can build the house of your dreams much easier than in previous games of the series.

The foundation is an area of the build mode that some players find intimidating. However, once you understand the available tools, you will be able to create everything according to your heart's desire with minimal effort. From cottages to villas, from wrap-around porches to balconies, the foundation will be the starting point for all your creations, no matter how spectacular they may be.

What Is Foundation

The foundation is your opportunity to change the size and shape of your house, as well as the rooms within it. Rooms, balconies, terraces, and decks can be created on a foundation, while existing rooms can be modified using the foundation tool.

How To Add Foundation

A foundation can be added to your lot by entering build mode, selecting "Walls and Empty Rooms," and placing a platform or level. Click once to place your initial foundation shape. Once it's placed, the foundation tool will appear as a group of arrows pointing in all directions.

When you extend the new foundation into an existing foundation, they will merge together, creating a combined space. By combining different pieces of foundation, you can achieve creative room shapes!

How To Use The Foundation Tool

The arrows that appear when you click on a room are part of the foundation tool. By clicking and dragging one of the arrows, you can change the size of a room. By clicking and dragging the arrows pointing up and down, you can raise and lower the room.

What Are Foundation Swatches

Like most furniture in the game, the foundation can be customized in various ways. Open the foundation menu to see the available designs. Hover over a specific design to see the different color patterns available to you.

Click on one of the primer colors and select the primer you want to edit in your world. This will change the design of all connected primers. There are even stilts primers that make your house appear lifted off the ground.

How To Have Different Foundation Swatches

If you want to have two rooms on one floor with different floor plan designs, you just need to make sure that you create the new room separately before connecting it with your existing primer. An example where you can apply this technique is a terrace design.

Create your terrace sideways, give it a primer color, and then drag the space to your house to attach it.

How To Connect Stairs

If your primer is elevated, your game character will need stairs to enter the space. Select a staircase design in building mode and place it at the edge of your primer. The stairs will automatically adjust to the height of the primer and connect to it. If you don't place the stairs near an existing primer, they will automatically appear at the height of a second floor.

Click to select a location to place the staircase. Once it's placed, the move tool will appear, allowing you to adjust the length and rotation of the staircase.

How To Add A Second Floor

Primer can also be used to create a second floor for your house. In the upper right corner of your screen, there are two arrows forming a triangle. Click on the upper arrow to switch to the second floor of the house. You may have noticed that the grid on the ground has moved upward. This is the new height for the floor on this level.

Be careful to pay attention to what your space is attached to. You don't want to accidentally change the height or color of everything around you. Remember that attached spaces also include rooms above or below you. If you increase the height of a primer on the second floor, the primer on the first floor will also rise.