One of the best things aboutStardew Valleyis that you can play the game exactly how you want to. Prioritizing crops, making your farm all about animals, you could even decide to never plant a crop and make all of your money through mining and fishing.

But no matter how you play, it’s nice to turn this Stardew Valley house into a Stardew Valley home. For some, this is easier said than done. And it can be made even harder depending on which farm layout you’ve decided to play on. There are no wrong answers, but there are also some solid things to try to make your farm look nice.

Stardew Valley farmer standing in front of two barns as brown and white cows and pigs walk around nearby.

The pictures taken for this article use a number of mods that affect how buildings, machines, and animals look. All of these tips still work for Stardew Valley without mods.

10Pick What’s Important To Your Playstyle

What do you like doing most on your farm? Are you all about making as much money as you can fromAncient FruitandKegsgive the rest of your farm over to the barn and coop animals?

If you know how you want to play, it will not only help you pick a farm layout, but it can also help influence how you design your farm. If you know you want lots of plants, then the standard layout might be the ticket. If you love fishing, there’s the riverland and beach farms for you.

Stardew Valley farmer standing in front of Pierre’s General Good Store with a question mark over their head

9Plan Out Your Farm Design

Once you know which farm you are playing with, then you can start to plan things, even before you load into the game. All thefarm layouts can be found onlineand you can open them in an editing software, app, or website and make notes as to where you want things.

This is not necessary by any means, but if you look at the farm layout online, it can give you a good skeleton to work on, especially in the early days of running your farm. you’re able to clear out specific areas you know you want to use quickly. Or you can begin to collect a lot of certain resources you know you want to use a lot of in crafting paths or items.

Stardew Valley farmer standing between two sheds with crops and bee houses separated by in-game paths

8Use Paths To Plot Out Your Designs

There are some paths that don’t take too much to make in terms of materials. And although you’re able to buy more from Robin, a lot of the base game paths are great. When you’ve run out of energy or are tired of grinding in the mines every day, you can spend time placing paths, visualizing your farm in-game.

If you are already using paths that you like, you’re just making progress on getting your farm how you want it while you build up the money and materials for whatever buildings you’ll eventually have.

Stardew Valley farmer standing between two sheds and behind a fish pond on the Four Corners farm.

7Work With Your Surroundings

Some of the maps in Stardew Valley have natural barriers that occur. If you like symmetry, the four corners farm is a great example of this as there are four areas that are squared off with cliff-like zones. You can then devote a square each to crops, animals, fish ponds, and buildings.

If the four corners farm isn’t for you, you can apply this philosophy to the forest farm, the riverland farm, really any of them. Having these areas that are already divided because of immovable boundaries can help you determine where to place things.

Stardew Valley farmer sitting in front of second computer in Sebastian’s room

6Find Inspiration Online

This may seem like phoning it in, but when you’re stuck and don’t know what to do, looking up farm designs online can help kick you into action. It’s astounding how beautiful some of the designs online can be.

On the flip side, if you’re all about efficiency, you’re able to find how others haveset up their farms to allow for the most machines, kegs, and crops as possible. There are many different ways to set up farms and social media, as well as just good ‘ol reliable Google, which can help get that creativity going.

Stardew Valley farmer in front of bee houses that are lined up around the Community Center

5Store Machines In The Valley

If you want to make lots of wine, jelly, honey, etc., that means you’re going to have to give up a lot of your farm land to accommodate for machines or sheds. Unless you store your machines off campus. Well. Off farm.

Machines can be placed all over Stardew Valley, not just on your farm. You can fill your walkway up to Robin’s and the Mountain with kegs. You can set up bee houses all around the Community Center. No matter what you want to focus on, you can clear up space on your farm by monetizing the rest of the neighborhood.

Stardew Valley farmer standing beside their house. There is a shed with two kegs in front of it and a shed with two preserve jars in front of it.

If you place a machine somewhere the NPCs walk through, they will break it down. If you aren’t sure where they walk, you can place something like a fence to see if it’s destroyed.

4Tackle Small Areas First

Something you may always do is build onto your farm design little by little. Pick a portion of your farm and make it look pretty before moving on to the next area. Take the farm house as an example. You can focus just on the exterior of the house first. Do you want to make a fenced-in area for your dog or cat? Maybe you want a flower garden beside your house.

If you focus on one, small area at a time, you can more easily change your mind without having to tear down your whole farm and start again. It can also help you determine what theme you want to go with or paths you want to use.

Stardew Valley farmer standing in front of a shrine made for grandpa at night with two lights on either side of it and statues.

3Make A Shrine For Grandpa

Still sticking with the theme of small areas, every farm has an area dedicated to your character’s Grandpa. You can use lights, awards you receive, paths, flowers, or any craftable item to pay tribute to the late farmer.

If you do this, it will allow you to play around with different styles until you’re happy with how it looks. Then, it can influence some of the other things you do around your farm to decorate. And if you want your farm to be efficient but still attractive, you can plant fruit trees near the shrine or seasonal flowers or crops you like.

Stardew Valley farmer standing near coops and barns with lights between them at night.

2Lights

Experiment with the different light sources in the game. There are braziers you can make after buying the recipe from Robin, as well as wooden and iron lamps.

Lights can not only help round out some of the areas where you feel like you need something extra, but at night it will make it so that you can see all your hard work as a decorator. And, of course, you get the added benefit of being able to see where you’re going.

Stardew Valley farmer standing in the middle of four barns that have plants and flowers dividing them

1Seasonal Plants And Tubs O’ Flowers

So you have paths, you may have fences and lights. How do you add a pop of color or that little something extra to tie it all together? Seasonal plants and the craftable Tub O' Flowers! There are six different seasonal plants that change their appearance with the seasons. And the best part, unlike flowers, you don’t have to water them.

The Tub O' Flowers is a recipe you can get from Pierre during The Flower Dance that happens on Spring 24 every year. This is also how you can buy three of the seasonal plants. Depending on your money situation in your first Spring, you can start early on decorating your farm.