I know there are a lot of posts that tell people not to compare their islands to other people's, to not feel pressured to terraform, etc., but I wanted to give a few more concrete tips, from one not-very-creative person to another. So if you wanted to try terraforming/decorating but feel intimidated by the amount of choices, and didn't know where to start, here are some things to consider:
First of all: don't worry about messing up. There's pretty much nothing you can do to your island that can't be changed/fixed later. Sure, depending on the scale it might take a bit of time&effort (and potentially some Bells), but that brings me to my next point:
Don't try to change the entire island at once. Focus on smaller areas, and let inspiration take you from there. Working with smaller areas also means there won't be as much to fix if you decide what you've made isn't doing it for you after all.
Mess is a part of the process. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will be your town. While you're moving buildings around, building ramps and bridges and waiting for that perfect item to complete the look your island will most likely look a bit janky, and that's fine (you can even lean into it by setting up contruction signs or fencing off parts of the island, like in that one trailer.)
Don't feel pressured to terraform everything. You can just work with what you've got, you don't need to reshape rivers and tear down mountains if that feels like too much power.
Let the items you have inspire you. If you aren't doing online trading then you'll likely find yourself missing certain pieces of furniture/DYI recipes (I'm still waiting for benches...), but sometimes you'll find the Nooks selling something that will inspire you to make an area you never intended to make, but it just works out so well (and remember - you can always change it later.) Also it never hurts to just plop some items down and see how they look together.
Make something stupid once in a while. Forget about cute little cafes and flower gardens for a sec and make an... idk, bidet shrine, a porta-potty maze or whatever else your imagination conjures up (for some reason I seem to have toilets on my mind right now). After all you can always tear it down later. (And if you're wondering 'why?' - the point of this is to get used to messing with the construction tool&make something without the fear of making a mistake. Of course it's going to look stupid, that's the point. Of course feel free to skip this if you don't want to do it, lol.)
Watch island tours/look at other people's towns, not with the attitude of "man, their island is so much better than mine, I can never make anything good", but for inspiration. Even artists don't just pull stuff out of thin air, they use references. Decorating an ACNH island might not be high art, but the principle is the same.
Take your time. Unless you're time-travelling you likely won't complete your dream island fast, and even with time travelling it can take hundreds of hours. Not everyone can afford to sink that many hours into the game in such a short window of time, and that's ok. Plus, it has its perks - as we can see with the recent update adding bushes and hedges, we can probably expect future updates to add more items to play around with, and hey, maybe some of them will inspire you.
And perhaps most importantly - this is supposed to be fun. If terraforming isn't doing it for you, you can just pretend it doesn't exist. I mean, all the previous AC titles worked just fine without it, so you can completely ignore it if you want.
(Also, from experience: if you just put down a lot of flowers, bushes, and paths in a way that kind makes sense and make the island look busy it's generally going to look pretty good.)
And that's all I've got for now. I'm sure some if this will be obvious to people, but I see a lot of people stressing out about how to decorate their islands, and as someone who's also not that good at creating stuff/afraid of messing up I figured it might help at least some peoplel. If you've got anything more to add, feel free!
First of all: don't worry about messing up. There's pretty much nothing you can do to your island that can't be changed/fixed later. Sure, depending on the scale it might take a bit of time&effort (and potentially some Bells), but that brings me to my next point:
Don't try to change the entire island at once. Focus on smaller areas, and let inspiration take you from there. Working with smaller areas also means there won't be as much to fix if you decide what you've made isn't doing it for you after all.
Mess is a part of the process. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will be your town. While you're moving buildings around, building ramps and bridges and waiting for that perfect item to complete the look your island will most likely look a bit janky, and that's fine (you can even lean into it by setting up contruction signs or fencing off parts of the island, like in that one trailer.)
Don't feel pressured to terraform everything. You can just work with what you've got, you don't need to reshape rivers and tear down mountains if that feels like too much power.
Let the items you have inspire you. If you aren't doing online trading then you'll likely find yourself missing certain pieces of furniture/DYI recipes (I'm still waiting for benches...), but sometimes you'll find the Nooks selling something that will inspire you to make an area you never intended to make, but it just works out so well (and remember - you can always change it later.) Also it never hurts to just plop some items down and see how they look together.
Make something stupid once in a while. Forget about cute little cafes and flower gardens for a sec and make an... idk, bidet shrine, a porta-potty maze or whatever else your imagination conjures up (for some reason I seem to have toilets on my mind right now). After all you can always tear it down later. (And if you're wondering 'why?' - the point of this is to get used to messing with the construction tool&make something without the fear of making a mistake. Of course it's going to look stupid, that's the point. Of course feel free to skip this if you don't want to do it, lol.)
Watch island tours/look at other people's towns, not with the attitude of "man, their island is so much better than mine, I can never make anything good", but for inspiration. Even artists don't just pull stuff out of thin air, they use references. Decorating an ACNH island might not be high art, but the principle is the same.
Take your time. Unless you're time-travelling you likely won't complete your dream island fast, and even with time travelling it can take hundreds of hours. Not everyone can afford to sink that many hours into the game in such a short window of time, and that's ok. Plus, it has its perks - as we can see with the recent update adding bushes and hedges, we can probably expect future updates to add more items to play around with, and hey, maybe some of them will inspire you.
And perhaps most importantly - this is supposed to be fun. If terraforming isn't doing it for you, you can just pretend it doesn't exist. I mean, all the previous AC titles worked just fine without it, so you can completely ignore it if you want.
(Also, from experience: if you just put down a lot of flowers, bushes, and paths in a way that kind makes sense and make the island look busy it's generally going to look pretty good.)
And that's all I've got for now. I'm sure some if this will be obvious to people, but I see a lot of people stressing out about how to decorate their islands, and as someone who's also not that good at creating stuff/afraid of messing up I figured it might help at least some peoplel. If you've got anything more to add, feel free!
