How it works
Subscribe to a Workshop rug that takes a custom image, place it on an empty lot, load your floor plan onto it, scale it until a doorway looks right, then trace the walls straight over the picture. Delete the rug at the end and you are left with an accurate shell.
- Paralives on Steam — Workshop mods are Steam-only
- The Fully customizable carpet mod by Earth Fish
- A floor plan image saved on your computer
- About thirty minutes for a small house
How to build from a blueprint in Paralives
Ten steps, from installing the mod to a decorated house that matches the plan.
- 1
Open the Workshop from inside the game
Click Mods on the main menu and choose to browse the Steam Workshop. You can do the same thing through the Steam client, but browsing in-game means a subscription appears in your mod list without restarting Paralives.
Mods → browse the Workshop, without leaving the game.Watch at 0:12 - 2
Subscribe to the customizable carpet
Search for rug and look for Fully customizable carpet by Earth Fish. It is an ordinary-looking rug with one important property: it accepts any image file as its texture. Hit subscribe and it lands in your mod list straight away.
The mod is a rug that will display any image you give it.Watch at 0:36 - 3
Find the modded rug in build mode
Load into the lot, enter build mode and bulldoze it if you want a clean start. Search rug in the build catalogue: the modded one carries a small cloud-with-arrow badge marking it as a Workshop item. Place it on the ground.
The cloud badge is how you spot a Workshop item in the catalogue.Watch at 1:12 - 4
Load your floor plan onto the rug
Select the rug, open its image option and click the plus to browse your computer. Any picture works — a plan you saved from a search, an architect's drawing, or a sketch you made. Confirm and the image appears on the rug immediately.
Any image file on your PC can go onto the rug.Watch at 1:48 - 5
Scale the plan to build size
Stretch the rug until the rooms look plausible at Paralives scale. There is no measurement overlay, so use a doorway as your yardstick: a door is roughly one grid tile wide, and if the plan's doors are much narrower or wider than that, the whole thing is out of scale. Getting this right now saves re-tracing later.
Use a doorway as the yardstick — about one grid tile.Watch at 2:12 - 6
Trace the walls over the plan
Switch to the wall tool and draw straight along the lines in the image. Work room by room, closing each shape before you start the next. Interior walls, closets and pantries all come across; ignore anything on the plan too thin to matter, because Paralives walls have a fixed minimum thickness.
Room by room, closing each shape as you go.Watch at 2:36 - 7
Copy the window positions
The plan marks where the windows go, which is the part that is genuinely hard to eyeball otherwise. Place each one over its mark and resize it to match the opening on the drawing. Watch the alignment highlight so windows on the same wall sit at a consistent height.
Window placement is where a real plan earns its keep.Watch at 3:48 - 8
Add the doors, including the awkward ones
Doors are next, and plans usually show the swing arc so you know which way each one faces. Wider openings on the drawing are normally sliding or double doors. This is also where you discover the quirks of the plan — a bathroom reachable only through the bedroom, or a walk-in pantry you had read as a closet.
Door swings on the plan tell you which way to face each one.Watch at 5:00 - 9
Delete the rug
Once walls, windows and doors are in, sell or delete the rug. The shell that remains is an accurate copy of the plan, ready for flooring and paint. Now is a good moment to save the lot to your library, before decorating changes anything.
The rug goes; the accurate shell stays.Watch at 6:12 - 10
Decorate inside the plan
Furnish room by room using the plan's own layout — the sink, stove and fridge where the drawing puts them, the bed against the wall it indicates. Following someone else's layout is a genuinely good exercise if you always build the same shapes, and you can loosen anything that turns out to feel cramped in-game.
Furnishing to the plan is a good habit-breaking exercise.Watch at 7:00
Before you start
- Scale is judged by eye — Paralives has no ruler, so check doorway widths early rather than after tracing.
- Real plans include structural detail the game does not model; ignore anything thinner than a Paralives wall.
- The rug is a mod. Delete it before uploading your lot, or players without the mod see a missing object.
- Mods can break after a patch — check the Workshop page again after each Paralives update.
Blueprint questions
- Does Paralives have a blueprint tool?
- Not in Early Access 0.1.7c. There is no floor plan overlay or blueprint import, which is why players use a Workshop rug that accepts a custom image as a stand-in.
- Can I build a real house floor plan in Paralives?
- Yes. Save the plan as an image, display it on the customizable carpet mod, scale it against a doorway and trace the walls. Room shapes and window positions copy across accurately; exact real-world measurements do not.
- Do I need mods to use blueprints?
- For the overlay, yes — you need a modded object that displays a custom image, and Workshop mods require the Steam version of the game. Without mods you can only keep the plan open on a second monitor and estimate.
- Will other players need the mod to use my lot?
- Only if you leave the rug in. Delete it before uploading and the lot works for everyone, because nothing else in the build depends on the mod.
Related guides
Full build mode tutorial
Every tool in order, from settings to saving the finished lot.
15 build mode tips
The tricks that save a rebuild, with a screenshot for each.
Custom content
What counts as CC in Paralives and where the good sets are.
Install mods
Subscribing, load order and what breaks after a patch.
Build budget planner
Price the build before your household runs out of money.