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Paralives Field GuideParalives Field Guide

Build guide

Paralives bungalow: a whole house on one floor

A step-by-step Paralives bungalow build from two one-storey speed builds — how to plan a footprint that spreads instead of stacking, how to stop a wide hip roof reading as a box, and how the porch and garden finish the plan.

Start the walkthroughFarmhouse guide
A finished Paralives bungalow with a brown hip roof, a brick chimney, a contrasting yellow front gable and a covered porch reached by short steps.
DARIKOSIMS's finished one-storey build — every room the household needs, on one floor.

The short version

A bungalow in Paralives is not a preset — it is a decision to spend floor area sideways instead of upwards. Lay one continuous floor plate, carve the rooms out of it with separator walls, then break the wide hip roof with a chimney, a second siding colour and shed dormers so the house does not read as a low box.

  • No bungalow preset exists — you build the one-storey shell yourself
  • One continuous floor plate: no stair well, no landing to plan around
  • Interior rooms come from Separator Wall Placement Mode, not new footprints
  • A single wide hip roof needs a chimney and dormers to stop reading as a box
  • A raised porch deck with posts and lattice buys an entry without a storey
  • The game prints wall length in metres, but never the lot area

The footprint

Spread the plan instead of stacking it

A two-storey house solves space by going up; a bungalow has to solve it sideways. These four steps set the floor plate, the partitions and the span before a single roof piece exists.

  1. 1

    Set the front of the plan with the first wall run

    The build starts on a bare lot with only a terrain-paint scar where the house will sit. The first wall is laid along the street edge, which fixes which side of the plan is public and which side opens to the garden — every room decision after this one follows from it.

    An empty Paralives lot with the build grid visible and one short wall started along the street edge, before any floor has been laid.
    First wall run on the bare lot — the front of the plan is set here.Watch at 0:08
  2. 2

    Lay one continuous floor plate

    A bungalow lives or dies by its footprint, so the floor goes down as a single unbroken surface with the exterior walls tracing it. The tooltip confirms the surface is Hardwood; the walls are still the plain starter material and get painted last. Notice there is no stair well cut into the plate — that freed space is the whole point of going one storey.

    Top-down view of a Paralives bungalow shell showing one continuous hardwood floor plate inside plain exterior walls, with the Hardwood floor tooltip open.
    One unbroken plate: no landing, no stair well to work around.Watch at 0:36
  3. 3

    Carve the rooms out of the plate

    Interior partitions come from Separator Wall Placement Mode, which drops a wall onto an existing floor without extending the outside shell. That is how a single-storey plan gets its rooms: one big plate, then dividers, then doorways cut back out of them.

    Paralives Separator Wall Placement Mode active inside a one-storey shell, with a partition being drawn across the hardwood floor and a right angle indicator on screen.
    Separator walls carve rooms without growing the footprint.Watch at 0:40
  4. 4

    Read the span off the metre overlay

    The same move at a bigger scale: ItsAnitaa's Fairhaven plan runs partitions across a much wider floor plate, and the blue overlay reports the wall length in metres while you drag. It is the only measurement the game gives you for free, and on a one-storey house it is how you catch a room that has quietly become too long.

    Paralives build mode measuring a 5.7 metre interior wall as a partition is dragged across the floor of a wide single-storey brick house.
    The metre readout is how you judge a one-floor span.Watch at 2:10

The roof

Keep a wide hip roof from reading as a box

One storey means one long, blank roof plane. Both builds fix it the same way: a stack through the slope, a second colour on the gable, and dormers dropped onto the front run.

  1. 5

    Roof the whole plan with one hip

    With the shell closed, the roof catalogue opens on hip and gable surfaces rather than a per-room tool. One large hip covers the main mass; pieces snap to the top of the wall and inherit its height, so the roof shape is decided by the wall outline you already committed to.

    The Paralives roof piece catalogue open beside a one-storey house whose main hip roof is only partly placed, showing loose red roof surfaces.
    Roof pieces are placed as surfaces, not as a house preset.Watch at 0:44
  2. 6

    Punch a stack through the roof plane

    A bungalow's chimney is what stops a low hip roof reading as a tent. Here the stack rises through the slope on the street side and the roof closes around it, so place it before you paint anything — the roof rebuilds itself around the obstruction.

    A pale chimney stack rising through the red hip roof of a Paralives bungalow shell while Wall Placement Mode is active.
    Chimney first, roof colour second — the stack breaks the plane.Watch at 1:10
  3. 7

    Paint the roof on its own palette

    Roof Painting Mode carries its own swatch grid, so tiles can go a different colour from the trim. Both builds here keep a warm roof over a pale body, which is the classic pairing and hides the fact that the whole roof is a single piece.

    Paralives Roof Painting Mode with its swatch grid open over the roof of a nearly finished one-storey house with a covered porch.
    The roof has its own palette, independent of the siding.Watch at 1:20
  4. 8

    Break a long roof with shed dormers

    Over a wide single storey the hip roof gets very long and very blank. ItsAnitaa sets two shed dormers into the front slope — roof pieces laid on top of the main plane — which gives the silhouette something other than one big triangle and puts light into the rooms underneath.

    Two shed dormers set into the dark hip roof of a brick Paralives bungalow while the wall siding palette stays open at the left of screen.
    Dormers sit on top of the roof plane; there is no dormer tool.Watch at 4:10

Skin and openings

Siding, windows and the front door

With no second floor to compose, the facade carries the whole character of the house. This is where the two-tone paint scheme, the window rhythm and the raised entry come from.

  1. 9

    Give the gable a second colour

    Wall Painting Mode opens the full siding palette. The move visible here is painting the front gable and the porch fascia warmer than the body of the house, which makes a shallow porch read as an entrance instead of a ledge. With no upper floor to compose, two tones on one shell do most of the work.

    The Paralives Wall Painting Mode siding palette open beside a one-storey house whose front gable is painted a contrasting yellow.
    Two siding colours on one shell is what makes the entrance read.Watch at 1:36
  2. 10

    Place windows from the room, not the street

    The window catalogue is opened against the finished brick wall and each unit highlights the wall section it will snap into. On a bungalow the front rooms get the tall windows and the service side gets the small ones, so line them up from the interior plan you drew in step 3 rather than from the facade.

    A Paralives window catalogue open against the brick front wall of a bungalow, with a selected window highlighting the wall section it snaps to.
    Windows snap to the wall segment they are dropped onto.Watch at 5:20
  3. 11

    Set the door on a raised deck

    The door catalogue is open with a fanlight unit highlighted in cyan above a short run of steps. Raising the entry a few steps off the lot costs no floor area and is most of what makes a bungalow porch look deliberate rather than accidental.

    A Paralives front door with a fanlight highlighted in cyan above concrete steps, with the door catalogue open beside a one-storey shell.
    The cyan highlight is the door about to be placed, not a bug.Watch at 2:30
  4. 12

    Close the porch with posts and lattice

    The porch is a deck under the main roof with square posts at the corners and lattice skirting below the deck edge — Fence Placement Mode supplies the rails. Keeping it open on three sides is how a single-storey house gets a bright front room without adding a storey.

    A covered Paralives front porch built with Fence Placement Mode, showing square posts, a railing and lattice skirting under the deck.
    Posts plus lattice: a porch without spending floor on walls.Watch at 2:12

Grounds and living

Finish the plan outside the walls

A bungalow runs out of floor area before it runs out of household. The overhead read, the garden path, the living room and a pergola patio are how both builders buy the rest.

  1. 13

    Read the finished plan from above

    Straight overhead the shell shows what a bungalow spends its floor area on: one long entry spine with rooms either side and no circulation stacked on top of itself. The garden path already loops the house, so every external door lands on paving instead of bare lawn.

    Overhead view of a finished Paralives bungalow footprint showing one storey of rooms arranged along a central spine with a path looping the house.
    Top-down is the only way to see a one-floor plan as a plan.Watch at 8:40
  2. 14

    Curb the beds before you plant them

    The rock catalogue is open with a sunflower and blue-flower bed already edging the front path. Terrain paint lays the bare ground, rock pieces curb it, and the planting fills the strip between — in that order, or you end up moving flowers.

    A Paralives front garden bed of sunflowers and blue flowers edging a stone path, with the rock catalogue open in build mode at the left.
    Rock pieces curb the bed; the flowers go in afterwards.Watch at 4:00
  3. 15

    Furnish the long rooms first

    With no upstairs, one living room carries the whole household's downtime, so the sofa and rug land before anything else. Cushions and small clutter are then lifted onto surfaces with Shift (hold) while you move the mouse — the same item-height adjustment works on every surface in the house.

    A Paralives living room seen from above with a sofa, a Greek-key rug and the cushion colour swatches open over the seat.
    Cushions are separate items — drop them on the sofa, not beside it.Watch at 9:40
  4. 16

    Push the last room outdoors

    The one-floor budget runs out at the back wall, so ItsAnitaa takes the last rooms outdoors: a round gravel patio with a metal table and six chairs, a white pergola standing over the bed beside it, and a bench on the lawn against the picket fence. The rock catalogue is open at the left — the boulders in that planting come from it.

    Top-down view of a Paralives bungalow backyard with a round gravel patio, a metal table and chairs, a white pergola beside a planted bed and the rock catalogue open on the left
    Patio, pergola and a bench on the lawn — the last three rooms, none of them under a second floor.Watch at 37:35

Bungalow questions, answered from the footage

Is there a bungalow preset or template in Paralives?
No. As of 0.1.8b there is no house-type stamp and no one-click bungalow in build mode — you lay the floor plate, walls and roof yourself, exactly as the sixteen steps above do. Finished one-storey builds can be downloaded from the Workshop through the in-game library, but those arrive as whole houses rather than a style you can apply to your own lot.
How big a lot do I need for a one-storey house?
Bigger than the same floor area needs on two storeys — that is the entire trade-off, and it is why bungalows get pushed to the outer lots. We cannot give you a verified figure: neither builder states a lot size and Paralives never prints the lot area on screen. The only measurement the game does show is wall length in metres while you drag, which is what step 4 uses.
Can I add a second floor to a bungalow later?
Not without rebuilding the roof. Wall and floor heights are free to raise, but every hip piece, chimney and dormer in steps 5 to 8 sits on the one-storey wall line, so adding a storey means stripping the roof first. Neither build in this guide shows a mid-build floor addition, so we have no footage to confirm how much of the interior survives the change.
Where do the kitchen, bathroom and laundry go?
On the same floor as everything else, and grouped. DARIKOSIMS runs a compact kitchen along one wall with a bathroom off the living area; ItsAnitaa keeps a separate utility room with a washer and dryer behind the kitchen. With no stairs, wet rooms can share a wall and run their services in one line, which is the practical reason bungalow plans read as a row of rooms rather than a cluster.
Does a bungalow need stairs at all?
Only at the front door. Both houses here sit close to grade and the only step run is the short porch stair in step 11 — the rest of the plan is flat, which is what makes the type popular for households that want to avoid climbing. If you want a higher deck you are into the foundation workaround rather than a stair tool, which our foundations and stairs guides cover step by step.
What is the cheapest thing to get wrong on a bungalow?
The roof. A single wide hip over one storey reads as a low box unless you break it, and all three fixes are free or nearly so: a stack through the plane (step 6), a second siding colour on the gable (step 9) and dormers dropped onto the long slope (step 8). Both builders use all three.

Go deeper on the tools

Foundations

There is no foundation button — raise a porch deck or a sunken lounge with wall heights instead.

Stairs

Eight staircase styles and how to resize them, for the one flight your bungalow actually needs.

Roofs

Corner roofs, flat roofs, skylights and dormers explained tool by tool, not style by style.

Keep building

Starter home

Empty lot to playable house on a budget — the essentials list a bungalow still has to satisfy.

Farmhouse

Another low, wide silhouette with a porch — but the roof and the outbuildings work very differently.

Tiny house

What one storey looks like when the lot refuses to give you more floor area.

Windows & doors

Snapping openings to walls, fixing curved-wall windows and resizing sliders.

How to make a porch

The raised-foundation and half-level methods behind the entry deck in step 11.