Creating custom staircases in The Sims 4 is so much easier than it once was. No longer must we do arcane rituals to create landings with foundations or cursed floating floors to connect stair sets. You can create all sorts of special shapes with base game staircases these days, but the tools are still just a little fiddly.
I'll walk you through the three tools of custom staircase creation, which isn't nearly as overwhelming as it sounds, and show off a few of the special types of staircases that you can build with them so you can get down to creating your own majestic interiors.
How to create custom staircases in The Sims 4
Start by placing any staircase style in your house or lot. Click on your staircase to select it and you'll see the side arrows for increasing its width, along with the newer tool, which I'll call the landing tool, represented by a cube with two bent arrows. Click and drag the landing tool to add a bend to your stairs joined by a landing. Once that's done, you'll see two more grabbable tools available. Here's what they all do:
- Landing tool: Adds another bend in your staircase, joined by a landing tile.
- Height tool: Raises or lowers the landing along your staircase.
- Pivot tool: Affects the very bottom of your staircase, changing which side of the final landing it is attached to.
The taller your staircase (affected by your chosen wall height), the more bends your staircase can support, with the ability to raise and lower each landing. A short wall height can support two landings, and thus two bends, for instance. You can create stair bends at 90-degree or 180-degree angles.
You'll figure out a lot of the possibilities by playing with custom stairs yourself, but here are a few examples of the possibilities you can try.
How to build a stairwell in The Sims 4
You can create a spiral stairwell in The Sims 4 using a 3x3 tile room. To make them properly overlap like this you'll need to either use a stair set that does not have walls automatically added to its sides or place any staircase of your choosing and use the Sledgehammer tool in the top bar to delete the walls.
Now that you have floating stairs, add two bends using the landing tool to shape it into a spiral. You may need to customize your staircase outdoors first and then use the move tool to place it in the room it belongs. After that, select your first set of stairs and press the copy button (double squares right below the move tool). Pop up to the floor above and use the < or > keys to rotate your staircase until it fits on top of the first. They should share a floor tile as shown above. For even more twists, use a taller wall height.
How to build switchback stairs in The Sims 4
Similar to a stairwell, you can create a fire escape style switchback staircase by creating two stairs with U-shaped landings. Unlike the circular stairwell, you can't just copy your first staircase to create the second, because it should be facing the opposite direction. If you're on a short wall height, you'll need to use the height slider to lower the landing on the bottom staircase and raise the landing on the one above so they don't conflict. If you're using a taller wall height, you'll have a bit more freedom.
How to build ballroom stairs in The Sims 4
You can't actually create forked stairs in the Sims 4, but you can put two sets of custom stairs next to each other to achieve a similar effect. By putting the landing of two stairs backing up to one another, or having two sets of stairs share a floor tile on the floor above, you can create some very grand-looking steps that belong in a ballroom.
