The Palette House is the design studio in Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream. It's where you paint custom clothes for your Miis, custom food items, custom pet patterns, and the decals that go on apartment walls, TVs and book covers. It is also the single most-asked-about feature of the game — partly because the menus aren't intuitive, partly because painting cell-by-cell with a controller is unlike anything else in the game.
This guide covers the whole system end-to-end: how to unlock the Palette House, what every brush and mode does, how the categories differ, and a step-by-step walkthrough of your first design. By the end, you'll know enough to paint anything from a simple heart emoji to a 64×64 portrait.
How to unlock the Palette House
The Palette House unlocks naturally through normal progression — typically within the first few hours of play, after you've built a handful of buildings on your island. There's no hidden requirement, side quest, or grind. The game introduces it through a notification when you've reached the right point in the build-and-grow cycle.
If you've played for a few hours and don't see it yet, focus on adding more Miis and unlocking more buildings. The trigger is tied to overall island progression, not to a single specific action.
The 256×256 canvas
Every square Palette House category — clothes, food, pets, decals — uses the same 256×256-pixel canvas. That's 65,536 game pixels per design. TVs and book covers use rectangular canvases (wider than tall), and the exact dimensions vary per item — check the in-game preview before designing.
You don't paint at the pixel level directly. You paint with brushes, and the brush size determines how many game pixels each stroke covers. There are four pixel-perfect brushes:
| Brush | Grid cells | Total cells | Paint time | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 32 px | 8 × 8 | 64 | 2–5 min | Test runs, simple symbols |
| 16 px | 16 × 16 | 256 | 10–15 min | Chunky icons, beginner pixel art |
| 8 px | 32 × 32 | 1,024 | 20–40 min | Most icon-style designs |
| 4 px | 64 × 64 | 4,096 | 45–90 min | Portraits, photos, complex art |
This is the most important table in this guide. Brush size = pixel size. Switching brushes mid-design is allowed but rarely a good idea — pick the brush that suits the design's complexity before you start.
Pixel-perfect vs smooth mode
Each brush has two stroke modes, controlled by icons at the bottom of the brush picker:
Pixel-perfect mode (rightmost stroke icon)
Every stroke snaps to a single grid cell. One cell, one colour, no anti-aliasing, no blending. This is what every pixel-art tool (including ours) is calibrated against. Use pixel-perfect mode for any design where the cell grid matters — which is essentially every paint-by-numbers reference, every recipe-card design, and every chunky icon you'll see shared online.
Smooth mode
Strokes are soft, anti-aliased, and don't respect the grid. Colours blend across cells. Useful only for organic illustration where you don't want pixel art at all — e.g., a watercolour-style flower painted freehand. Most beginners don't realise smooth mode is a separate setting and accidentally end up with blurry-looking pixel art. If your designs look wrong, check the mode first.
The "Grid view" setting (what it does and doesn't do)
The brush menu has a "Grid view" toggle with four density options. This setting only overlays reference lines on top of the canvas — it does not change your art. Pick whichever density is easiest to count against.
The densest setting (8×8) draws a reference line every 4 game pixels, which lines up exactly with our Grid Maker preview when using the 4 px brush. For other brush sizes, the densest grid view is still the best choice — it gives you the most reference lines to count against.
Pixel size = brush. Reference lines = Grid view. Two different controls. Beginners often confuse these and end up frustrated when changing Grid view doesn't change their pixels.
Every category explained
The Palette House lets you design across several item categories. The canvas is the same size for all square categories — but the in-game use differs.
👕 Clothes
T-shirts, dresses, hats. Visible on every Mii who wears them — high-traffic. The best return on your painting time. Start here. Clothes designs work especially well at 16×16 (chunky icons) and 32×32 (full graphics).
🍱 Food
Custom food items you give to Miis. Appears full-screen during the feeding animation, so chunky 16×16 designs read well. Pizza slices, donuts, ramen, sushi — classic food-art subjects work perfectly here.
🐾 Pets
Patterns for cats, dogs and other pets. The canvas wraps around the 3D pet model, so the result looks abstract on a flat preview but coherent on the actual pet. Stick to bold patterns (stripes, spots, two-tone) rather than detailed art.
🖼️ Decor / decals
Wall art and decorative items placed inside Mii apartments. This is where personal pixel-art creations live the longest — they don't get worn or eaten, just hung. Use the Island Maker to plan where your apartments go, then plan the decals that go inside.
📺 TVs & 📚 book covers
Rectangular canvases (wider than tall, dimensions vary per item). They're seen during specific animations rather than constantly. Lower priority than clothes — but TVs are a great surface for album-cover homages and landscape pieces.
Your first design — step-by-step walkthrough
Let's paint a heart emoji on a t-shirt. This takes about 10 minutes, including the time spent finding menus you've never seen before.
- Open the Palette House on your island.
- Pick "Clothes" as the category, then "T-shirt" as the item.
- Tap the brush selector. Choose 16 px (gives you a 16×16 grid).
- Set the stroke mode to pixel-perfect (rightmost stroke icon at the bottom of the brush picker).
- Set Grid view to 8×8 (densest setting). The canvas will now show reference lines.
- Pick red from the palette. The palette is the swatch grid below the canvas — pick any red.
- Paint the heart shape. Two semicircle bumps at the top, a V-shape at the bottom. Use the reference lines to count cells.
- Switch to white (or whatever background colour you want). Fill the corners around the heart.
- Confirm and save. The game prompts you to name and save your design.
That's it. You've made your first Palette House design. Give the t-shirt to a Mii and they'll wear it permanently — every time you see them, you'll see your design.
Where to go from here
Once the menus feel natural, the bottleneck becomes "what to paint" not "how to paint". Three concrete next steps:
- Browse the 30 pixel art ideas for inspiration sorted by difficulty.
- Use the Grid Maker to convert any image into a paint-by-numbers reference. Drop a photo, get a recipe card.
- Try the Pixel Art Maker for photo-style designs. Four dithering algorithms produce softer, more photographic output than flat colour.
The Palette House rewards practice more than talent. Five designs in, the workflow is automatic. Twenty designs in, you'll be painting things friends ask how you made.