Short answer
In the Palette House brush menu, find the Grid view toggle and pick the leftmost option — a plain square with no internal lines. The grid disappears immediately. Your art doesn't change: the grid is purely a reference overlay drawn on top of the canvas.
Step-by-step
- Open Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream and enter the Palette House.
- Pick the design category you're working on (clothes, food, pets, etc.).
- Tap the brush menu icon.
- Look for the row labelled "Grid view" — four small icons showing different reference-line densities.
- Pick the leftmost option (empty square) to hide the grid completely.
- Pick a denser option if you want help counting cells.
What Grid view actually does
Tomodachi Life's Grid view setting only changes how many reference lines are drawn on top of the canvas. The four options give you:
- None — clean canvas, no overlay. Best for finishing touches and pure freehand work.
- 2×2 / 4×4 grids — sparse reference lines. Easy on the eyes, helps you stay roughly aligned.
- 8×8 grid — densest option. Every cell visibly bounded. This is what you want when following a pixel-art reference, especially one from our Grid Maker.
Crucially, Grid view does not change pixel size. The pixel size of your design is determined entirely by which brush you pick (4, 8, 16, or 32 px) and whether you're in pixel-perfect or smooth mode. You can paint identical art with the grid off or on at any density.
Why might you want to turn it off?
- Cleaner reference shots — for sharing screenshots of your designs to Reddit or Discord.
- Less visual noise — once you're confident with the canvas, the grid is just clutter.
- Different aesthetic preference — some players find the grid distracting, others find it essential.
"Get rid of grid mod" — is there one?
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is a closed Switch / Switch 2 title without official mod support. Modifying the game would require system-level Switch modifications, which violate Nintendo's terms of service and can permanently brick your console. We don't recommend or document those.
The good news: you don't need a mod. The built-in Grid view toggle covers every case. If you want the grid completely gone, the leftmost option does exactly that. If you want it back, change the setting any time without affecting your art.
Switch 2 differences
On Switch 2, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream runs at higher resolution but uses the same Palette House UI and the same Grid view controls. Mouse mode (Switch 2 exclusive) doesn't change the grid — it just makes individual cells easier to click.
If you're here because the grid is "off centred"
"Off centred" usually means the in-game grid density doesn't match what you're seeing in a reference image. Fix: set in-game Grid view to 8×8 (densest). That gives you one reference line per cell at the 4-px brush, which is what most pixel-art tools assume.
If your design itself looks off-centre on the canvas, that's a different problem — your source image was probably padded asymmetrically. See our Troubleshooting page for details.