Animal Crossing New Horizons: Happy Home Paradise - How To Get Facilities


As well as vacation homes, you can remodel facilities in Animal Crossing: New Horizons Happy Home Paradise. All of those abandoned buildings that are scattered around the main Island near the Paradise Planning office are just waiting for you to bring them back to life. We're going to show you how to get facilities, how to remodel them and explain a bit about what they are.

Read More: Animal Crossing New Horizons: Happy Home Paradise - How To Change the Weather, Time of Day and Season

How To Get Facilities

You will know about Island Facilities after your fifth client as Lottie will stop you from working and you will need to speak to her outside an empty building to be able to continue. Lottie will tell you about the abandoned buildings on the Island and how she will need a permit before you can do any work to them. After this, she will leave and you will need to work as normal again.

You will only be able to unlock your first Island facility after you have completed the vacation home for your sixth client. The next time that you choose to work, Lottie will tell you that she has the permit to start renovating the Island Facilities and you will head to the empty building next door to begin working on it.

Need a new name for your island? Here's some of the Best Island Names and Generators.

How to Remodel Facilities

Remodelling a facility on the main Island works in a similar way to remodelling a vacation home. First, you will be able to change how the building looks on the outside. You will be able to change:

  • The roof colour/design
  • How the walls look
  • The door colour/design
  • A detail specific to the building - For the school, you get to change the colour of the bell.
Animal Crossing New Horizons Happy Home Paradise School Facility exterior changes screen
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Once you're happy with the exterior, you can then head inside the building.

Just like there is with vacation homes, there are required furniture pieces and furniture amounts that must be in the design. However, with some facilities, it will not be a specific piece of furniture but a specific type of furniture. To find out what you must include in your design, press the right button on your directional pad to bring up the "order" panel. This will show you all of the furniture that you can use that will fit the theme of the facility but the bit you must look at is right at the top.

At the top of this section, you will see which furniture pieces you must include and how many of them. For the school building, you must include 1 Teacher's Desk, 2 Desks, and 4 Chairs. These are only a minimum requirement, if you want to add more of anything then you can but never less.

There are considerably more decorative items available in facilities design which means you can go into as much or as little detail as you like. Furniture items in facilities can be used too, so try to think about this when placing them down.

Animal Crossing New Horizons Happy Home Paradise School Facility
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Once you're happy with your facility, speak to Lottie and you will then be able to hire staff to work there! You can click on the character and choose to change them to another character or change their outfit to suit their role. You will only be able to choose from the characters who have had their vacation homes completed by you.

After you've chosen the staff, you will then be able to take your interior photo as you would with a vacation home. Then, you can talk to Lottie and you will head outside where the whole Paradise Planning team will be waiting. You will need to take a photo of the exterior of the building to celebrate completing it (if you click ZR, the whole team will do a pose or action for the photo).

That's it, once you're happy with the photo your facility will be complete.

What Are Facilities?

Facilities are buildings that have been abandoned on the main Island and you can turn them into shops, services, or public places. They are different from vacation homes as you don't have a client to please but you will have a minimum amount of facility-specific furniture that must be included. You can visit your completed facilities simply by walking to them on the main Island.

All Facilities and When You Can Get Them

Here is a list of all of the facilities that you can work on in the game and when you can access them.

  • School: You learn about the school after your 4th client but you cannot build it until you finish your 6th home.
  • Cafe: You can choose between this or the Restaurant after completing 12 homes. If you choose to complete this one, you can complete the Restaurant at your leisure.
  • Restaurant: You can choose between this or the Cafe after completing 12 homes. If you choose to complete this one, you can complete the Cafe at your leisure.
  • Hospital: Speak to Lottie after completing 22 houses but you cannot build this facility until you have completed 25.
  • Apparel Shop: Complete 30 homes.

Alongside building facilities, there are many things for you to learn and do in Animal Crossing: New Horizons Happy Home Paradise. Fortunately, we have some guides that can help you if you're finding it all a bit confusing. We have one guide on how to get Poki and another on how to build fences as it's a bit different in the DLC.

For more articles like this, take a look at our Animal Crossing New Horizons and Guides page.