As soon as the Spa Day Refresh dropped, the Gallery was flooded with spas and salons built by excited Simmers who couldn’t wait to share their creativity! Not surprisingly, pretty much all of these builds were absolutely stunning; the Simming community is just oozing with talent, we all know that. However, also unsurprisingly, the vast majority of these spas and salons were very large, very elaborate, and very expensive. I had a really hard time finding a cute little salon that my Sim could afford to purchase right out of CAS to launch their new business.
So I built one myself! I thought using Get To Work’s retail system combined with the new spa equipment would be a fantastic idea. My Sims could tend the spa stuff at a business they actually own and sell a few extra things on the side. Win win!
Before I started building, I knew I was going to have an extremely tight budget. The lot could not cost any more than 10,000 simoleons. Sims only start out with 20,000 simoleons and they need to be able to purchase a home as well as this business straight out of CAS. If a Sim was very frugal, it was doable with a 10k budget for the salon.
I picked the smallest, cheapest lot I could in Newcrest and got to work. This would be a pretty tight space but I didn’t want it to feel tight and cramped, so placement of the furnishings would be key here. Before I even did anything to the walls or floors, I placed the items inside the tiny building, playing around with how everything would be laid out. Once I was satisfied that I had a layout that flowed nicely, I went about making the place pretty.
I went with a chic black and white colour scheme, using Moschino Stuff and Parenthood wallpaper to give the place some personality. I paired it with some trendy black and gold floor tiles from Get Famous. Already, the place was starting to look pretty spiffy, but I wasn’t finished, yet. I also added some Moschino Stuff windows to let lots of natural light fill the space.
By now, I had all the main components of this build. A check-in desk, a small waiting area, some shelves for sellable items, a mini-fridge that sells face masks, a spa chair, and a salon chair from Get Famous, along with some wall cabinets to place supplies on. Now it was time to decorate and really make this place look like a nail salon!
But I was already in danger of going over-budget, so I focused on purchasing things that were actually needed, first; like sellable clutter items to fill up the shelves behind the front desk. If a retail lot doesn’t have anything for sale, it won’t function, so that was very important. Then, I used one of my favourite cheats to help me out a bit with the rest of the decorating: bb.showhiddenobjects. This cheat unlocked so many different beauty products I could place on the cabinets as decoration and all of it was absolutely free! I filled the cabinet in front of the salon chair with makeup brushes, blush applicators, blush palettes, lip balm, eyeliner pencils and other goodies. On the cabinet next to the spa chair, I focused on nail care and placed plenty of nail polish bottles and nail files. Again, all of this was free since I was using hidden debug objects.
Outside, I used the same trick but with another cheat: bb.showliveeditobjects. All of the plants and almost all of the exterior decor cost me nothing to place down because I pulled them from the hidden live edit menu. This allowed me to give the nail salon a bit of curb appeal for almost no simoleons at all.
Once I had a finished salon, I had a Sim purchase it and set all the shelved items for sale so it would function properly, then uploaded it to the Gallery!
If you’d like to have this budget nail salon in your own game, it’s called Budding Artist Nail Salon and my ID is SnarkyWitch!
Some things to tweak or be aware of when using this lot:
- Remove the foot bath and chair behind the counter. I put them in for looks but they can get in the way of using the spa chair and cash register if you’re playing with this lot.
- It’s a good idea to hire an employee right away to check out customers and restock shelves while your Sim tends the spa chair. Your Sim can’t do these things and tend the spa chair at the same time so it can get annoying hopping back and forth constantly.
- This lot does not have a washroom. It just wasn’t in the budget. Most neighbourhoods have public washrooms off-lot, though, so that’s an option if your Sims really have to go.
- The salon chair can be used to give Sims makeovers but sadly, our Sims don’t have the option to charge money for these services. Hopefully one day, the salon chair will get a revamp in a future Get Famous refresh and our Sims will actually be able to earn a living using the salon chair. Hey Sims Team, are you listening? Wink wink!
