House Design 002- Foyer

Agenda- Tips and Tricks, Furniture, Scaling, Baseboards, Lights

Hello Everyone, Domswolf here alongside Electiz and we are here to bring you another House Design lesson. Today we will learn the components of a good Foyer (the front room where you take your shoes off).

Hey guys today like announced, we’ll give some tricks to make a foyer!

Lets start with tricks!

A foyer has to be proportional to the house you build. You make a huge mansion, you have to make an impressive foyer. You build an apartment, the foyer is practically absent. You build a small house, make a smaller one.

The foyer is something that a lot of Roblox developers don’t work a lot on, but it shouldn’t be that way, because it’s the first inside’s impression someone will have when they enter.

Good materials?

In roblox, it can be dangerous to put too much basic textures (I mean like cobblestone, brick, wood planks…)

-Why, you actually used some in The Canadian?

Sometimes, it actually gives a better look. But too much is like not enough. People will say it’s not enough detailed. An overload will deteriorate the quality.

What I suggest for a foyer? You can make a paint wall.

Trick- When you make a paint wall, don’t use Smooth Plastic but Plastic. The reflect of lights is better-looking for a wall and when we look closer, it looks like paint.

Sometimes I even like to use metal. But this is usually only good if you want an old feel to the house. The Canadian is a fancy big house so it needs to look more clean and tidy. It all depends on the style

And don’t forget to make a fination, it will give a nice look to the foyer.

Sometimes it depends on the style. But fination will give a well-made look to your place.

Now another trick, lot of people forget the door color need to be styled for BOTH style of inside and outside! Sometimes it should be brown outside and white inside…

Well how to do this? Let me show you some examples.

-But how should I do this?

For an entry door, you should build 2 separate sides! And then, put them together to make it look like 1 single door!

Now you know a trick for the door, you now have to furnish the room. Some people don’t know what to add for a foyer, but it’s easy actually. You have to add little objects that can be found in real life.

-Why?

Because it will make people feel that someone really lives in that house.

-“I really like it. You know architecture and how to fill a room with real object. Makes it look like someone lives there.” Maelstronomer

That’s what Maelstronomer commented on my “Aguavista” game, well this is exactly what we should feel in a foyer.

What to add? You can add to furnish a foyer? Keys, hats, clothes, a lamp, somewhere to sit, a little table.

You can take more examples in a real-life foyer or just by looking on the Internet for inspiration.

Last thing, like I said earlier, the foyer have to fit with size of the house… It’s not the only thing! It have to fit with the style. Middle-class house will have middle-class style, a mansion will have a luxury foyer, a modern villa will have a modern foyer..!

What kind of furniture can we find in a foyer? Well one of the things we can find is some sort of bench or a chair or something to sit on. You will see this in a real house for the purposes of taking your shoes off. When we get to the design portion of this course we will talk about different styles, but if you are just making a normal traditional house I will give a few tips on making one.

First, the legs are a little complicated but they are very similar to Electiz’ mesh table leg from The Canadian. We will once again be using meshes.

Of course there are so many ways to do a leg like this, but here is the way shown in both many foyer benches and The Canadian.

First we need our main part. This part will be a cylinder. Take a cylinder mesh and make the dimensions: (0.4, 1.8, 0.4). The height is 1.8 because all places that you can sit should be about ⅓ the height of the player (5.2 studs). For a table it is around half the height. These measurements are based on real furniture probably in your own houses.

I don’t want to show you how to necessarily do it because Electiz and I want you to discover your own style instead of just doing it our way. What I can tell you is to find pictures of benches like these and try to use your knowledge of meshes to make a replica of it. Once you get the design in your head, you can make your own without a reference photo. You will want to use a lot of cylinders and spheres. I bet there are some of these kinds of legs in your own house you can practice with.

Tip: Always use sphere meshes instead of the sphere shape. The sphere shape only allows you to make a symmetrical sphere and it only let’s you make larger spheres. The same goes for cylinders.

Many of these traditional benches have a green, brown, or gray color to the part you sit on. Make a nice rounded brick on top of this creation. (If you haven’t seen the rounded brick lesson, link will be at bottom of lesson. Or you could go to Building Lessons and click on Lesson 10).

All of these measurements may seem a little ridiculous but they are quite necessary. You want to make sure you get the scale right.

Scaling

Scaling has got to be one of the most important things in building (and where most beginners usually slip up. Don’t feel bad, we all did it too). You may notice some beginner builds being far too tall with like 16 stud high ceilings. This is the lesson we learn how to fix that.

As we mentioned last lesson, the NPC you place for scale reference should be ⅔ or 5/7 the size of a door. Well for the ceiling height we will use the door for a comparison. The door (in roblox houses and real houses) should be around ⅘ the height of the ceiling.

Sadly, my most popular showcase Home Sweet Home (loved by so many) is still suffering from this problem. I’m quite surprised that my oldest (and personally, maybe worst) project is on the top of my list. But don’t let that make you ignore this scaling lesson, that project was my first and oldest so clearly it has gathered more attention.

The Y axis is not the only one to worry about. I have also seen projects that are HUGE and practically empty. Do not make a house so big that you cannot fill it to its full extent.

Fination

Earlier in this lesson and in Lesson 001 Electiz mentioned Fination. This is something I recommend you use because it makes the room look less empty. Fination includes Baseboards on the ground and Crown Moulding on the top. There are many styles of doing this again depending on the house, but for this traditional style I will make a brown wooden baseboard.

Now there are a few ways we can make these. One way I like to use is by making a simple brick and then a wedge shape that makes the baseboard ‘curve’ into the wall. Another way to do it is just make one brick that goes across the floor. This is a simple way to do it but we want more detail.

Electiz’ way is simple to use but makes the house look a lot better. Take a brick that touches the wall (0.4 studs tall), then take two shorter and thinner bricks (some people even just use one). Once again, look around your house for examples.

Architects Tip: You can really get a good understanding of just about anything just by making observations. Really get to know your own house to get design ideas. When you are at friend or family member’s house you can also make observations there. Part of the reason I do many replica showcases is because I like exploring different styles of building.

Lights

Another thing we can often find in foyers is an overhead light. For the design I am going for here, an old fashioned light like this could be a good fit.

This is actually a photo of the light in my own foyer. My foyer is small but only because back when it was build in 1917, the house was half the size it is now. Proportions were still kept in mind.

Electiz’s Tip: Like Domswolf said, taking stuff from your real-life houses can be soooo useful! I did that for “The Canadian”. Let me show you a pic of the game.

So, here’s the dining room in my game. I took so much element of my real-life house in that.

1. The Chandelier.
2. The curtains.
3. The floor how it made.
4. The white finition and paint color.
5. The lights.
6. The metallic air thing on the floor (Don’t remember the name of it)

You see, being inspired by real-life stuff allows you to make a game incredibly more detailed, because you have an example of how stuff are made.

-Domswolf

-Electiz