Dark Room Problem When Building a House

[Selbrina]

I've recently noticed that when I'm building a house, no matter how many windows I add, the room/house remains dark. It's distracting and makes it hard to place furniture. I remember in the Sims 1, depending on the size of the room, the room would lighten as soon as you placed a window.

I have all of the expansion packs and have just recently started trying to make really nice, realistic homes, so I'm not sure if it has always been this way in the Sims 2 and it's just recently started to bug me, or if something is screwy. I can work around it by not enclosing a room completely, but if there's something I can do to fix this, I'd love to know.

Thanks!

[ancienthighway]

It sounds like you may have a lighting mod installed.  I suggest removing it.

[gali]

I don't care how much the room is dark. Usually, I put 3-4 windows, and as the bathrooms are without windows at all (I build from left to right: 2 bedrooms, two bathrooms for each bedroom, and all these connected to the living room and the kitchen) - I put a lot of ceiling lamps, and leave them on all the time. The sims don't mind to sleep with the lights on, and the environment score is very high....

[Selbrina]

No, no lighting mod.

To clarify, the problem is when I'm building. Once I put in lights, move in a family and start playing, it's fine. It's when I'm building that the room stays dark and it makes it hard to place furniture and get an overall view of the room.

[MaryH]

I've figured out a way around this problem. Switch your game to nighttime, and use one of the ceiling lights to light up the room. Switch back to daytime, and you'll see what you're building.
It isn't a lighting mod-it's just the way the building is done. Weird, but you can work around it.

[Selbrina]

Thank you so much, Mary. I'll give it a try.

[jeditechyrosemary]

Another option is to leave one wall space open or make it a greenhouse panel (it drives me nuts too and I always end up putting a single panel of almost all my rooms as a greenhouse so I can avoid it.   The greenhouse panel can even just be facing a room with an opening or greenhouse section and it still keeps it "light").  Hope that helps!

[Selbrina]

I've tried leaving a wall open too, but was wondering if there was something wrong with my computer. I'll definitely try the greenhouse panel for bigger rooms. Thank you so much!

[jeditechyrosemary]

No problem.  The greenhouse panel is how I always build rooms now, and with some of the awesome curtain/blinds out there you can even have "privacy" for your sims (if they want it! lol).

[Dracoamie]

you could try using white wallpaper and floors until you've got the furniture in and then change the floor and walls. It might help.