Once Animal Crossing: New Horizons players get their island filled with villagers and have K.K Slider perform, the real work has just begun. Terraforming is unlocked, and you can set about bending the land to your will. It is around that time when you might set a goal to get a five-star review. Isabelle can give you some tips, from cutting down trees to planting flowers.

Her main point is that you need to decorate. However, she just leaves it at that. If you are looking for ideas on how to decorate your island and achieve that elusive five-star rating, you've come to the right place.

Updated on October 15, 2023 by Gabrielle Castania: Though there hasn't been anything in the way of new content for Animal Crossing New Horizons, we wanted to come back and brush up our Animal Crossing island ideas for those impressive five-star ratings for those of us still loving that island paradise life.

How To Unlock ACNH Island Evaluations

When just starting your Animal Crossing island, you don't immediately have access to Island Evaluations. A couple of things need to happen in the game first. These are:

• Construct Nook's Cranny
• Build your first bridge
• Furnish three incoming villager homes
• Upgrade Resident Services

Once Resident Services is upgraded to a town square, everyone's favorite assistant Isabelle will move to your Animal Crossing island.

She is in charge of island evaluations, so getting her to your island is the first step.

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What Are Scenery And Development Points in ACNH?

When it comes to your Animal Crossing island rating, the game keeps track of two different scores to decide your star rating.

Your development score awards points based on improvements made around the island. Constructing bridges and inclines, putting up fences, decorating with purchased furniture items, and fully upgrading your stores all add to your score.

Meanwhile, the scenery score keeps track of the flora and fauna (see what we did there?) on your island. By planting trees, basic or hybrid flowers, and bushes, as well as placing crafted DIY furniture items outdoors around the island, you can increase your scenery score.

Your star rating is calculated by these scores, which we detail a bit more in the table below:

Animal Crossing Island Rating Points

Point Values For Your Development Score

Point Values For Your Development Score

Plants don't provide any scenery points until they're fully grown, so it'll be a few days before the points are added to your scenery score total.

Rewards For Having A Five-Star Island

Besides having bragging rights, having a five-star island gets you two rewards:

• Lilies-of-the-Valley: These unique white flowers will start growing on your island as long as your island remains at five stars.
• Golden Watering Can Recipe: This is the most durable watering can in the game. This watering can is the only way to grow golden roses. Water and crossbreed black roses with this watering can to get the highly desired golden roses.

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Animal Crossing Island Ideas To Increase Your Island Points

Knowing point values for ranking up your island is one thing, but having ideas for what to do is another. Luckily, there are many creative ideas out there that players have utilized to fulfill the point conditions of a five-star rating.

Expand The Shops To Outside

The Nooks Cranny and Able Sisters stores are a perfect place to start decorating. The best storefronts are those with seating, signs, plants, and cute fencing.

Many players like displaying some clothes and accessories outside the Able Sisters. Others add a coffee shop to the side. Some just absolutely adorn the area with flowers, bushes, and fences. Of course, players also do a mix of all three! For Nook's Cranny, ideas include a place to park bikes, a fruit stall, plant shop, or patio with seating.

Supplement Your Museum

Who said the ACNH museum only had to be inside? Decorate your island museum with artifacts of your own. These can be doubles of the fossils inside, pieces of the shell furniture set, or just pieces you think belong in a museum.

You can also build a park around the museum. Maybe install a playground or even put up a coffee shop.

Build Yards Around Villager Homes

Adding fences ranks up your island score in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, so giving all your villagers their fenced-in yard will get you closer to the five-star goal and make your island all the more lived-in. Within the yard, you can decorate with flowers, shrubs, and pieces of furniture.

Fans have had a great time matching the colors and personalities of their different villagers to their yards. Give cat grass to cat villagers like Raymond, blue flowers to a blue villager like Sherb, and plenty of sweets to a villager like Merengue.

Make A Park

Making a park is an easy way to take up space and add a lot of decorations to your island. Add a playground, flowers, a walkway, a theme park, fountains, and more.

The possibilities are endless, and the game offers tons of different decorations that would suit a park. This is the perfect place to decoratively rank up those scenery points!

Set Up A Big Garden

Gardens can be more than just crops for cooking. Decorate your Animal Crossing island with gnomes, lights, beekeeping boxes, a well, pots, a scarecrow, and a bench. You could even make a little table for folks to have tea among the flowers.

Not only will this add up your island's points, but you can have lots of flowers in one place to attract more bugs in a way that looks purposeful.

Construct A Spa

Once you can terraform the island, you can make your own waterfalls. With some well-placed waterfalls, flowers, towels, changing rooms, lanterns, and plenty of hot tubs, you can make a spa area in your village.

Create A Restaurant Area

Many creative players are making their own little restaurants on their islands. There are plenty of tables, chairs, food, and kitchen items you can use. Add some fencing and pathways, and you've got everything you need.

The cooking system really gives this idea extra life. If you don't have enough food for the tables, just pick some flowers or buy candles to decorate on top of them.

Add Elements To Your Campsite

Campers need more than just a tent to have a good time. An easy way to decorate your Animal Crossing island quickly is to put furniture around the campsite. You can add anything from a pool to a star-watching area to a trail to a telephone booth.

Just think about what would make a campsite all the more enjoyable for a visitor. Even just a path or signs pointing towards your stores and resident services adds a realistic touch.

Decorate Your Beaches

The beaches are great, but they can become a real paradise with the right decorations. Beach balls, fishing gear, lawn chairs, towels, and more can rank up those points toward getting five stars. Add a lighthouse and coconut trees while you are at it.

Don't be hesitant to experiment with how flowers may accent the beach areas. Also, don't forget the pier - you can actually put furniture on it to offer Kapp'n some decoration.

Talk To Sable Every Day For More Decoration Options

Customizing furniture is great and can inspire more ideas, but you can be pretty limited in your decoration choices if you're not into making your own art.

However, if you talk to Sable every day, she will eventually give you a lot of other patterns you can use on various pieces.

Plant A Bamboo Grove

Eventually, with Nook Mile Tickets, you can collect bamboo to plant on your island. The question is, where to put it? A lot of players have made their own little groves of bamboo.

You can decorate it with lanterns, waterfalls, mossy rocks, and statues, or combine the grove with your campsite or park.

What Lowers Your Island Rating?

Though you've got plenty of options for creatively boosting your Animal Crossing island rating, there are a few tricky things that lower your island rating. These include:

• Having more than 220 trees and bamboo planted around the island.
  • Too many weeds also impact your rating, even when used decoratively with your other plants - the game doesn't differentiate.

• Leaving 15 or more items dropped on the ground outdoors instead of properly placed outside.
  • Tree branches, stones knocked from rocks, star fragments, and shells do not count toward this metric.

• Placing more than 45 total items within an 8x8 square anywhere on the island, leading to overcrowding.
• Having seven or fewer villagers living on the island.

If one or more of these conditions are present on your island, you'll cap your island rating at a max of four. Alleviate any of these issues to boost your island back to a five-star rating.

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