Digital Dollhouse for the Holidays

Digital Dollhouse is a virtual 3D dollhouse experience that empowers kids of all ages to become their own interior designers. With no materials used – i.e. the experience is online, this might make the perfect eco-friendly stocking stuffer for your little one this holiday season. My boyfriend’s daughters and me recently gave Digital Dollhouse a try, and we really liked it.

Product: Digital Dollhouse, a safe online experience for kids that allows them to choose a home style then decorate to their heart’s content.

Cost: Memberships start as low as $4.95 per month – you get plenty of features for this price, but can add others for a little more.

Eco-perks and safety aspects:

• Architectural Digest “AD 100” designer Campion Platt, a known leader in sustainable architecture and green design recently partnered with Digital Dollhouse to create a new home for kids to decorate – the modern and sustainable beachfront dream home.
• Digital Dollhouse has no packaging, no manufacturing, requires no shipping of transport of goods, no use of materials or toxins and has a very small carbon footprint.
• Digital Dollhouse is Privo certified.
• Digital Dollhouse has a written privacy policy.
• Digital Dollhouse is a friendly, safe and closed online environment designed for kids of all ages. There is NO CHAT on Digital Dollhouse and members will never be able to share personal location or other information while on the website. Members can create ‘My Friends’ lists that allow them to view other member’s Digital Dollhouses and give virtual items but no text exchange can occur between members.
• Parents may also check in on their children at the Parent’s Dashboard.

Room designed by Digital Dollhouse member

How it works:

Digital Dollhouse aims to create awareness and educate children on design, architecture and history in a playful and dynamic online environment. After you help your child to create an account, he or she can choose a house style then paint, furnish and decorate their own virtual dream house and even purchase and re-gift items in a virtual economy.

There are fun home styles to choose from like a Victorian home, beach house, and there’s soon to be a castle, NY loft, and more. Each home opens up and you click from room to room, add paint, rugs or wooden floors or tile, wall accessories, furniture, and other home objects along with even people and pets.

Your child gets a set amount of coins per membership and then you get to shop for and buy new items to decorate your home with. The cost of a regular membership is $4.95/month which provides members access to the houses and 1000 Digital Dollhouse coins a month. 1000 coins goes a long way in this virtual world. For example a mirror may cost 20 coins while a pumpkin costs 10 coins and a bed costs 59 coins. I think that an average kid would be happy with a regular membership, but you could upgrade to the $9.95 membership which gets you 2,500 coins, design tips, and tricks from design gurus. Anything over that (you can buy extra coins) seems excessive to me, because one perk of this virtual world is that it can help teach your child to budget wisely – i.e. she wants the couch and lamp, but can only afford one, so which is more important?

What we thought:

My helpful reviewers were my boyfriend’s 11 and 13 year old daughters – who I figured were the perfect test subjects for this virtual world.

We loved the blank slate of a home to decorate. There’s huge attention to detail in each room and it’s really a creative process to start with an empty room and decorate it from the ground up. I hate shopping normally, but thought the little home boutiques were really fun. You can shop by home style, furniture type or check out a seasonal specialty boutique. Check out some of the realistic goods below – these pieces cost coins and then you use them to decorate…

We loved how realistic all the goods look and it’s fun to try and mix and match. There’s also a mass of specialty home products like ceiling tiles, rugs, wall coverings and more, so it’s very in-depth.

My boyfriend’s girls thought that decorating a home seemed dull at first, but then got way into it and would tell each other, “LOOK at what I did in my house,” share design ideas, and more. In the end they said that the virtual dollhouse world was “Really fun” and that it was cool to get to shop and then create a little world. They also liked looking at the gallery of what other kids were busy creating.

There are some fun perks as well, such as The Digital Dollhouse Team picks a free item to give away every day if you visit the play area (like a pillow or clock or so on) and there’s a daily design winner featured.

I liked that the site was safe, creative, and not your typical virtual fighting deal – this is low-key creative fun – perfect for a rainy day. The site is easy to navigate and it didn’t have weirdness like pop-ups or outside advertising. I would call this wholesome fun.

Any negatives?:

I think that this is a good tool for teaching kids about design, budgeting, and consumer choices, BUT only if you’re an involved parent. Kids do not need to be online all the time, not with the obesity epidemic in this country. Kids need to be outside, playing with other real kids, and so on. I think that you need to set a limit (as noted above, I think any coins over 2,500 is excessive) and limit it for the month. Otherwise, this virtual world does not teach about budgeting, but shopping to the extreme.

Overall:

Five out of five stars. This is a fun, positive and safe site that encourages creativity. Digital Dollhouse has a low carbon footprint, very little commercialism, (other than the shopping aspect), and if used correctly with parental supervision can teach about budgeting and online tasks.

I think it would make an excellent inexpensive stocking stuffer gift for the holidays – you could stick a little gift card about it in your child’s stocking and then they’ll get to have fun creating their own house.

Visit Digital Dollhouse to learn more. If you’d like to review before you make a final decision, you can view the FREE game version as well.

[all images via Digital Dollhouse]