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Animal Crossing character customisation: How to change your face, hairstyle, outfit and face paint in New Horizons

How to change your avatar's appearance in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has finally brought full character customisation to this game series, allowing players to pick their avatar's skin colour, nose, eyes and other facial features from the very beginning.

As long as you have the right furniture, you can continue to change your avatar's face, hairstyle and outfit whenever you like.

New Horizons also introduces a new type of character customisation - face paint.

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Character customisation in Animal Crossing: New Horizons explained

New Horizons has broken Animal Crossing tradition by replacing the appearance quiz with a character customisation screen.

Now, rather than having the appearance of your eyes determined by talking to a cat, you can simply pick the design of your eyes yourself.

You'll be able to decide your:

  • Skin colour
  • Hairstyle
  • Hair colour
  • Eyes
  • Eye colour
  • Nose
  • Mouth
  • Cheeks
The opening customisation options in New Horizons.

As you play New Horizons, you'll be able to design your own face paint and purchase both new hairstyles and colours.

How to change your face and hairstyle in Animal Crossing: New Horizons explained

If you want to change both your face and hairstyle in Animal Crossing: New Horizons at will, then you'll need to build either a vanity table or a mirror.

To build a basic full length mirror you need both its DIY recipe and:

Once you've built this piece of furniture, place it in your house or around the island and then interact with it.

You'll be returned to the character customisation and can alter your appearance in any way you like.

The character customisation screen with additional hairstyles and colours.

How to buy new hairstyles and colours in Animal Crossing: New Horizons explained

When you begin playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you'll have a choice of eight different hairstyles and eight different hair colours. If you don't like any of these options or just feel like changing your hair, then you'll need to purchase some new hairstyles.

Both hairstyles and hair colours are purchasable from the Nook Miles shop found on the Nook Stop in Residential Services.

All you have to do is earn the right amount of Nook Miles and then redeem them for the collection of hairstyles or colour you require. After that, head to your nearest mirror to change your look.

Below you'll find which hairstyle collections you can purchase and exactly how many Nook Miles you need to spend:

  • Top 8 Pop Hairstyles - 2,400 Nook Miles
  • Top 8 Cool Hairstyles - 2,400 Nook Miles
  • Top 8 Stylish Hair Colors - 3,000 Nook Miles
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Face Paint in Animal Crossing: New Horizons explained

Face Paint is a new form of customisation introduced in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and allows you to wear any of the patterns you've created on your face.

These are the patterns that are usually used for your island's flag, items of clothing or for general decoration about your island.

The pattern will be divided into three different sections; the top half of the pattern sitting on your forehead, while the bottom half is divided between your two cheeks. This, as you can imagine, has the potential to create some terrifying results.

You can wear the patterns you create on your face.

You can create your own patterns either by using the Custom Design Pro Editor on your Nook Phone, which costs 800 Nook Miles, or by visiting the Able Sisters once they open their shop.

Clothing in Animal Crossing: New Horizons explained

Clothing in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is any item that your avatar can wear. This could be anything from a fake beard to a kimono.

Below you'll find the eight different categories of clothing items you can wear in New Horizons:

  • Bags
  • Dresses
  • Face decorations, including glasses
  • Hats, including wigs and other forms of head decorations, such as flower crowns
  • Shoes
  • Socks
  • Tops
  • Trousers and skirts

You can wear up to nine different items of clothing and, to know exactly what your avatar is wearing, select the blue picture of a shirt, which is located next to your total amount of Bells, in your inventory.

Doing so will open a mini-menu which displays what clothing items you're wearing and allows you to remove them.

How to change your outfit in Animal Crossing: New Horizons explained

From dresses to metal helmets, you'll quickly find yourself amassing a large collection of clothing in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which you'll no doubt want to wear.

You can keep your clothes in your inventory, but the easiest way to change your outfit is to use a wardrobe.

To build a basic wardrobe, you'll need both its DIY recipe and:

Next place your new wardrobe either in your house or around your island and then open it up to change your clothes.

Any wardrobe you own will let you change any and all of your clothing items.

You can also change your outfit by visiting the Able Sisters and using their fitting room to try on any of the clothes they're currently selling.

This will allow you to both check out your new style and, if you decide to buy the clothes, wear them.


The Animal Crossing 2.0 update and Happy Home Paradise is here! We can help you with the new additions - including where to find Brewster, Gyroids, new villagers, ordinances, new fences, storage shed, new hairstyles, Froggy Chair, group stretching and Kapp'n boat tours. Cooking is now unlockable, so you need to know how to make both flour and sugar, as well as how to grow carrots, potatoes and tomatoes. Meanwhile, if you're new to Animal Crossing, our New Horizons tips can help with the basics. From the off, there's fish and bugs to catch, flowers and fruit to grow with. One long term goal is building your Happy Home Academy score. Finally, you need tools such as the new ladder and vaulting pole to fully explore.


How to obtain clothing items in Animal Crossing: New Horizons explained

There are a variety of ways to obtain clothing items in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

The Able Sisters is, as always, the best place to go if you're in desperate need of new threads. The Sisters will be selling a variety of different clothing and accessories each day, while also letting you place your custom designs on pieces of clothing.

You can also redeem your Nook Miles at the Nook Stop for a variety of Nook Inc. clothing. This includes accessories like a bandanna or an eye mask.

You can redeem your Nook Miles for clothing.

Occasionally your island will also receive special visitors and some of them will have special clothing items for sale. Kicks the Skunk, for example, will visit, allowing you to buy a variety of bags, shoes and socks from him.

Thanks to the crafting system introduced with New Horizons, you can also craft your own accessories. This includes items like flower crowns, which you can create by collecting the flowers that grow on your island.

You can also download custom clothing designs created by other players by using QR codes.

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