One of my most popular house designs involves large academies or mansions. I really like having lots of Sims or large estates owned by some prestigious and honorable family. With the Nrass Master Controller and the Portrait Panel mod you can have as many sims as you like on your lot and living in your home (although you can only see up to twenty-four panels).
My most common design is an old supernatural family or a school that is run by one.

For example:

This is the academy that I made in 2014. It's split into four houses: Fairy (blue), Witch (pink), Vampire (green) and Human (red).

Now of course the academy has to be big and whilst I'm still developing my architectural skills, my themes are always clear and consistent.

This is the outside of the academy:


Now some close up shots:





The mix I was going for had to encompass all four species but also show that the school is modern and wealthy and so I was using a lot of the items from the high tech end of the sim shop, from the 'Into the Future' expansion.






In my academies I always have a gym, a art room, a music room and several class rooms. Because this academy had witches I put into a potions/alchemy classroom.




To add in the age of the supernatural families I used a lot of Cashcraft items I downloaded from The SIms Resource. If you love Victorian designs, old wealth and border medieval styles then I highly recommend checking out the cashcraft's designs in The Sims Resources. Here's a link to their page on The Sims Resources:  TSR - cashcraft - . If you haven't been to The Sims Resources before it is really worth checking it out. She also has stunning designs for Sims 2 if you're still playing it.


I wanted to play this one normally but with so many sims it was hard to keep track of them all.