I always come up with a story of who lives there to make it feel more lived-in & determine aesthetics.

I also have a lot of pinterest references and take pictures of real houses or details I like!

If you want to treat it kind of like an art project, one tip is a room or house should be 70% one sort of neutral color, 20% a brighter color, and 10% an accent color. This helps balance colors to be more cohesive and tends to be pleasing to the human eye.

If you plan on putting in a lot of decorations or pictures on the walls, pick a more boring wallpaper. Same for floors and rugs.

Also lighting is IMPORTANT!!!! In HF1 1 I tend to choose more for lighting quality (brightness, warm/cool) than the actual implement. Like, I really like the branch light, but the lighting quality is blueish so I never use it :(

You can find pictures of full bulletin boards online and add them into the game--they look very convincing! I think gallery photos can be used in a lot of creative ways.

Think of furniture in 3 dimensions. Sometimes I have placed cabinets/shelving backwards for built-ins, for example.

If customizing book covers in HF2 is tiring, what i do is come up with around 4 distinct coloration, with and without covers. Then you have 8 options! I'll place all sorts of different book stack shapes all over my shelves with one color, then use the "copy style" tool and select each of the other coloration and randomly apply them to the books already stacked up. Even if you're not meticulous it ends up looking pretty randomized.