Stardew Valley is a gorgeous game. The pixel art style is equal parts endearing and nostalgic, and the bright, saturated color palette has become an icon of the game in itself. But after spending hours upon hours in the game, sometimes it’s nice to change it up a bit. One of the perks of PC gaming is the array of amazing mods available to players.
The Stardew modding community is as passionate as you’d expect any Stardew Valley community to be. One of the most popular mod types is aesthetic mods - changing the colors of the map, buildings, and even sprites. Here, we are going to go over some of the best aesthetic mods for Stardew Valley, as well as where you can download them.
Updated July 26, 2023 by Jacqueline Zalace: You deserve to customize your Stardew Valley world, making it unique and above all, beautiful. As such, we've added even more great aesthetic mods to choose from.
21 Elle's Seasonal Buildings
In the vanilla game, you can change the color of your farm buildings—but, your options are limited until your buildings are fully upgraded. For your farmhouse, you can only change the roof color until you fully upgrade. Elle’s Seasonal Buildings lets you change the paint, building materials, and style of any farm building, at any time.
The mod includes customization options for every farm building in the game, including unlockables, and there are plenty of colors and themes to choose from. There are also multiple styles for every building, including versions with flowers and vines, and “clean” versions without them.
With this mod, the Slime Hutch will actually match the other buildings on your farm—or, if you feel so inclined, the rest of your farm buildings can match your Slime Hutch.
20 Artisan Good Icons
The best mods are the ones that you didn't know you needed and this is certainly one of them. Artisan Good Icons gives every different type of artisan good in the vanilla game its own unique icon, allowing you to distinguish between them at a glance and organize your chests easier.
This includes juices, wines, and your preserves among other things. Even the different varieties of honey get their own icons. Once you've played the game with this mod installed, you'll surely refuse to go back to the plain days.
19 Non-Alcoholic Shane
Shane is one of the more compelling bachelors thanks to his well-written storyline that does not avert its eyes to the pains of addiction and depression. As you get to know him, he will slowly open up to you and he can even be married if he so happens to make him fall for you.
That said, many players take issue with him not being able to quit the hard stuff with the snap of his fingers and so the Non-Alcoholic Shane mod was born. This removes all traces of his messiness in his spousal room, including the beer cans and muddy footprints.
18 Way Back Pelican Town
If you’re bored with the look of the vanilla game and you want a more drastic change, this mod is perfect for that. Way Back Pelican Town changes the look of all of the buildings, structures, and decor throughout town, including both community buildings and NPC houses.
As implied by the name, the mod brings Pelican Town back to the days of yore, making the town square look older and more quaint. Every building is gorgeous, and the neutral colors make the map look a bit more toned down. The neutral white and brown color palette means that this mod looks amazing with virtually any map recolor, and in any season.
17 Fairy Mushroom Tree
The vanilla mushroom trees are quite eye-catching in appearance, aren't they? They're incredibly bright and stand out like a sore thumb. This mod aims to give these mystical trees a more muted color palette and realistic stem.
Fairy Mushroom Tree comes in two shades, so be sure to try them both out before settling on the one you want!
16 Eemie's Victorian Buildings
This graphical pack changes the styles of your farm to suit a more Victorian taste, with contrasting woods in your buildings and an overgrown nature aesthetic in general. It even replaces the water and earth obelisks with something a little more natural.
Consider pairing the building overhaul mod with this companion mod that changes up the crafting machines to suit this aesthetic, including even lightning rods, signposts, and chests.
15 Wind Effects
This mod adds a whole new dimension to the graphics of Stardew Valley that the screenshot above could never really translate thanks to it being a static image. In a vanilla game of Stardew Valley, wind can be present, but it really has no effect on any of the crops on your farm.
Wind Effects adds a beautiful, natural-looking shaking effect to grasses and trees that make your farm feel far more alive and adds a new level of dynamism to the game that cannot be beaten.
14 Elle's Animal Replacements
Download Mods Below!
Technically, Elle’s Animal Replacements encompass six mods, because there are mods for each set of animals: town animals, barn animals, coop animals, cats, dogs, and even horses. Even better is the number of options that you have per animal—this is where the Generic Config menu comes in, to let you customize the colors of every animal in the game.
Most of the fur and coat colors are fairly natural, except for a couple of rainbow options for horses; there are even unicorns. If you only want to replace one animal or set of animals, it’s totally fine to only download one of the mods, but once you see them, you’ll probably want them all.
13 Industrial Furniture Set
Industrial Furniture Set adds over 170 pieces of furniture to the in-game catalog. The set includes pretty much every furniture item imaginable, including beds, TVs, decor, and cribs. The color palette is nice and neutral, with warm browns and beiges that will compliment any decor style or interior design.
This set is made to pair with Mi’s and Magmatica Country Furniture Set and Warm Cozy Fireplace. You don’t need either of those mods to use the Industrial Furniture set, but they do look amazing together.
12 Rustic Country Interiors
This mod changes the interiors of the town buildings, including community buildings, stores, and NPC homes. Importantly, it doesn’t change any of the items that NPCs have—everyone keeps their bedroom furniture, but it looks a bit different.
The best parts of this furniture set are the beds and the rugs, purely because of how cozy and comfortable they look. This set does mute the game’s color palette a bit, but it doesn’t compromise any of the personality or style. It also looks great with Hesper’s other furniture sets, like the Industrial Furniture.
11 DaisyNiko's Earthy Recolor
Earthy Recolor is a map recolor, which means that it changes the look of the terrain (including dirt, grass, sand, and stone), trees, bushes, and exterior of town buildings. It gives the game an overall more neutral look, making it a bit easier on the eyes.
The saturated yellow and orange tones in the original map become more brown-toned and natural-looking, and the blue tones of NPC houses are mostly switched to browns. Trees all change with the seasons, and each season looks as vibrant and beautiful as ever. Plus, this recolor works well with most building replacement mods (including Way Back Pelican Town).
10 Wildflower Grass Field
Wildflower Grass Field fixes the vanilla game's basic-looking grass, adding blossoms, wildflowers, and other varieties of grass to your town so that it looks fuller, and all-around more interesting.
The buds change seasonally, so your grass will look totally different in the fall than it will in the spring. Even winter has its own grass patterns. To use this mod, you’ll need to download Satozaki’s More Grass, to allow different visual effects to show up.
9 Seasonal Villager Outfits - Slightly Cuter Aesthetic
This mod not only makes the villager sprites and portraits look better, it also gives them seasonal outfits. The modified sprites and portraits look very similar to the ones in the vanilla game, but they are smoother, and all-around a bit more polished looking.
The portraits also include the new seasonal outfits, plus some other fun details (like Elliot’s earrings). This mod combines Poltergeister’s Slightly Cuter Character Sprites mod and Slightly Edited Portraits mod, so if you use either of those, you’ll have to decide whether you want to add seasonal outfits or not.
8 Kats Brighter Hair
Anyone who has tried to give their farmer neon hair (or, to an almost impossible effort, a natural-looking blonde) knows the struggle of getting that slider to just the right spot. Enter: Kat, with the Brighter Hair mod to the rescue. Choose between a 25 percent, 50 percent, or 75 percent boost in brightness across all hair colors.
Kat recommends 25 percent for a subtle touch, 50 percent for medium blonde hair, and 75 percent for “bright pastel and wild neon colors.” If you’re looking for a true neon, 75 percent is definitely the way to go, but if you’re indecisive, keep the extracted folder somewhere on your PC so you can switch the files if you want to change things up.
7 Dreamy Valley Reshade
Dreamy Valley Reshade does exactly as the name implies; the mod reshades the valley. With this mod, you can essentially filter the game, changing the color of everything. Additionally, when paired with the Dynamic Night Time mod, the valley will change appearance depending on the time of day.
If you do decide to download this mod, be sure to check out the other required mods to download. In total, there are seven, but they provide the full modded experience.
6 Eemie's Just A New Map Recolour
Next up, we have Eemie's Just A New Map Recolour. This is a compilation of Eemie's Map Recolor mods packaged into one bundle. With the addition of the Content Patcher, you can tweak the visual appearance of the valley.
For example, you can choose between pink or green as the leaf colors during the spring, as well as a light or dark dirt color. Overall, this mod adds great, yet subtle, variation to the game.
5 Citrus Interface
Looking for a mod that changes text boxes and menus? Then Citrus Interface may be the mod for you! With this mod, UI of the game will have a lighter color palette.
Citrus Mod does not change any assets within the game, but you can turn on a matching color filter, adding pastel-like tones on top of the game. As an added bonus, the cursor is also an orange.
4 Visible Fish
Have you ever been fishing and thought, "I wish I could see the fish in the water"? With the Visible Fish mod, your dreams will finally come true. This mod shows you all fish that are in the water. For example, if you are near the ocean, you will see ocean fish swimming around.
The Visible Fish mod does not affect gameplay or fishing mechanics, it's just for aesthetic purposes. We know that the waters in Stardew Valley are filled with fish, so it's time to be able to see them all!
3 Hat Mouse And Friends
Hat Mouse is a lonely NPC that sells hats in a shop found on a southern island within the Cindersap Forest. Selling hats alone every day doesn't sound ideal, but that's where the Hat Mouse And Friends mod comes in.
With this mod, Hat Mouse will gain some buddies who man the shop for him. Now, there is a total of 14 possible mice that rotate as the hat seller. With the Hat Shop Restoration mod, you can even add an interior to the building.
2 Simple Foliage
Simple Foliage is exactly what it sounds like. This mod adds a variety of foliage to the game, while still keeping them rather simple. Rather than only having a few tree and bush models, you can now see a larger range of greenery.
In addition to changing the appearance of trees and bushes that grow throughout the world, the appearance of fruit trees will change. Who knew that an addition this simple would make the game feel much more full?