Play Dollhouse . Scale

Or should I type, "Scale"? Because play dollhouse furniture is not remotely to scale. I've mentioned scale before but I wanted to do a full post on it with pics so you can see how the play sets work in relation to each other.  Here's the low down: Plan Toys, Ryan's Room, Educo/Hape, and Le Toy Van all pretty much have the same scale. It's just about 1:12 or 1/12. That means that for every foot in real life, you have an inch in the mini. As you can see in the photo above, the awesome mushroom bed (by Enchantmints) is smaller. Not much, but enough. In the play dollhouse, it's not going to make much difference. I'm sure my 2 year old is not going to mind.  Pictured above is the double bed from Educo/Hape with the Plan Toys bunk bed and the Enchantmints bed.

Sylvanian Families or Calico Critters run smaller. I've read both 1:16 and 1:18. Some of my favorite dollhouse companies like Lundby use the smaller scale. That means that 1:12 scale items are going to look a little large in the space. But I have seen photos on flickr and I find it hard to tell the difference. Think about it: the couch I'm sitting on right now looks big in my tiny house but in my friend's McMansion, it would look small. Above on the left is the stove from Ryan's Room (came with the house), on the right, the Le Toy Van Sugarplum kitchen stove, and in front, the stove from Enchantmints.

The thing with play furniture is that it doesn't have the fine detail of regular or collectible dollhouse miniatures. Also, as you can see in the photos, even within some of the sets, there is a big size difference.  Pictured above is the Enchantmints bed -- about the same width as the Plan Toys crib. And that crib is not much smaller than the bunk beds. In real life, the crib would not be that big. That's the Plan Toys bunk bed. Play dollhouse furniture is made with thicker pieces of wood than traditional miniatures so that little fingers will have a harder time destroying it.

The white sofa is Ryan's Room (came with the house). Leaf settee from Enchantmints. The Enchantmints line works really well with the Calico Critters (known internationally as Sylvanian Families).

And three sets of barstools! I can't remember if the orange is Ryan's Room or Le Toy Van. The white is the other one. The mushroom set is obviously Enchantmints.

And a little more information on other brands: Barbie and Blythe dolls (not the petites) are 1:6 scale. So there will be some stuff for them that you can use in a play dollhouse that will work fine because of the chunkiness of the wooden toys. I found some dishes in a box from when I was a kid that I'll be adding to the loot so she'll have some accessories. 

For the rest of the play dollhouse posts, click here. They are all in one place.

Wooden dollhouses are expensive. Make your own!

So I thought I'd put together a little round-up of some of my absolute favorite DIY dollhouses. A huge part of me is regretting not making one this year but it's something we'll definitely do in the future when Z and I can make it together -- probably for bigger dolls. So I guess you could call this, "How not to buy a wooden dollhouse."

Modern dollhouse:

Isn't this stellar? It's from Made by Joel. His blog is one of the ones that I click on immediately in my Reader when I see a new post. He's very talented and comes up with some great projects to do for kids and with kids. You don't need woodworking skills. The people who work at the "home improvement centers" will do a few cuts for you for free. This looks like one 1" X 6" cut into different widths and a few other bits.

Ikea Catalog Dollhouse:

This simple tutorial shows you how to take two pieces of cardboard or stiff posterboard and an Ikea catalog to make an awesome house. It's a great project you can do with your kid. From See the Woods and the Trees with an update here. I think that the Flor catalog would work well too. Great interiors.

Bookcase dollhouse:

I found this one ages ago at ohdeedoh. Unfortunately, the flickr account is no longer active so these are the only pictures we have. It's just a simple shelf with awesome furniture inside. You could easily customize this with scrapbook paper wallpaper and some handmade rugs.

Shelf Dollhouse:

Darlybird just appeared in my life via Grosgrain and was quickly added to my Reader. In a series of posts, she tells us everything she used to make this amazing dollhouse for her kids and includes links to some resources (like where to shop for that awesome re-ment stuff she's got in there). You'll need to read the first post, then click through to the series.

Foamcore Dollhouse:

Amy from Sweet Sweet Life posted a tutorial on how to make a dollhouse (similar to the Ikea catalog one) using foamcore. The tutorial is here, although the original idea came from Cookie Magazine (r.i.p., beloved tome). She made cute little dolls for it using pictures of Charlie and Lola. She has filled it with all kinds of mini goodness including some Calico Critters stuff that I recognize from my research. Amy's new blog is here.

Finally, there's always About.com. They have compiled a pretty good list of links for plans to make a real play dollhouse -- like cutting wood and stuff like that.

Next week I'll do a round-up post of making dollhouse furniture and more reviews. A couple sets have just arrived. For the rest of the dollhouse posts, click here then scroll to the bottom for links to the other posts. I'll get a link thing on the sidebar going sometime soon.

Oh, special thanks to everyone who was cool about letting me use their images. I contacted everyone I could find as these images don't belong to me.