Dolls Houses - A Scale Guide

Dolls Houses

A Scale Guide for First Time Buyers or Makers

If you are embarking on making or buying a dolls house or even a newcomer to the hobby and a little puzzled about the different scales available then look no further, you will find all you need to know here.

1/12th Scale

The most popular scale is 1/12th. The furniture and accessories for this scale are the most widely available, both commercially made and otherwise. It is easy to manage for the young and old alike and as well as a very wide variety of items available for adult collectors, there are also several ranges of chunky furniture for children too.

Dolls House shops carry 1/12th Scale as their main range, so if you are buying a first house foran adult collector or planning to make a first house for a child, then this is the safest scale to make it itn, ensuring the easy availability of items to furnish and accessorise it.

1/12th scale is 1 inch equals 1 foot, which is a good round equation to work out if you are about to make a plan for a house yourself. Basically the measurements of a real house can be directly converted to inches. For example if your ceilings are 8 foot hight, then in 1/12th scale, this would equal 8 inches high.

1/24th Scale

This scale is great for the dolls house enthusiast with limited space. The measurement equation of this scale is 1/2 inch to 1 foot. So basically a 1/24th scale dolls house is half the height, half the depth and half the width of a 1/12th scale house. This scale is not as popular as 1/12th scale and furniture and accessories for this scale are presently harder to find, possibly because the items for this scale are very small and people may find them fiddly, preferring their larger counterpart 1/12th scale. for this reason.

There is a much smaller range of commercially made furniture and accessories available in this scale and the furniture styles are limited. However, there are some wonderful houses available in this scale in all different shapes and sizes for those willing to search for them.

Prospective buyers will need to seek out specialist makers of this scale. There are several ways to do this, one of them being through one of the dolls house magazines on the market - they have many advertisements for specialist makers and shops also. There is also a large number of dolls house fairs regularly up and down the country, details of which can also be found in the dolls house magazines. I would highly reccommend a vistit to one, as there are many makers and commercial sellers all under one roof and it is like seventh heaven for a dolls house enthusiast.

As you may have gathered by now, this is not a reccommended scale for a first dolls house nor a dolls house for a child - a 1/24th scale house should only be made for an adult if it is requested and also if the person who is to take possession of the house is aware that the accessories and furnishings will be more difficult for them to track down, as well as the size being more fiddly.

The above two scales are the two main ones of the era.

1/16th Scale

This is a slightly more difficult scale for conversion purposes as the equasion for this scale is 1/4 inch equals 1 foot. The only 'new' items available for this scale to my knowledge are Lundby who have brought out a new range of furniture and accessories. Lundby dolls houses have apparently been available since the 1940's and some of the furniture and accessories can be found on ebay and in specialist shops on the internet which can be found through your search engine.

Other vintage furniture in this scale can also be found using keywords such as Barton, Carolines home, triang spot-on, dol-toi and lundby in your search engine. Places selling these items will give you more clues to other vintage lines.

Even though the vintage houses such as Triang are very popular and sought after, buyers have to settle for the commercially made lundby or vintage items in their houses as there are very few if any specialist makers that make items in this scale, from personal experience this is because of the difficulty in the conversion of sizes, trying to calculate the proportions of 1/16th scale fimo food items is not as easy as making in 1/24th or 1/12th.

Again, this is another scale that is not advised when making a dolls house for a child or adult unless it is particularly requested.

1/48th Scale

I will only touch on this scale briefly as it is an extremely specialised scale and relatively new also. Measuring in at only 1/4 inch to 1 foot. There is presently as far as I know no commercially made items available for this scale and is only made by a few specialist makers - it may be worth trying a search in the USA as this scale may be more popular and widely available over there. This is a very tiny and fiddly scale, but lovely and great for anyone with very limited space.

Yet again - not at all suitable for a first house and most definatly not suitable for a child.

I hope you have found this guide helpful and informative.Please vote to let me know if it has been any use to you.

Thank you for looking.