Building a LEGO city is a rewarding experience but making it truly yours involves adding custom details that reflect your personal style and creativity. Whether you’re enhancing the look of a busy downtown area, adding charm to residential neighbourhoods, or making the city more dynamic, these five simple tips will help you infuse your LEGO city with a unique personality.

1. Custom Signage: Using Printed Tiles or Stickers

Signage is one of the easiest ways to personalise your LEGO city and make it feel more like a real, bustling town.

• Tip: While you can purchase custom bricks and stickers online (or make them yourself) another great option is to take already available tiles and use them for a different purpose. For example, using the Vidiyo tiles as posters or branded tiles (LEGO, SHELL etc.) for billboards and advertising.
• Ideas: Consider creating street signs, traffic signals, or custom billboards with advertising, event posters, or neighbourhood names.

2. Unique Vehicles: Adding Variety with Custom Cars and Trucks

While LEGO offers a wide variety of vehicles, custom cars and trucks can add a personalised touch to your city, whether you want a fleet of sleek, futuristic cars or retro classics. Customize your vehicles with unique colour schemes, decals, or even specialised parts to give them a more distinctive look.

• Tip: Now I’m not great at MOCs so I start with existing LEGO vehicles (or the remaining parts after my kids are done playing) and modify them with different wheels, bricks, and accessories.
• Ideas: To keep it simple look for interesting vehicles the LEGO bring out. Food Trucks, Emergency Services Vehicles or Classic Cars link in the Modular Downtown Diner.

3. Landscaping: Trees, Gardens, and Parks

A key part of any city is its landscaping. Adding greenery to your LEGO city helps bring it to life and makes it feel more welcoming. Landscaping doesn’t have to be complicated (thankfully) —simple trees, gardens, and parks can have a big impact. You can use various shades of green bricks to create realistic trees and bushes or build flower beds and ponds for a park.

• Tip: Experiment with different types of trees using LEGO’s foliage elements or combine smaller pieces to make bushes and hedges. You can also add details like park benches, walking paths, and fountains to enhance the scenery. You can also have a look on Youtube for a large number of tutorials.
• Ideas: Include public gardens, a community park, or green spaces around residential areas. Add a fountain in the town square or a small vegetable garden behind a house. Whether it’s a lush city park or a tiny balcony garden, landscaping adds a warm, personalized touch to your city.

4. Custom Buildings: Adding Personal Flair to Structures

Customising buildings is one of the most effective ways to make your LEGO city stand out. Rather than just sticking to standard sets, you can add unique touches to your buildings by changing their colour schemes, architecture, or interior designs. This allows you to create a city that feels like your own.

• Tip: Take a normal LEGO set and build it into a modular house. Sets like LEGO City Houses, the Up house, Sesame Street etc all work great and if you need any help, you can always have a look at rebrickable.com for inspiration.
• Ideas: You could create a custom townhouse with an outdoor garden or build a high-rise building with a rooftop patio. Add signage, windows, and doors that reflect the style you want for each area—whether it’s modern, rustic, or futuristic.

5. Lighting: Illuminating Your City with Custom Light Kits

I haven’t done this yet (maybe if the budget ever allows) but have seen many others and they look amazing. It is a simple yet effective way to add an extra dimension to your LEGO. You can use LED light kits designed for LEGO sets or create your own lighting using tiny LED bulbs. Adding lights to streetlamps, buildings, and vehicles can turn your city into a glowing masterpiece at night.

• Tip: Purchase LED light kits from LEGO accessories retailers or create your own by wiring small LED lights. Focus on lighting up important areas like the main square, train station, or city centre. Adding light to vehicles and windows will make your city feel alive, even after dark.
• Ideas: If you are unable to add lights directly to your LEGO creations consider if you are able to place colour changing lights somewhere in the room/shelf where your city is located. This can help simulate sunset or sunrise in your city.

What I chose to do

Brick Lake City is still a work in progress, but the kids’ love of superheroes has already inspired some fun additions. We’ve added an Avengers Tower and used a mix of printed tiles from various sets, which brings a fresh and exciting vibe to the city.

Another thing I’ve done is slightly raising the modular buildings by a couple of plates. This allows me to create a raised footpath/sidewalk, and the road now includes a gutter. It’s small details like these that can set cities apart and make them uniquely yours.

Final Thoughts

Adding custom details to your LEGO city is a fun and rewarding way to make it uniquely yours. From custom signage and vehicles to landscaping and lighting, these simple tips will help transform your city into a vibrant, personalised world. The best part is that you don’t need to be a master builder to incorporate these ideas—just let your imagination guide you! Whether you add a few small touches or completely overhaul sections of your city, the end result will be a LEGO world that truly reflects your creativity and style.