A look at the new Linden Log Homes in Second Life

On Tuesday, April 29th, 2025, Linden Lab announced the latest Linden Home theme to receive an update: the Log House Theme.

As well as continuing to periodically release new Linden Home themes, the last being the Premium / Premium Plus Aspen theme (which I looked at here), the Lab has been revamping older offerings, expensing them with additional styles and  options. For the Log Homes, this means for new designs which both fit the existing styles whilst also offering something new. They also appear to have a touch of PBR in their finish.

Mixing stone and timber builds, the four new style comprise:

• Bearstone: a partially stone-framed, two storey unit with covered verandas to the front and rear (1/2 length). The front door opens open a lobby space with dog-leg stairs going up and rooms opening to the left and right. The left, L-shaped ground-floor room is accessed either through an open arch or via a door under the stairs. A further door provides access to the rear veranda. The room to the right is also accessed via an open arch, with windows to the front, side and rear aspect. The two upstairs rooms (one large, one small) are accessed via a landing area at the top of the stairs.
• Oakridge: a two-storey unit again with partial stone rendering and with potentially the largest footprint of the four new units. The front door provides access to a lobby area with stairs to the upper floor and a door leading to a small front room. The rear of the house is taken up by a full-width room, strategically-placed archways indicating that it could be spilt into two. Glazed double doors provide access to a full-width veranda to the rear, partially covered. Upstairs, a small hall provides access to three rooms, one overlooking the front aspect and two the rear. The larger of these has a narrow balcony space.

• Pinecone: potentially the smallest in terms of footprint / space. A covered deck runs almost all the way around the unit’s perimeter. The central front door opens direct into a room with stairs to one side. These serve a central landing with rooms opening off it to the front and rear.  An archway connects the ground-floor front room to one of near-equal size to the rear, with a door from here opening onto what amounts to a narrow hall leading to the back door.
• Timberline:  a single-storey unit in the form of a cross. Two large reception rooms run front-to-back through the house, linked by archways. Above the front reception room is a large gallery space overlooking the rear reception room with its large fireplace, and large windows overlooking the front aspect. Bedrooms open off of this gallery to either side, each with a further rectangular room beneath it opening off of the reception rooms.

These updates are different enough to the original Log Homes to likely be popular among those using the theme, while their overall styling matches the overall look of the original styles such that they won’t stick out like a recently hammer-hit thumb when placed among the older styles.

And – could it be that someone at LL actually heard me bemoaning the lack of back doors among the Log Homes (and Aspen?†. Some of these designs do indeed sport doors to the rear aspect. In fact, the Oakridge is such that, depending on how it is placed in a parcel (and your feelings on such things / the road access you have) the side of the house with its glazed double doors could conceivably act as the front of the house.

Footprint-wise, the majority of these new offerings feel larger than most of the originals, and do provide (for the most part) more rooms to furnish. I’m quite sold on my Lincoln style Log Home so in no hurry to change things around; however, I have a feeling I might be trying on the Oakridge for size at some point, if just for curiosity’s sake.

For those who don’t have a Log Home and wish to try out the new styles for themselves,  they can be previewed at the BelliHub Linden Home Demo area and at the demo area within the Second Life Welcome Hub.

“Old” Linden Homes Removed from Linden Home Portal

As I noted at the time, the Aspen Homes release coincided with the announcement that the Lab is finally looking to move ahead with the “retirement” of the original 2010 Linden Homes (now referred to as “legacy Linden Homes”). To that end, the release of these new Log Home styles came as the original Linden Homes were removed from the Linden Homes pages.

† Short answer: No. I raised the point two weeks ago, and obviously, Linden Homes don’t just sprout up in an instant; design and testing, approval, etc., all need to come first. so clearly the provision of back doors was already well in-hand!