Tag: Premium

The latest Linden Homes theme – this one for Premium Plus subscribers – was launched on Thursday, September 12th, 2025. Entitled Ridgewood Enclave, it comprises twelve home styles overall, split into six pairs (one partially or fully open-plan, and the other with the lower floor divided into separate rooms / spaces).

The overall style is that of a contemporary US setting, rich in palm trees sweeping roads and footpaths (or sidewalk, if you will 🙂 ), with attractive planters often bracketing the access points for parcels, neatly marking  and a general sub-tropical up-market feel.

These access points mark one of the feature to this theme: until now, Linden Homes have never really connected directly with any local roads or trails forming a part of the overall region landscaping. If a home owner wanted to have a direct link from their parcel to the local roadside, then they’d have to fits one themselves, making sure the root prim was anchored within their parcel.

The Ridgewood Enclave homes all appear to have a driveway link prepositioned (generally with planters to either side) outside of the actual parcel (so part of the protected land), with house rezzing oriented such that the driveways included with each house style aligned to this linkway so as to form a direct access point between the house and the local road. It’s a neat solution for a problem that has in the past caused a certain amount of grumbling among some Linden Home owners.

Outside of this, all of the house designs utilise PBR, with some having additional features such as interior windows from upper floor rooms overlooking the ground floor rooms; rooftop balconies – some quite extensive, and water feature / planter options. All of the parcels are 2048 sq metres in keeping with Premium Plus Linden Homes, allowing a number of the designs to be of a fair size and still leave room for a garden space.

The following is a summary of the styles available within the theme.

Crestline / Veilstone: single story home with either a large, roughly L-shaped open-plan ground floor or with solid wall dividers to break up the ground floor space, and a small box room (Veilstone). Both versions have water features / planters to the front and rear.

Duskledge / Greyledge: a two-storey design with an open plan lower floor incorporating an arch which could be used as a separator between the front room and a small back room area (Duskledge) or with two ground floor rooms running the length of the house (Greyledge). A spiral staircase to the rear of both leads to a single bedroom with a large front balcony. A full height tower occupies part of the front aspect double doors provide access to the rear.

Slatefall / Shadowline: a two storey block-shaped unit with a largely open-plan lower floor with a single additional box room  (Slatefall) or the ground floor entirely open-plan (Shadowline). A dog-leg stairway provides access to an upper floor hallway serving two bedrooms, one with a view to the front aspect and one to the rear and accessing an open balcony (also accessed directly from the landing. An external stairway from this balcony then accesses the rooftop.

Verdemont / Brackenrock: an imposing 2-storey unit with a large rooftop balcony served by an enclosed spiral stairway rising through a tower at the rear of the house. The ground floor is open-plan (Verdemont) or with two large rooms (Brackenrock). The spiral stairway also accesses a curved gallery providing access to two bedrooms, one to the front aspect of the house and one to the rear.

Cragspire / Hardcastle: a two-storey house with a turreted spiral staircase to the front aspect alongside the front door. The ground floor is open-plan, with a central raised ceiling (Craigspire) or split into three rooms, the largest of which features the raised ceiling (Hardcastle). Two upper floor bedrooms are reached via a spiral staircase to the front of the house and a large galleried landing, also overlooking the ground floor. Doors from the galleried landing also access a side balcony with further spiral stairs leading up to a rooftop balcony.

Claystone / Stonemont: a roughly square unit, two storeys in size, with a large open-plan lower floor (Claystone) or which includes solid room dividers (Stonemont) offering the opportunity to create a second room with its own access to the rear of the house. Three bedrooms are accessed via a dogleg staircase, two of which overlook the front of the house, and the third to the side of the house. The latter has an ensuite bathroom and a private covered balcony.

If I were a Premium Plus subscriber, I think Ridgewood Enclave would likely be attractive enough an urban setting for me to give it a go; it has the sense of being something of a general step up from previous Premium Plus and Premium Linden Home Themes. Demos of all the houses can be found at the BelliHub Linden Home Demo area and at the demo area within the Second Life Welcome Hub.

Additional Information

• Introducing Ridgewood Enclave: A New Linden Homes Community
• Ridgewood Enclave, A contemporary Retreat

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! 

The newest Linden Homes theme – this one again for Premium and Premium Plus subscribers – was launched on Tuesday, April 15th, 2025. Entitled Aspen Ridge, it has something of the Log Homes combined with the Newbrooke Homes vibe about it in terms of the general appearance of the six styles of Home offered in the theme.

With a stone base and partial stone walls mixed with wood, the theme is described as a “new chapter” in Linden Homes, and the designs appear to leverage PBR materials. The six styles within the theme comprise:

• Parkstone – a large, lodge-style home, with a grans L-shaped main room with front and rear access, a centre-rear dogleg stairway and a small rear box room with a window to the rear aspect. Exposed beams support the ceiling, with a large, single open-plan upper floor with two under-eaves balconies to the front aspect, large windows to the rear and skylight windows.
• Ridgeway – similar to the Parkstone, but with the upper floor divided into three areas: a large landing / hall with a balcony to the rear aspect, a small box room with balcony to the front right, and a large room to the front left with roof extension with panoramic window.

• Highpoint – an A-frame unit with a large main lower floor room with front access and a smaller rectangular room with view to the front and rear opening off of it. Dogleg stairs provide access to a large, open-plan upper floor.
• Summitview – a split-level lodge-style home with the upper gallery space overlooking the main front room with panoramic windows to the front and rear aspect. Two small rooms are located under the gallery floor, both access via a short hall.

• Elkridge – a cabin-style house with a square main room and smaller box room to the front. Stairs front the main room rise to a single rectangular upper floor room.
• Crestwood – a single-storey cabin-style home with a awkwardly-shaped main room complete with two front entrances, with two rectangular rooms opening off of it, one to the rea and one to the front right aspect.

In terms of being a “new chapter”, this seems to reference the fact that the homes appear to use PBR materials as noted, and, in an interesting move, the fact that the ground on which they sit changes to match the northern hemisphere (North American?) seasons – this being spring at the time of writing. This is certainly a new tweak to Linden Homes, and it will be interesting to see if anything is done to retrospectively update past theme to offer the same – if possible.

As far as the overall design, I’ll be honest, I found them a mixed bag. If I were to go for one of them, it would most likely be the Parkstone or Ridgeway, whilst the Crestwood strikes me as a missed opportunity. But that said, the use of PBR and the magic of changing seasons likely aren’t enough to crowbar me out of my Log Home. I also had to (again) question what it is about Linden Homes and back doors – or the lack thereof in many of the styles.

It’s a question I’ve often pondered, and it came to mind again in looking at the Aspen Ridge, of which only two have doors to the rear (and they are, ironically, the two with perhaps the largest footprint for any 1024 sq m parcel Linden Home – limiting the garden space front and rear). It’s not exactly a big thing, but if your house happens to be in a position so as to encourage having both a front and rear garden, having styles that require traipsing around to the back garden from the front door tends to get … old.

And with that off my chest, I’ll note that the Aspen Ridge theme can be previewed at the BelliHub Linden Home Demo area and at the demo area within the Second Life Welcome Hub.

Retirement of “Old” Linden Homes Announced

The release of the Aspen Ridge homes brought with in confirmation that the original 2010 Linden Homes (now referred to as “legacy Linden Homes”) and their mini-continents are to start to finally be retired. This had been indicated back in 2019, when the current Linden Homes launched with the Traditional and Houseboat themes, but the actual retirement was repeatedly delayed as the older Homes appeared to remain fairly popular among those disinterested in moving.

With the confirmation the legacy Homes are now to be retired, those still holding one are strongly advised to upgrade via the Linden Homes page.

Additional Information

• Welcome to Aspen Ridge: A Living Mountain Escape & A New Chapter for Linden Homes.

Update, December 19th, 2023: the Mediterranean Theme homes for Premium Plus are now available via the Linden Homes Store.

The newest Linden Homes theme – this one again for Premium Plus subscribers – was open for preview during the RFL Xmas Expo (December 1st-10th, 2023). Once again offering a range of homes occupying 2048 sq metre parcels, the overall theme for this upcoming release is “Mediterranean”, bringing with it a Tuscan theme – perhaps one of the most popular styles of house used within SL, which may be reflected in how popular the theme might prove, once available through the Linden Homes store.

As with more recent releases of Linden Homes, the theme comprises a total of four designs, each available in “normal” (with a fixed set of rooms) and “open” (with a more open-plan design allowing holders to define the spaces within with additional walls, etc., as they prefer), for a total of eight styles. Not all variants of the new theme were displayed at the Expo reveal, but those which were are described below.

Bella Vista: the open-plan version of a single-storey house, with a central terrace to one aspect, flanked on two sides by the house wings, and the third by the rest of the house, which also opens onto a second terrace. This version of the house presents a large L-shaped room to one side of the entrance hall, two smaller rooms on the other.

Bella Rosa: “normal” version of the Bella Vista, no preview available at the Expo reveal.

Favola: a two-storey house with central stone turret enclosing the entranceway, in which a curved staircase rises to a galleried landing overlooking the entrance. An archway provides access to two lower-floor rooms, also linked by an archway. The largest of the latter further accesses a terrace which is shared with one of the side rooms, which are accessed from the main room via a doorway. The galleried landing provides access to three upper-floor rooms.

Felicita: the open-plan version of the Favola, presenting two large ground floor rooms linked by a doorway and two linked upper floor rooms, the staircase rising directly into the larger of the two.

Grande Vista: a large, two-storey house with turreted front entrance complete with external stairs circling around it to reach the upper floor and provide access to both balcony there and the upper floor hallway, also reached via the internal stairs from the front entrance. A small room opens off of the entrance, and a central hall parallels that of the upper floor, providing access to (respectively) four rooms on the ground floor, the largest of which has a small terrace area opening off of it to one side of the house, and (upstairs) three rooms, two of which have their own balconies.

Gran Palma: the open-plan version of Grande Vista, with the entirely lower floor opened-out into a large single room space, archways linking it to the entrance hall, with the upper floor rooms as described above.

Primavera: a central 2-storey area with entranceway to front and large main room, flanked on either side with two single-level wings, one with two individual rooms, the other with two linked rooms (ideal for a kitchen space and dining room), both of which are linked to the main room via archways. Doors from the rearmost room on either side provide access to a roomy terrace overlooked from the main room by large windows. Reached via a dog-leg staircase to the front of the house, the upper floor provides large landing area which might be used as an open room / study, and two rooms suitable for use as a bedroom / bathroom combination or perhaps two bedrooms.

Precioso: an open plan version of the Primavera, not displayed as a part of the Expo reveal.

Some of the versions of the houses at the reveal were furnished, offering some idea of how they might look in use – a good twist on these reveals by the Lab, and perhaps a little overdue. As is usual for the modern range of Linden Homes, all of the styles / versions can be accessed by an off-parcel rezzing system, allowing the full capacity of the parcel on which a house sits to be used for furnishings, garden landscaping, etc.

When the first selection of Premium Plus Linden Homes – the Ranch theme – was released, I noted that I felt it lacking character, and not something sufficiently appealing to give me pause to consider upgrading from Premium to Premium Plus. I still do not feel the need to make the jump, but in terms of character I do find this theme to have far more in the way of character. Set within a sub-tropical environment, they would clearly have their own unique attractiveness; hence another reason to feel they could well prove popular on release.

Availability

According to Patch Linden, at the time of the reveal there is no release date for the Mediterranean theme, and the advice to Premium Plus subscribers with Ranch Theme homes was not to abandon them to await a pre-end of the 2023 release of this theme, as it may not come until 2024. At the time of writing, a new area of Bellisseria, north and east of the current Ranch Theme homes, appears to be in preparation – possibly for this new theme.