Let your elder’s shine! In a refreshing nod to often-forgotten elder Sims, The Sims 4 Golden Years Kit adds a warm, personality-driven collection of Create-a-Sim (CAS) content tailored for older Sims.
Let’s break down the different items, including the good the bad and the questionable.
Table of Contents
Key Features
Designed For Aging Sims: Tell the stories of aging Sims with clothing tailored specifically for Elder body types, as well as convenient accessories like glasses with straps, a toupee, gardening gloves, and more.
For golden lifestyles: With these fashions Elder Sims will be able to express their individuality in understated ways. There are styles for gardening and working out as well as comfortable clothes for everyday life.
ea.com
Catalogue
The kit includes a few different outfits for both male and female frames, including full body outfits, separate tops and bottoms, and two styled looks for female Sims. It also includes accessories like glasses on a chain, patterned gardening gloves, and a necklace with a ring pendant – small, touching details that enhance storytelling potential. There’s even what appears to be a wearable life alert pendant, for anyone wanting a realistic touch, and even a toupee which sticks true to The Sims cheeky sense of humour it is known for.
Swatches of all the items
The Good
The clothing items that revolve around a hobby – like birdwatching, baking or gardening – is a lovely touch. It gives your Sims something to wear while they embrace all the free time of retirement as they dive into new hobbies. Realistic touches like kneepads on gardening outfits to protect their knees and flour dustings on shirts like they have just finished baking a pie are the little details that make the outfits feel lived-in.
The female clothing items are beautifully designed, with coordinated bonnets and coats that exude a cosy charm you’d expect from a fashion-conscious elder. Matching outfits is a minimal ask from a CAS kit, however, its still always nice when it works well.
A standout item is also the use of 3D meshes for the binoculars in the jacket thankfully, not just painted-on details (looking at you sunglasses). Birdwatching is something most people associate with an elderly activity – I know lots of the older women in my life live for it – so it makes sense to see a jacket with the binoculars hanging round their neck come with this kit.
The toupee, while obviously a hat item, cleverly embraces its artificiality, making it feel intentionally humorous and charming rather than just a realistic-looking wig. We all know or can think of one person who has walked around in a toupee they’ve convinced themselves is realistic-looking when in reality it can be clocked a mile away. Now your Sims can too! I know I’m looking forward to seeing this on auto-generated townies who want to hide their hairlines.
Accessories shine in this kit. The glasses with a chain are one of the items I was most excited for as they are just perfect old-person-who-needs-reading-glasses-but-can-never-find-them core. Aka, every elderly person I’ve ever met. They also are classed as a necklace so you could put one pair on your Sim’s eyes and one round their neck, also like every elderly person I’ve ever met. Those rings are also stunning, and I’ll be using this item probably the most out of all of them.
The addition of a necklace featuring rings is a surprisingly heartfelt touch, since many people do choose to put their wedding bands on chains and wearing rings on swollen arthritic hands can be painful. Just a little realistic detail.
On the men’s side, the grandad-style suit with suspenders and high waistband adds much-needed variety and character to elder male fashion. I can picture this being perfect for family reunions, date nights, or grandchild weddings.
The Bad
Unfortunately, some items in the kit aren’t as polished as they could be. One odd issue I had involves the life alert – it shows up on older items but doesn’t appear with new ones, raising questions about consistency or a potential bug. If it’s hidden on purpose, that decision should have been uniform. If it’s a glitch, it’s a frustrating oversight.
There are also no everyday styled looks for male Sims only pyjamas and formal, which feels like a missed opportunity, but unfortunately we are getting used to male CAS slacking behind female as it often has less variety. This is something I really hope the team change as they go forwards with releasing more and more kits. The styled looks feature is something that could be utilised across the board.
And while we’re talking polish: the painted-on texture for the glasses in the pocket of the fishing jacket reads as lazy in 2025, especially when the rest of the accessories show such care. Those binoculars look immaculate, so we know its possible!
The Questionable
Not everything in the kit lands gracefully. The “dentures” don’t really look like dentures, but more like the Sim is missing some back teeth.
On one hand, this is semi-realistic – people do lose their teeth as they get older, and often when they fall out or need work done tend to favour saving the front teeth for aesthetics over the back teeth.
On the other hand, it isn’t really something I think that should be a premium item in a paid for DLC, you will almost never see the inside of your Sims mouth in game and if you do you’d have to be running a supercomputer to focus in on their missing molars. I feel like this item slot could have been used for something that players can appreciate whilst they are playing.
And, as for the elephant in the room, the full-body outfit combining shorts and joggers is baffling; it feels like fashion for the sake of a laugh, not something any Sim (or person) would wear by choice. Every elderly person I know or have known takes a lot of pride in their appearance, I can’t imagine anyone genuinely putting an outfit like this together.
Final thoughts and feelings on The Sims 4 Golden Years Kit
Much like the majority of the community, I felt like elder sims had little love and attention, so was really happy to hear that a Golden Years kit focusing on style and fashion was coming to us. The actual items have left me with mixed feelings.
My initial thoughts when I saw this kit were that if this came out when I was a child I would have been so excited for it because so many of the items included – like the glasses on the chain or the gardening attire – are what I would associate with all the elderly people in my life, and being able to add these little touches to my families would have been amazing.
As an adult I still love the kit and will be using it loads, but can look at it a bit more critically. The Golden Years Kit is a love letter to elder Sims; with a few typos. It’s endearing, it’s useful, and it’s silly. But it also reminds us that CAS kits still need quality assurance testing, and male Sims deserve as much attention as their female counterparts.
There are whole brands which market fashion to elderly people, and it would have been nice to see the team pull some examples from these. Even things like slip-on shoes which many elderly people use or going down the medical wearables route and exploring things like wrist supports (which I know are not limited to old people only, but loads of older people use them for things like arthritis and carpal tunnel) or even – and I know I’m pushing the boat out here – a new walking style with a walking stick or Zimmer frame would have been so welcome.
My grandmother’s thoughts
For a different perspective on this kit I went to a woman I knew would have some insight: my grandmother. It’s fair to say her thoughts were mixed.
She loved the rings and most the accessories (besides the life alert) and while people do still wear glasses on chains lots of her friends have varifocal lenses now instead of two separate pairs, so that would have been nice to see. Feedback on the clothes was more mixed. It’s true the layered jackets and the gardening attire is stuff that you see people wear, but some bits felt really dated and missed the mark – too stereotypical “old lady frill”. With the co-ordinating sets it would have also been good to see a variety of more modern styles but done in an age appropriate way, without coming across as frumpy.
What are your thoughts?
Join the discussion below, and stay tuned for future updates on The Sims 4 Kits as well as a review of the other kits released on the same day as this one – Restoration Workshop and Kitchen Clutter.
The Sims 4 Golden Years Kit is available on Steam, the EA App, and other official Desktop and Console platforms.
As an older adult (60) this is heavily stereotyped and I’m not likely to buy it. Overall, the clothing CC looks dull and rumpled. It leaves me thinking “this” is what people think we are? I’m disappointed. Thank you for your review, Sophie.
I agree completely, although perhaps because I’d be considered an Elder at 62. With the exception of the jewelry, this is a costume kit, and it doesn’t even have an “old hippie” outfit!
That is such a missed opportunity!
This is what I thought when I first saw it. “Elders” today are mostly boomers, and they don’t dress like this. Sims 4 always had it right by having the same clothing for elders as adults and young adults, now this?
What is this kit? Honestly, the wig is almost degrading, even insulting, the clothes look dirty, the glasses are in the pocket, it looks like a glued label, the details are so poorly done. We had the right to expect elegant clothes, even for seniors. Honestly, I don’t understand what they did, except to make fun. What a disappointment.
I like the feminine frame body outfits and the suit for the masculine frame. Particularly the apron is nice since I do have a few elderly bakers including a ms claus sim so that will be nice. Though I have a stronger preference for the clutter kit since I’m a big fan of clutter.
omg the painted glasses and the dentures, what were they thinking
I’m just as disappointed as you are. All the suggestions you made at the end of the article are so clever and with the two other kits having functionnal items this one looks far behind…
This kit makes me sad. I am an ELDER playing the Sims and have other ELDER friends playing the Sims, and this is what they think is what the elder communiy is like?
Ugly clothes, pants up to their necks? Is this how we look. I am so sad, really.