cwniamh Sorry for the late reply. Does this happen with any other items? Are you playing in DirectX 9 or 11 mode? You can see this detail in the lower-left corner of the Main Menu, after the version number. If you're in DX9 mode, try DX11 instead. Open the EA App, click Sims 4 > Manage > View properties, and add -dx11 (with the hyphen) to the command line box.
If that doesn't help, please provide a dxdiag. Click Windows key-R, enter dxdiag in the run box, wait for the scan to finish, click "Save all information," and save the file to your desktop. From there, you can attach it to a reply using the paper clip (Attachment) icon included with the other formatting buttons.