Minecraft: How to Build a House

Houses come in all shapes and sizes. Anything from a dirt cube to a brick mansion can be a comfy home in Minecraft. However, the best abodes are in ideal locations and possess useful furniture within.

The Best Places to Build a House

Whether you are starting a new playthrough or are relocating your main base, you’ll want to be close to certain resources. As such, you’re better off building a house on the borders of two or more of the most useful biome types. A home near both wooded and sandy biomes is arguably the best place to plant your roots.

Resources to Look for When Picking a House Location

Wood is useful for many crafting recipes, so having a forest biome nearby is always handy. Although, you don’t want to set up camp too close to a forest biome, as the shade provided by the trees will shelter hostile mobs from sunlight.

Water is also pretty important for a lot of reasons. You can always haul a couple of Water Buckets from somewhere else to make an infinite water source, although simply having a body of water nearby is more immediately convenient. With this in mind, picking a house location with a nearby river, lake, or ocean can be beneficial.

Sand can also be very useful—but can be tricky to obtain in large quantities if you’re not near the right biome. There are three main biomes with sand that all provide different benefits:

• Desert biomes – great for Sand blocks, Cactus, and finding rare loot in Desert Temples
• Beach biomes – great for Sand blocks, Sugar Cane, and water-related loot
• Badlands biomes – great for Sand blocks, building materials, and ores

How to Make a House

When you begin construction, unless you’ve got a wealth of fancy blocks, it’s best to start with a simple material.

What to Build Your House With

In regards to available building materials, Cobblestone is often the best for beginner houses. Cobblestone is pretty strong and you’ll get tons of it while mining, making it a great option for making a house.

However, if you’re near a forest, Wood Planks can also be a solid option. They aren’t as strong as Cobblestone blocks, but they look nicer. If you choose this material for your base, be sure to use Wooden Planks instead of Wooden Logs for the most part. A single Wooden Log breaks down into 4 Wooden Planks, so you’ll have much more materials if you use the latter.

What Shape to Make Your House

In terms of shape, a cube or rectangular prism of some sort is the best. Not only is this architectural design simple and baseline aesthetically pleasing, but it’s also efficient. In regards to volume, cube-shaped buildings have the most space inside. More interior space means more room to put your stuff—which is always a good thing if you plan on making a bunch of nice furniture.

What to Put Inside Your House

You’ll want to have all of the most basic crafting tools in your home—as well as a few crucial pieces of furniture. Here’s a list of the essentials:

• Bed – to set your respawn point
• Crafting Table – for most of your crafting needs
• Furnaces (it’s recommended to have 2) – for smelting and cooking
• Chests (as many as you need) – for storage

Besides the essentials, there are other great tools to have in your home for convenience and efficiency. These can take a little while to obtain but are worth having close by:

• Enchanting Table – for enchanting items
• Bookshelves – to place around your Enchanting Table for better enchantments
• Anvil – for enchanting, repairing, and renaming items
• Stonecutter – for creating decorative blocks
• Brewing Stand – for making potions

Furthermore, be sure to light up the inside of your house! This will prevent hostile mobs from spawning within. The easiest way to light your interior is with Torches, although you can also use Lanterns and other light-emitting blocks as well.

Advanced House Building Tips

If you’re tired of a simple cube-like dwelling, you can build up your base to make it look better. There are nicer-looking materials that can be made pretty easily as well as techniques to enhance your home’s exterior aesthetics.

Nice-Looking Building Materials

Concrete blocks come in a wide variety of colors, yet are also pretty sturdy. As such, they can be a solid material for base building. Furthermore, Concrete Powder is pretty easy to make in large quantities if you have lots of Sand and Gravel blocks lying around.

Alternatively, you can turn other blocks you have no use for into better-looking variants by using a Stonecutter. If you have a ton of Diorite, Andesite, or Granite lying around, you can turn them into polished blocks that possess the same color, but a different texture. These can make great accent building materials—or even main building materials if you have enough of them.

On top of that, you can use Stonecutters to turn your horde of Cobblestone blocks (or other blocks) into walls, stairs, and slabs. You could also refine Cobblestone into Stone before putting it into a Stonecutter, which will allow you to make Stone Bricks: arguably the nicest-looking variant of Stone.

Using Stairs, Slabs, and Glass to Enhance Your House’s Exterior

Stairs and Slabs can be placed in any position, making them perfect for breaking up the flatness of your exterior walls.

A great place to start is to build a roof with Stairs and other blocks. Afterward, use some upsidedown Stairs where your roof meets your house for a more sculpted look. Additionally, making a skirt of Stairs around the base of your house can also enhance its depth and make it look like it’s built on some foundations.

As for Slabs, try placing sideways ones against walls in clear patterns. Lining your windows, roof, or Stair-skirt with sideways Slabs can add some subtle beauty to your boxy base. Furthermore, Slabs can also be handy for making more gentle inclines, like for a less-sloped roof, a more gradual walkway, or even a porch.

Also, no house really looks complete without windows. A windowless house is more like a bunker—which, while safe, looks very boring. This is where Glass blocks come in. In addition to being able to use basic Glass blocks for simple windows, you can refine Glass blocks into Glass Panes to get much more window material (6 Glass blocks can be made to make 16 Glass Panes). On top of that, you can make Stained Glass blocks and Stained Glass Panes as well for more colorful materials.

Advanced Decorating Tips

If you’re looking for a way to make your house look more like a home, you’ll need to be creative! There are tons of items and blocks you can use for aesthetic reasons in ways you wouldn’t expect. Try to think outside the box to make your home both unique and comfy.

Interesting and Versatile Items for Decorating

Trapdoors can be placed in open and closed positions. Due to their simple yet ornate appearance, you can use them in place of many real-world house decorations. For example, you can have a pair of sideways Trapdoors flanking a window to create shutters that can manually open and close. As another example, you can place some inside to create countertops or shelves to line the walls.

Paintings are great for filling up empty wall spaces—especially since they come in many shapes and sizes. You can use a Painting to cover pretty much any of your uglier walls, or even use them to cover up a secret passage. There are also many designs to choose from, which can let you make a fancy art gallery in any room or hallway.

Carpets will give you a way to make your floors look nicer, especially in bedrooms or lounge areas. When used in combination with hardwood floors and tile-like surfaces, Carpets can make things a lot cozier.

Furthermore, about floors, choosing a type of wood for your floors (or something that resembles tiles) can kick your interior design up a notch. There are many types of Wooden Planks in the game, so choosing one besides basic Oak Wooden Planks can add a fresh feeling (like Acacia Wooden Planks or Birch Wooden Planks). If you’re after some tile-like materials, consider light-colored ‘polished’ Slabs, like Polished Diorite Slabs or Polished Granite Slabs.

Creating Special Furniture

Besides items like Beds and Crafting Tables, you can also make a few that don’t serve an actual function. Think of things you have in your real-life house and try to recreate them in Minecraft.

You can make a TV by using simple resources like Blocks of Coal for the body of the TV and Glass Panes in front of it for a screen. Additionally, you can use sideways Trapdoors to look like speakers. Alternatively, you can place some light-emitting blocks behind a landscape-oriented Painting to get a different kind of TV.

Chandeliers can also enrichen the look of your home. Using Chains in combination with Torches, Lanterns, and fancier-looking blocks can be visually appealing.

Glazed Terracotta is also a fantastic-looking block that can really make things pop. These are some of the most colorful and intricately-textured blocks in the game. As such, you can place them anywhere as highlight blocks to enhance your rooms and furniture. Consider placing Glazed Terracotta in the corners of certain walls or around pieces of furniture that you want to stand out.

The possibilities are almost endless for aesthetic home enhancements. The only true limit to what your base can look like is your imagination! For further inspiration, consider checking out interior design websites and magazines. Anything you find in them can potentially be constructed in Minecraft.