How to Build a House in Minecraft

Minecraft is all about finding resources and building whatever you can imagine, but most people start by building a house. You need a home base to operate from, and that’s the function that your house provides. You can stick to a dirt shack, a hole dug in the ground if you want, or upgrade it as far as you like, as long as you include the essential items to keep yourself safe and facilitate your adventures.

Why You Need a House in Minecraft

If you’re playing in survival mode, Minecraft is a dangerous place. Zombies, skeletons, and exploding Creepers come out as soon as it gets dark, so your very first task in the game is to create a place where you can survive the night. Once you’ve built your initial house, you’ll also want to place a bed to set your spawn point, add chests to store things, and install valuable tools like a Crafting Table, Brewing Stand, Anvil, and Enchanting Table.

Materials for Your First House

Here are the materials you’ll need to make your first house:

• Material to build the house from (dirt, stone, or wood)
• Torches to light your home (crafted from sticks and charcoal or coal)
• A door (crafted from six wood planks)
• Glass for windows (made from sand in a Furnace)

The door and glass are optional for your initial house. If you’re running out of time, and it’s almost night, all you need is a hole dug in the ground or a simple dirt shack and some torches to light up the interior. If you have a door and glass for windows, you’ll have an easier time seeing when it’s safe to go back outside.

How to Build a House in Minecraft

Here’s how to build a basic house in Minecraft:

1. Gather your materials, and locate a place for your house.

2. Build the walls of your house.

3. Jump inside, and place your roof.

   It will be very dark when you finish the roof, so you may want to leave a small skylight until you have placed torches.

4. Place torches on your walls for lighting.

   Craft a torch by placing charcoal or coal on top of a stick in the crafting menu. Need more help? See our guide to making a Minecraft torch.

5. Your basic house is now ready for your first night in Minecraft. If you don’t have windows or a door ready, you’ll need to remove a block from one of your walls to see when it’s safe to go back out.

How to Improve Your House in Minecraft

While a basic dirt shack lit with torches is good enough to get you by, you’ll need to add things like a bed and crafting table to make that house a home. You can also use materials like stone or wood to make your house look better, and add advanced tools such as a brewers stand, anvil, and enchanting table to make helpful gear for your adventures. If you want, you can even build an entrance to your mine right into your house.

To complete your house, you’ll need these materials:

• Stone or wood to replace the dirt.
• Bed (crafted from three wool and three wood planks)
• Crafting table (crafted from four wood planks)
• Furnace (crafted from eight cobblestones)
• Stairs (crafted from planks)
• A door (crafted from planks)
• Glass panes (crafted from glass, which is made from sand)

The exact process you take to improve your house will depend on your imagination and preferences, but here’s a general process you can follow:

1. Place four wood planks in your crafting interface to make a Crafting Table.

2. Place eight cobblestones in the Crafting Table interface to make a Furnace.

3. Add a door for easy access.

4. Use your Furnace to make glass by placing sand in the top slot and wood, charcoal, or coal in the bottom slot.

5. You can use the glass blocks as windows, or use your Crafting Table to make Glass Panes for a cleaner look.

6. Add windows so you can see outside.

7. Place three wool (harvested from sheep) on top of three wood planks in your Crafting Table interface to make a Bed.

8. Place the Bed inside your house, and use it to set your respawn point.

9. Start removing dirt walls.

10. Replace the dirt walls with your choice of wood or stone.

11. Your basic house is now done.

12. If you want it to look better from the outside, climb on top to add features like a peaked roof and chimney.

13. Using stairs and wood blocks, build yourself a pitched roof.

How to Add More Usefulness to Your Minecraft House

At this point, your house is functional, and it even looks pretty nice from the outside. However, there are a lot of other things you can add to make it even more helpful. You’ll need to build a bigger house to fit everything in, though, or dig down and make yourself a basement. If you have stairs left over from building your roof, they make it easy to traverse between floors in your house and also look great.

Other valuable things for your house:

• Chest (crafted from wood planks)
• Anvil (crafted from three iron blocks and four iron ingots)
• Brewers Stand (crafted from one blaze rod and three cobblestones)
• Enchanting Table (crafted from one book, two diamonds, and four obsidian)
• Bookshelves (crafted from books and wood planks)

Once you’ve accumulated the materials to finish up your house, here’s how to do it:

1. Dig out a basement, and use stairs to make yourself a convenient staircase.

   Use torches or other types of lighting to light the basement sufficiently. If you prefer, you can build a second story on top of your ground floor instead of digging a basement or expand horizontally with additional rooms.

2. Place four cobblestone and one Blaze Rod on your Crafting Table to make a Brewing Stand.

3. Place the Brewing Stand.

4. Place four iron ingots and three iron blocks in your Crafting Table to make an Anvil.

5. Place the Anvil.

6. Place three planks in the top line of the Crafting Table interface, followed by three books and then three more planks to make a Bookshelf.

   Each Bookshelf will power up your Enchanting Table. For full power, craft 15 bookshelves.

7. Place a book in the top middle slot of your Crafting Table interface, followed by an Obsidian block directly underneath it, Diamonds on both sides of that block, and a line of three Obsidian blocks on the bottom to make an Enchanting Table.

8. Dig out an area that’s five blocks deep, five blocks wide, and tall enough to walk into.

9. Line the walls with Bookshelves.

10. Place an Enchanting Table in the center.

11. Place your choice of lighting in the room to prevent monsters from spawning.

12. Consider placing a door on one wall of your basement and then digging out a vestibule on the other side. It will create an accessible closed-off staging area for your mine.

13. Dig a mine shaft on the other side of the door.

    As long as your mineshaft is fully lit and doesn’t intersect with natural caverns, you won’t have to worry about mobs spawning and entering your house.