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Highlights

  • Building in Minecraft offers endless possibilities for creativity and improvement, with even small details making a big impact.
  • Themed buildings and custom paths can enhance the overall look and feel of a town or village.
  • Paying attention to interior design, experimenting with different block variations, and incorporating natural elements can elevate your builds to the next level.

Minecraft's cubic aesthetic is one of the ever-popular game's greatest strengths, making it easy to put all kinds of blocks together and end up with something that looks good. But while the skill floor is low, the skill ceiling for building is almost immeasurably high - just look at some of the incredibly talented builders in the community who are still learning how to get better at building as they play.

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No matter how you build, there's always room to learn more and really take your constructions to the next level; even the smallest of touches can elevate a build in a huge way. If you're looking to get good at building, or simply want some building tips to take your skills to the next level, here are fifteen super-simple tips that, if kept in mind, will have you building like a pro in no time.

Updated February 3, 2024 by Quinton O'Connor: Minecraft continues to thrive even today, and we've added some tips and tricks to help you ensure your builds thrive along with it.

15 Make A Themed Building For Each Activity You Need to Do

Minecraft Building Tips Village Themed Builds Medieval Style
Builds by Steelpandas.

Every time you need a space to set up something new - an enchanting room, some brewing stands, a storage system - it's easy to just add them into your main base and call it a day. A great way to build up a town, however, is to give each of these things its own building and tie the theming into the build.

Ideas include magic witch-y building for making your potions, a wizard's tower for enchanting, or a secure vault to keep your items safe. Keeping a consistent block palette across all your builds while varying the style and theme of each one is a brilliant way to make a beautiful village or town. Once you've built this town, it's a great idea to tie it together by...

14 Building Custom Paths To Connect Your Builds

Minecraft Building Tips Custom Path
Build by Steelpandas.

Whether it's small houses in a quaint village or giant skyscrapers in an industrial city, putting effort into how players move between the buildings is another great way to take things to the next level. A well-done path or road can really help an area feel cohesive and improve the town as a whole.

Path blocks are an obvious solution for paths, but coarse dirt, variants like podzol, and brown terracotta work well too, with stone buttons making excellent pebbles.

Meanwhile for roads, stony blocks and concrete are a good way to go.

13 Add Smaller Features For Atmosphere

Minecraft Building Tips Custom Pond
Build by Steelpandas

Once you've got your buildings sorted and connected them all up with pretty paths, it could be a great idea to add some custom builds along said path to really make the area come alive. Things like ponds, campsites, or even just benches are great for adding atmosphere to an area.

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Details like this are great for fleshing out a town or city, so dot a few additional builds around in the area along your path, and before you know it your town will be the envy of everyone on your server.

12 Custom Trees Are A Great Way To Instantly Make An Area Look Nicer

Minecraft Building Tips Custom Trees Spruce
Builds by disjoint.

Throwing down some saplings and doing the standard bonemeal spam is fine, but if you want to take your builds up a notch, making the trees yourself as well can be utterly transformative. It doesn't have to be anything fancy or complicated.

Even small trees that are just alternatives to the vanilla onesare fantastic.

Trees, like any organic shape or structure, can be tricky to get the hang of in Minecraft's blocky style, but they're well worth the effort. With a bit of practice, you'll be sprucing all your builds up with handmade arboreus in no time!

11 Put Some Time Into The Interiors, Too

Minecraft Building Tips House Interiors Cosy Cottagecore
Build by Steelpandas.

When working on a build, many players put hours into making the outside look amazing, and then all the inside gets is some carpet, a furnace and a crafting table, and some chests next to a bed. A great way to take your build to the next level is to make it look fantastic both inside and out.

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Using different walls on the inside, splitting the space up into smaller rooms, adding furniture - these are all great ways to go that extra mile and create something that'll really blow people away.

10 Variate Your Walls (And Other Stuff) With Similar Blocks

Minecraft Building Tips Walls Variation
Builds by disjoint and Steelpandas.

For any given block in Minecraft, there are a handful of others with similar colors and even textures. Mixing such blocks together in walls, floors, and anything else - either randomly or in patches - can be a fantastic way to stop things from becoming a bit flat or monotone.

It works better in some scenarios than others, and it might take a bit of trial and error to find the right level of variation. But especially for larger builds, this is an amazing way to keep things interesting to look at.

9 Don't Be Afraid To Experiment With Depth

Minecraft Building Tips Walls With Depth Asian Japanese Architecture
Build by disjoint.

Given the ubiquity of 90-degree angles in Minecraft, it can be easy for things to feel a bit flat. One way to make things stand out is to use depth in your walls. Build them across a couple of blocks, with beams sticking out across the front. Or use stairs, walls, and slabs to mix things up - both are great ways to make things a bit more exciting.

Like variation, this ultimately depends on the build, and will probably require some trial and error. But when done right, a wall with a bit of depth is leagues ahead of its flat counterparts.

8 Be Smart With Your Mob-Proofing

Minecraft Building Tips Mob Proofing Spawn Proofing
Build by disjoint.

Torch spam everywhere is the bane of many a builder, but in a survival world, it's seen by most as a necessary evil. Either risk a Creeper attack or shoehorn light sources into a build that might not suit them. What a lot of players don't realize, though, is that there are a lot of cleaner ways to mob-proof.

A light source placed under the carpet will still light an area up, and the carpet itself is actually a spawn-proof block - as is anything else that doesn't have a full topside at the conventional height, like a bottom slab or stairs.

7 Play Around With Wood Types

minecraft wood types
Build by disjoint.

The various types of wood block are undoubtedly core materials for many a builder, but mixing and matching two or more different types of wood, as well as working log and stripped log into the build in addition to planks, can actually create some really striking designs.

There's a whole spectrum of wood colors already in the game, and the number of options is only going to grow, so don't be afraid to get stuck in and see what sort of wood-based wonders you can come up with.

6 Use The Natural Environment In Your Builds

minecraft lighthouse bluff
Build by disjoint.

When most people think of a Minecraft house, they picture a build standing in a field, desert, forest clearing, or some other clear area. However, if you're willing to get creative with your choice of terrain, you can design some unique and impressive builds.

Modern Minecraft's world generation is so varied and so spectacular that inspiration is everywhere if you're looking for it. Houses built into mountains; a city carved into the walls of a ravine; a village of bridges and treehouses suspended high above the jungle - the possibilities are endless.

If you really want to go the extra mile, you could even enhance the terrain yourself!

5 Choose A Base Block Palette

minecraft block palette
Build by Steelpandas.

Whether you're working on a single build, or an entire city, a block palette can be a seriously helpful aid in creating aesthetically pleasing builds. Picking out a set of blocks that look good together in isolation will ensure any resulting builds look great.

If you are working on a larger project with multiple builds, sticking to the palette can help keep a real sense of cohesion and visual unity, though introducing one or two unique blocks to each individual build can be a great way to keep things fresh, too - don't be afraid to experiment and see what works best!

4 Think Outside The Box When Using Blocks

minecraft creative block usage
Build by Steelpandas.

In vanilla Minecraft, especially without any texture packs, it can be difficult to create detail, particularly interiors, with the blocks available to you. Fortunately, a little creativity is all that's required to start reinventing the game's basic items to suit your needs.

The wooden stair block with signs on either side is a classic stand-in for a chair, with a pressure plate on a fence making a table to match. A leaf block over a dead bush in a pot makes a nice indoor tree; banners can serve as curtains; an iron trapdoor works as a great stovetop - blocks can serve as all kinds of other things.

3 Bigger Doesn't Always Equal Better

minercraft small windmill
Build by disjoint and Steelpandas.

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking the best way to make your build look good is to simply make it as big as possible, especially in larger worlds. In reality, while large-scale builds can be fantastic, small builds are often just as impressive - if not more so, given the difficulties of capturing detail at a small scale in Minecraft's cubic system.

Think about what you want your build to do - is it a house? Will it be containing some kind of storage or farm? - and build it at a scale appropriate to its purpose.

From there, you can simply focus on decorating and detailing what you have to make it look good, rather than worrying about inflating its proportions to a needlessly large level just for size's sake.

2 Mods Can Improve Both How You Build and How Your Builds Look

Minecraft Building Tips Custom Trees Fall Autumn Resource Texture Pack Shaders
Build by disjoint.

Mods and resource packs are easy to add and have made up a large part of Minecraft since its launch, and they can be a great help for builders too. Shaders are a great way to make things look amazing, and resource packs can do everything from subtle improvements like saturating a texture to giving you whole new color palettes to work with they're really just oak and acacia.

Similarly, there are numerous up-to-date mods that are very useful. Two examples are Tweakeroo, which provides countless options to improve a builder's quality of life, and Litematica, which allows you to copy templates of builds to work from - ideal for those who like to brainstorm in Creative worlds first.

1 Always Be On The Lookout For Inspiration

Minecraft Building Tips inspiration Owl Animal Statue
Build by Steelpandas.

The Minecraft community is absolutely massive and filled to the brim with talented builders and amazing constructions. Definitely don't steal people's designs outright, but taking ideas such as block combinations or color palettes is a great way to improve.

Similarly, the real world can be a fantastic source of creativity. If you see a building, structure, object, or animal you like in real life, why not try replicating it in Minecraft? Take in lots of inspiration and keep the rest of this list's tips in mind — you'll be building like an expert before you know it.

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