13 Cool Minecraft House Ideas to Build in Survival

Building a house in Minecraft is often one of the first things players do when they start a new world. Houses provide a good place to shelter from mobs, storage space, and provide a place to sleep. They’re definitely a top Minecraft building idea with many different uses!

When just starting with Minecraft in survival mode, usually houses will be built out of easy-to-get materials like cobblestone and wood. As you progress in the game and gain access to better materials, you can build with blocks like waxed copper blocks, quartz, and concrete.

Minecraft House Building Tips

To make things more fun, you could include some extra rooms in your house just for “decoration”, for example a kitchen with a pantry or even a library. These rooms are able to serve a purpose, for example a kitchen can store your food and a library can be a place to do your enchanting.

Another tip is to plan well in advance to save valuable time. You should decide early-on whether you want a small house or a big house, what materials you will build from, and how tall the house will be.

We have put together the very best Minecraft house ideas for both survival and creative modes and we hope you find it helpful for inspiration!

1. Modern House

Modern houses in Minecraft usually have plenty of glass, neutral colors, and an open floor plan. This house is a good example and includes these elements. For the building blocks, usually wool, quartz, or blocks like concrete are used. Quartz is often the best because you can also make staircases and slabs with it.

Here are some cool ideas for building a modern house in Minecraft: use plenty of glass to provide natural lighting, use asymmetrical shapes, and include big “open concept” spaces. To add a luxurious feeling to the house, add water features like a pool or a simple fountain.

2. Sandstone Mansion

This sandstone mansion is fairly big and could be more challenging to build than the other Minecraft houses. Regardless, it is a stunning example of a luxury home in a warm climate with palm trees (complete with a pool in the yard)!

When building a sandstone mansion like this one, don’t forget to use multiple floors with staircases and room for a backyard garden! The staircases on the outside add a lot of character to this house.

3. Modern Villa (on the Lake!)

Everything about this Minecraft house is stunning: the huge glass windows and natural lighting, the choice of decorations and furnishings, and last but not least the waterfront lake. If you’re feeling up to it, building a little dock pier on the lake might be a nice addition.

Building a home on the lake offers many advantages, including a nearby water source, a place to fish and a place to go boating.

4. Suburban House

Building a suburban house is one way to bring some “real life” into Minecraft. Unfortunately, most things in the game don’t seem to scale well for real-life builds so it might be tricky to get the size of everything correct. For example, it may be difficult to build all the rooms, hallways, bathrooms, and bedrooms without making the house extremely large like a mansion.

Most suburban North American homes have an attached garage, which definitely adds to the feel of the home. Even though there are no cars in (non-modded) Minecraft, the garage can still be used as a chest room.

5. Starter House

A great example of a “starter house” built in Minecraft. It is not too big and uses simple blocks (like birch wood), so this is something easy that almost anyone could build.

You will notice that the first floor is elevated with a staircase, leaving room for a balcony and a basement underneath. There is a lot you can do with the basement, but usually players will use it for storage space or a small underground base.

The balcony is well-lit and has some crops growing on it. Any time you’re hungry, just do some farming and cook the best food in Minecraft right from your balcony!

6. Modern Mansion

A beautiful, simple, and also relatively easy to build “mini mansion”. It features a pool in the front as well as an overhead balcony from the second floor. Note that the front entrance is actually on the sides rather than in the front which adds to the uniqueness of this build.

The blocks used to build this house are not too complex and include glass, wood, stone, leaves, and water. This video obviously uses a custom texture pack, which makes the build look much better than it would in regular “vanilla” Minecraft.

7. Minecraft Village House

Don’t want to build your own house? The homes in naturally generated villages can be a good starting point for your first house in Minecraft, especially for surviving the first nights.

If you are having trouble finding a village, it would still be simple to build your own village house. The materials used are often pretty easy to get and include cobblestone, wooden logs, wooden doors, and trapdoors. They aren’t exactly beautiful, but they get the job done and protect you from monsters.

Don’t forget that each Minecraft biome has a different style of house. For example, villages in the desert will look different than villages in a forest.

8. Forest House

Since finding a woodland mansion can be pretty difficult, why not try building your own as your Minecraft house? A forest mansion like this one would usually be built somewhere in the middle of a forest and made primarily out of wood and a bit of stone.

My only dislike about this build is that I think there’s too many torches! I would suggest using a different light source like glowstone or redstone lamps if you have these materials as too many torches can look ugly and make the building look like it’s under construction still.

Wood is really common in the game, but you’ll probably want to have a tree farm to get all the wood for it. I would recommend getting an enchanted axe to increase the speed you can cut the wood at.

9. Asian House

An traditional Asian themed Minecraft house can be challenging to build because of the angles and curves involved. You might find it helpful to install an Asian decorations mod to help you build with this style of Minecraft building.

While this pagoda has many floors, you can also start with an easier one that is just a couple stories tall. Also consider adding a bit more color variety into the building, like shades of red or yellow, to make the building stand out a bit more.

The top floor could be used to build a decorated nether portal for access to the nether.

10. Large Oak Starter House

A beautiful Minecraft starter house in the forest with multiple levels for farming on the sides. Since it uses simple building materials like oak logs, it is a good house idea for survival mode.

An elevated house like this will look way better next to a hill or a forest as you can see in the video. If it were built in the middle of a flat field, it probably would not look half as good!

11. Minecraft Starter House (Multilevel)

An easy Minecraft house that gets the job done and would not take too long to build. There’s even a basement for putting your strongest Minecraft weapons, armor, and other supplies!

This one is best for beginners or players in their first few days of the game. Once you have advanced in the game and have access to more materials, you may want to consider building a bit larger or starting a castle.

12. Tiny Minecraft House

Tiny houses are getting popular in real-life, so why not try building one yourself in Minecraft? Looks can be deceiving and small spaces can have many practical uses. If you’re using Minecraft mods, you could even add some cool furniture or decorations inside! Some examples could be a hanging lamp or a small countertop.

In general, tiny houses are usually best when used as an “outpost” building to safely sleep and grab some supplies like food. Another use example would be putting bookcases in and doing your enchanting inside.

Another cool idea is to make a tiny house like this on the ground, and then have an entrance to a secret underground base directly underneath. People will come inside expecting a tiny house, and be pleasantly surprised when they find a big underground base under it!

13. Modern Hotel Tower

Our final pick for the best Minecraft houses is the modern hotel tower! This kind of tower is best for building “living suites” like apartments, condos, and hotel rooms. Since you can place multiple suites into the same building, it’s great for housing multiple people.

This Minecraft build makes good use of blue stained glass to provide a modern feel and each unit has glass walls with an opposing balcony. To ensure a good view inside the units, try to build your tower next to a scenic area like a beach or near a large valley.

---

That concludes our list of the coolest houses in Minecraft! Do you have any suggestions or anything to add? Leave a comment below.