Highlights

• Create unique rooms for each interactive block - maximize space and functionality in your base.
• Experiment with maps and banners for interior decoration - unlock creative design possibilities in Minecraft.
• Display rare items using item frames - showcase your accomplishments and add a personal touch to your home.

Minecraft has drawn in an ever-growing fanbase for years with every new update that’s released, and its gameplay has kept players coming back. For some, the challenge of surviving as long as possible keeps them going, or the goal of beating the Ender Dragon. For others, the simple task of building and maintaining a home in the woods is a dream come true.

When it comes to building in Minecraft, the player’s only limit is their imagination. However, it can be difficult to know exactly how to decorate the inside to their liking, especially if someone is playing in survival and is working with limited resources. Thankfully, there are several tricks that can keep a house as pretty as it is practical.

Updated on February 22, 2024, by Ben Painter: Minecraft is a game that will just not die, with no definite end to the game means that the possibilities are endless for gamers to explore. Whatever players decide to create in Minecraft is up to interpretation, but what everyone needs is a place to call home. There are hundreds of different ways to create a home or starter base, but there are some basic ways that gamers can use to help bring their homes to life. Using different blocks and experimenting with new features is a great way to make a unique and homely base. Here are a few more handy decoration tips for Minecraft.

15 Experiment With Maps & Banners

How To Create: Maps Require A Cartography Table, Banners Are Created In A Loom

On the face of it, a map has one use, to be a map and display the location of where the gamer is, but if players have the resources, then maps can become a much more handy thing to help decorate an interior. One map is one chunk so if players completely cover a chunk in one block, snow or white wool for example, then they have a blank canvas to decorate whatever the home requires. Although this takes a lot of blocks to do this, it can be used to create things like computer screens or wallpaper, displayed on an item frame.

The same can be done with banners, crafting a banner in a certain way to create something that represents another thing. For example, creating letters on a banner to act as a sign. There are countless ways maps and banners can be used for an interior.

14 Create A Separate Room For Every Interactive Block

How To Create: Varies, But Every Block Requires Wood Or Stone

Interactive blocks are things like looms, furnaces, cartography tables, and smithing tables. In order to have an interior less crowded and add use to each room in a giant house, players should create a uniquely designed room for each of the blocks.

Using the loom as an example, a loom is used to create banners, so gamers can create a decorated room with banners displayed, armor on armor stands, and tools displayed to bring the room to life. Each block has a different use in the game; anvils, blast furnaces, and grindstones will look well-placed in a blacksmith, and composters will look the part in a greenhouse along with some other crops and shelving for tools. The possibilities are endless.

13 Create A Map Room

How To Create: Lots Of Paper, Item Frames

A fantastic way to decorate a room or base is to create a map room. Maps can be placed on item frames, and they will show the player the area that they created. When making a massive village or city, it could be a good idea to display it in the open and create a specialized room for this.

Maps can also be locked, so they won't update when new blocks are placed. This can be useful to showcase progress made throughout the world. It would be awesome to see a before and after before starting a massive project. To make the maps stand out, a glow item frame can be used, using glow squid ink, to really make the map room pop.

12 Display Rare Or Important Items

How To Create: Item Frames, Item Of Choice

There are hundreds of rare items in the game, notch apples, smithing templates, and goat horns to name a few. A good idea is to display these items as part of decoration, as opposed to sitting in a chest. Using an item frame is an easy way to do this, it can be worked into shelving with rare blocks that can be placed, such as mob heads or the conduit surrounding them, to help break up the layers.

Using pistons and armor stands, gamers can make a realistic-looking glass display case for one item, give the item to an armor stand and place it one block under the floor, use a piston to push a block over the item frame and then use a piston to push a glass block over where the item is being held and it will look like it is being displayed in a glass case.

11 Glazed Terracotta Is An Easy Wallpaper

How To Create: Smelt Colored Terracotta In A Furnace

Glazed terracotta is a very unique block in the game, it is brightly colored and each color of the block comes with a different style, that can be used as a simple way to add detailed wallpaper.

Some colors, like orange, can be combined to make a flowing pattern that would look amazing as part of a wall in a base. Like the red displayed in the image, some variations can be subtle and just add a bit of texture to a wall, as opposed to a solid block of color. Gamers should experiment with a wide variety of different designs in their home.

10 Use Upside-Down Stairs For Counters And Tables

How To Create: Item Frames, Item Of Choice

It’s a small difference, but where a player may want a kitchen counter or a coffee table, using a stair of the player’s choice is a much better option than an ordinary block. Not only does it give the surface a far more defined shape, but having that small space underneath can give the illusion that there’s more space in the room than there is, and the player will feel far less crowded.

Stairs in general are a very good choice when creating furniture too, as it’s an easy way to mix up the shapes used in a room so they feel more diverse.

9 Use A Variety Of Crafting Blocks

How To Create: Varies

The arrival of 1.14 came with a far larger array of crafting tables and blocks for players to choose from than they ever had prior. For some, this was an exciting change, for others downright confusing to navigate. However, one benefit any player can claim with them is a far more aesthetic working area should they dip their toe into the world that is more complex crafting.

Whether it’s the addition of blast furnaces in a smeltery, smokers in the kitchen, or fletching and cartography tables in a workshop, using less common crafting blocks can go a long way into making a room look more fleshed out, regardless of their use or lack thereof.

8 Use Different Woods And Materials

How To Create: Grow Different Trees

To keep a house from looking flat, blocky, or monotonous, mixing different woods during construction can go a long way toward making a house look nice. Considering how most houses are constructed, the outside will usually shape the interior in many ways, and wood color is often one of them.

Whether this means using logs as pillars indoors, terracotta tile in the kitchen, or mixing oak and spruce planks together, the house will feel more alive with different materials than it would have with just one uniform choice.

7 Lanterns And Chains Are Perfect Lights

How To Create: Iron And Torches

Figuring out lighting indoors can be a bit tricky, and even more so if the player wants the lighting to actually look nice. For players who are sick of placing torches everywhere, or are just aching for a proper ceiling fixture, then lanterns will be their best friend.

In addition to being small, aesthetically pleasing, and able to be put on flat surfaces or hung from ceilings, lanterns have the added benefit of providing more light than an ordinary torch will, too. Once a player has a steady supply of iron, lanterns are definitely worth the investment.

6 Have Higher Ceilings

How To Create: N/A

With Endermen on the loose, it becomes second nature to have low ceilings just in case some eye contact goes wrong. This is absolutely a good idea, but in areas where decoration is a priority, higher ceilings, ideally at least four blocks, are the way to go.

This gives players enough space for chests, cauldrons, and other crafting tools on the floor and ceiling levels while still leaving enough space for players to see through any windows or place wall decorations with ease. Another benefit is leaving space for any ceiling lights should the player want them later.

5 When In Doubt, Add Bookshelves

How To Create: Books And Wood

If it’s hard to place exactly what’s missing from a room or tell if it needs something extra to fill it in, bookshelves are a perfect choice for anyone who wants their Minecraft home to feel lived in.

Whether it’s a bedside table, a library room, or just a wall that looks like it needs some shelves, bookshelves are the perfect decoration block for players with an easy supply of leather who are looking for a more studious or colorful look to their home.

4 Use Barrels Instead Of Chests

How To Create: Wood And Wooden Slabs

Chests certainly have their uses, and when it comes to pure storage capacity they’re the best of their kind. However, when decorating the inside of a base in Minecraft, it’s best not to default to chests as the only mode of storage.

Unlike chests, barrels can have items on top of them and still work, allowing more room for items like brewing stands, or upper cabinets if the player needs more storage. While barrels only hold as many items as a small chest can, their ability to fit into smaller spaces and even under stairs makes them a much better mode of storage than many give them credit for.

3 Signs Aren't Just For Writing

How To Create: Wood And Sticks

This is a more popular trick for anyone who’s been aching for proper furniture in Minecraft houses. Rightly so, as a set of blank signs on either side of some stairs is the perfect stand-in for an armchair or sofa. However, creative players will be able to find even more uses for signs, whether it’s adding texture to a wall, adding different designs with dye, or just keeping things nicely labeled in the house.

Regardless of exactly how they’re used, signs often offer an extra touch of detail, no matter how subtle, that keeps a house from feeling empty.

2 Make Closets With Barrels And Doors

How To Create: Wood And Wooden Slabs

For players who want more aesthetic storage, barrels are already a lifesaver. But for anyone who wants to take the storage in their home a step further, hollowing out a space in the wall for a closet is a great way to increase immersion.

Closets can be any size, so long as the hole for them is at least two blocks deep to fit a layer of barrels behind the door. Since Barrels can open even with blocks on top of them, even just two barrels on top of each other will offer as much storage as a large chest while taking up far less horizontal space.

1 Make Your Floors Interesting

How To Create: Get Different Wood Types And Start Mixing

One of the simplest yet most effective touches to make a room or house interior feel interesting is making sure it has a good floor. Whether this is by using a carpet, slabs to make a raised or lowered section, or mixing woods to make a design, it’s hard to go wrong with a well-made floor.

If wood isn’t the right material, this same rule can also apply to stones of any kind by using a variety of bricks, polished, or chiseled blocks in the same material to add texture and detail.