When it comes to picking an aesthetic for towns in Minecraft, medieval is one of the most obvious choices. With the types of blocks Minecraft has to offer and their relative ease to gather, a medieval look is the best fit for the game's style.
Generating many different ideas for houses can be tough, though, and new players especially will be looking for house designs that are a little more than pointy boxes of wood and stone. Thankfully, the Minecraft community is a massive and welcoming one, with plenty of fresh ideas out there for players to take inspiration from
Updated on October 9, 2021, by Ryan Woodrow: As Minecraft passes 10 years since its official 1.0 release, the community is as active as ever. They continue to build bigger and better designs as the game adds new blocks with new possibilities.
With the 1.18 Caves and Cliffs Part 2 update set to literally change the Minecraft landscape, players will be hungrier than ever for impressive, realistic medieval designs to populate the new sprawling plains and unforgiving mountains new world generation will offer.
13 Simple And Clean
Image By: InventorPWB
Basic wood and stone are the most useful materials when building in this style because they easily stick to the real-life buildings of the time. Knowing how to properly mix the two is key to getting the most of the style, and this design is perfect for that.
The stone base gives everything a solid foundation and establishes the basic materials, however, it doesn't overwhelm the design with boring grey. Instead, the wood takes over the design as it goes upward, mixing light and dark to allow the framework and the walls to complement each other. The roof can be made with either bricks or lighter wood, but both have a strong sense of color while keeping true to the style.
12 Well Underway
Image By: Sad Fix8700
Despite being fairly simple objects, wells can be quite difficult to make look good, as the wells in Minecraft's NPC villages make clear. This is for a couple of reasons. One, wells are traditionally round, something Minecraft isn't quite equipped for. Secondly, they're very small, and it's hard to get any kind of detail in such a small building.
This design makes the most out of a 3 x 3 design by using a large variety of small and thin blocks. The only whole block in the entire design is the stone brick around the base. Everything else utilizes walls, fences, half-slabs, and even trapdoors to keep everything at a good scale without feeling weird and bulky. This design can even be scaled up with little effort for those who want something more substantial.
11 Time To Go To Church
Image By: jdawgrockz
Often the biggest and grandest building in any medieval town (aside from the castle), the church is typically the only place where every resident of the town will regularly gather. That means it's got to be big and beautiful on both the inside and outside.
This design achieves that brilliantly by stuffing every nook and cranny with texture and detail. While it's predominantly made of grey blocks, the brown highlights of the wood keep it interesting, and even the plain-grey surfaces are broken up with in-dents and pillars, never letting the design settle and grow dull. What's more is all of the techniques are fairly simple and only require players to place a few stairs and half-slabs in the right arrangement, meaning anyone can do it with a bit of know-how.
10 Small And Stylish
Image by: Phelps Builds
Starting off with the basics, this house is a simple and nice-looking example of many of the techniques that make medieval buildings in Minecraft. The white walls (made with either Terracotta or Concrete) combined with dark wooden highlights are a key part of this style.
On top of that, it's an easy introduction to one of the most challenging aspects of these buildings, the rooves. Building a set of stairs from either side to meet in the middle is all well as good, but this building is a simple example of how to mix stairs and normal blocks to make something more interesting to look at, as well as the choice of color. This particular design will require some Nether wood, but that should be no trouble for players in the mid-game.
9 A House Fit For An Ealdorman
Image By: Rhiannon
This house takes the same techniques as before but makes them a bit bigger and more complicated for a much grander design. This is a perfect house design for any high-status area of a town, away from the peasantry and general populous.
Using Stone Bricks instead of White Concrete, the wooden logs are used to give the building an outside scaffolding that was often in these buildings around that time. Additionally, using fences instead of glass for windows is more time-appropriate, as glass was an expensive commodity.
8 Blacksmith's House
Image by: BlueNerd Minecraft
When thinking of commercial buildings to dot around a medieval town, a blacksmith is a must-have. Blacksmiths weren't quite common a fixture of towns as media would have people believe; they often lived and worked in the local barracks/castle. However, it just wouldn't feel right without some friendly bearded man out by his house, hitting some heated metal with a hammer.
This design uses the white and wood technique on the building but builds a stone tier into the bottom. This gives the idea that the bottom floor could be the blacksmith's store, while the top is where they live. Additionally, the outside area shows how many of the game's workbenches can be used for decorative purposes. This is a design where players could potentially use mods to make the whole thing even more intricate.
7 A Noble House
Image By: SwordSelf MC
This design pushes the techniques already shown and pushes them bigger and bolder. This one will be quite resource-intensive, using a lot of Terracotta for the walls and roof, but when the house looks as pretty as this, it's worth the effort.
With various sections of the house sticking out from the main section, this shows how irregular shapes make for far more interesting buildings. Additionally, the use of Lecterns as posts around the edges is the perfect way to use utility blocks for other purposes.
6 Farmhouse
Image By: BuildTherapy
Big or small, rich or poor, everyone needs to eat. A farmhouse is another clear choice for buildings in any medieval town, and this one is rather humble. This house is quite easy to build, but it still packs in a massive helping of detail, and studying it can be useful for players looking to learn how and where detail can be added to bigger builds.
While the farm shown is quite small, this house could easily be placed in the middle of a massive field. Additionally, the house's design is basic enough that it could be scaled up without much trouble, making it very versatile. Finally, throw in some Villagers and the whole thing could potentially run on autopilot.
5 Choosing The Right Texture
Image By: MinecraftHouseIdeas
This house is another fine example of the usual medieval house techniques, this time using stone as the outer scaffolding as opposed to wood. The colors are unusual on this one, but the use of sandstone makes for a more unique feel.
What this house also does is showcase how impressive using different Resource Packs can be when finding the right look for buildings. The pack used in this image is John Smith Legacy, but there are plenty of other packs out there for medieval looks, maybe even something more realistic.
4 Something A Little Bit Different
Image By: nrgmix
While most medieval buildings will have their basis in realism, that doesn't always have to be the case. Many fantasy worlds use a medieval setting, so players may want to be on the lookout for medieval buildings that are a bit more "out-there" for their design.
This is one such building. It makes use of all the techniques medieval builders are familiar with but applies them to a wild-looking building. These two towers could easily be home to an old sorcerer or a strange hermit who hides away from the rest of the town.
3 A Wall Of Houses
Image By: chopchop627
This is a unique design, but one that can be seen in select places throughout Europe. This row of houses (or one big house) also acts as a bit of wall, with the gap in the middle leading into somewhere.
While it's unlikely that these would be the walls to a town, they could easily make a very stylish entrance to a nice plaza, with lots of houses around the outside and maybe a market in the middle. Alternatively, this could simply be the front wall of a much larger building, to which the hole in the middle is the entrance.
2 Stay At The Inn
Image By: Dukeonred1
Every town of any worth needs a place where travelers can get a good drink, some good food, and a place to rest their heads. An Inn is a place where all of these needs will be met, and this one will certainly do the job.
A rather complex design, this takes almost all of the techniques seen so far and pulls them together for an extremely impressive building, with a Resource Pack adding texture to the white walls and roof, as well as some intricate detailing on the front. There are even a few modded blocks in there too. This one will put anyone's building skills to the test.
1 A Mansion Big Enough For A Village
Image By: AhKafamaGeldi
For players who have more resources than they know what to do with, here is the ultimate challenge in medieval building. The dimensions of this building exceed 100 x 100 x 100 blocks and will certainly take a while to complete, but it will be a sight to behold once it's finished. Not to mention, this is just one of many huge buildings.
While it's not the most complex of designs, the detailing on each of the front-facing walls is impressive, and the way all of the extensions lock together is beautiful. Perhaps the biggest challenge for this building is designing the interior. Players could make it massive and open, or it could be a complete labyrinth to navigate; they may just need a slightly beefier PC to see it in all its glory.
Minecraft was released on November 18, 2011, and is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, iOS, Android, Raspberry Pi, Windows Phone, Wii U, Nintendo Switch, and Apple TV.