Sometimes it's hard to make good looking houses in minecraft. So in this instructables I'm going to walk you through the process on how to make great looking houses!

I've played Minecraft for over 7 years, so I have a lot of building experience, hopefully I can share a bit of that experience with you.

Hope you enjoy!

Step 1: Layout

The first step is to do a little planning. One thing you don't want to do is having the shape be a plain rectangle. Making a more complex shape for the layout will make it look better, It's pretty hard to over do it. But try to avoid symmetry, asymmetry will make it look more interesting. When making a layout it's important to make sure the walls are a odd number of blocks long, this will help a lot down the road.

Step 2: What Blocks to Use?

there are 4 main parts to pick blocks for the house the walls, frame, detailing and the roof.

For the walls I like to use ether hardened clay (terracotta) or wood planks. Nearly all the colors of clay would look good, but if you don't know what color to I'd recommend light blue or lime green. As far as wood the only types I'd stay clear of are jungle and acacia for your first house, but growth is achieved when you try new things. but other then those they all look good. And for the frame I always go with logs, except for the birch and jungle logs they all look fine. And for the roof and detailing just try to pick a contrasting color of wood to the walls. The roof and detailing can be different types or the same.

Step 3: Basic Shape

Now that you have the layout done and blocks picked out you can start making it look like a house.

Start by rising the walls to be 4 or 5 block tall. when doing this indent the walls so the logs stick out by 1 block, this will give it more depth. If you're going to add a second floor do so now. Make the second floor 1 block longer on parallel sides, so it looks like the photo. And the height 4 to 5 blocks tall again. around the base of the second floor add logs going sideways to add separation to the floors.

Step 4: Detailing

The main goal of detailing is to fill space so its not so plain.

A simple thing you can do is add stairs to the corners of a wall, either all 4 or just 2 opposite corners. To split up a long (or short) wall you can add a log beam. Make shapes out of fences, slabs, stairs, etc: They can be pretty weird just mess around and see what works!

For windows the easiest way to add detail is adding an awning which can range from fancy to just a few blocks.

Step 5: Adding a Roof

This step can make or break a house. I'm going to show you 2 types of roofs.

Roof #1. Start by framing the in the basic shape of the roof by going 1 block in and 2 blocks up, until they meet in the middle: do this on both sides. Use a combination of solid blocks and stairs to make the roof as shown above. Then if you want to go a step further you can make the roof sunken in. For this I like to start with a normal roof then work my way down from the top, just try not to make it look too perfect.

Roof #2. This roof isn't as steep as the other one starting 1 block off the roof alternate between slabs and stairs. The reason I don't use just slabs is because then it would be hard to connect the roof to the walls.