Tutorials/Roof decorations

It seems that every part of a roof that could be decorated, is, in some roof design or other. There now follows a list of some of the more common embellishments.

Top ridge


The top ridge of a roof is an obvious place for decoration. In this image we use a stone fence to top off a gable roof. Note that the building is an odd width so that its roof comes to more of a point.

End ridges


Where a row of buildings is split into several smaller habitations, as in this terraced row of houses, extending the shared (party) walls above the roof surface makes the separation between buildings visible. Note how the terrace ends have also been decorated to maintain symmetry.

Parapets


To keep an inhabited building 'in scale', its roof should be in proportion with the building's other stories. Large featureless roofs tend to cover barns and hangars, and are rarely found covering dwelling places. In practice, a good rule of thumb for roof height is to make it more than one storey but less than two storeys high. Hence with 4-metre storeys, the roof should be in the range of 5–7 metres.

Whenever a roof's volume is large enough, it will tend to be used for additional rooms, perhaps even additional floors, and that in turn requires inset windows and other adjustments rather than a large expanse of blank sloping roof area. Extending the parapet vertically is often useful on larger constructions, as it allows the roof size to be reduced. This helps bring it back into scale with the rest of the building.

Stepped gable


There are two common ways to 'end' a roof. One method is to extend it a way beyond the edge of the building. This helps keep the walls and ground around the building foundations drier. The other way is to extend some or all the parapet wall higher than the roof, allowing for various decorative finishes, and shrinking the size of the roof relative to the rest of the building. These designs include the Flemish gable, stepped gable and some other variants.

Stepped gables are also known as corbie steps, crow steps or craw steps. This is a simple, effective and distinctive look for a Minecraft building.

Flemish gable


A Flemish gable is a decorative end to a roof containing one or more curves, and it is hard to model these convincingly at normal Minecraft scales. It's probably best to consider them merely 'a decorative roof ending' rather than trying to make them accurate. This roof style is also known as a Dutch gable. A similar design is the older clock gable, which is slightly more bell-shaped and has a cluster of three windows in the top area of the gable.

Dormers
A dormer is a structural element of a building that protrudes from the sloping plane of the roof. (C.f. monitor, which straddles a roof ridge.) Dormers create extra space in the roof by adding headroom and allowing the addition of dormer windows. Dormers have their own 'mini-roofs' above them, and these can have almost as wide a variety of roof types on them as the buildings themselves.

One unsual type of dormer is the blind dormer. This is a dummy dormer that is only visible from the outside of the building, and is there to make it look grander, more balanced, or to add interest to an otherwise featureless roof. A blind dormer could look like any other dormer type.

Patterned roof tiles


Embedding a pattern in the roof tiles themselves is a simple way to add flavour. Even tiny decorative flourishes can add up to make a noticeable difference, especially if you apply them as a theme throughout an entire settlement.

Facades


A facade is a way to add a decorative front to a plainer (and often cheaper) building. They are used to make a building look more attractive or grander than it really is, or to disguise a building's unusual shape (especially if its roof is the problem) so that it fits in better with its neighbours.

In Minecraft, redstone constructions may have all sorts of unusual shapes, and a facade may be a good way to disguise these workings.