Tutorials/Adding beauty to constructions

This tutorial is to give aesthetic advice for your home or building. The beauty in exterior design can come from many different elements all interacting together. No matter what architectural style or color scheme you choose, the most important aspect of exterior design is adding details. This means that if you're building a blue colonial style home, you want to make sure to use different shades of blue blended together, maybe with another color as an accent. Try not to make your build look like a box. People may not always agree with your style, but attention to detail is undeniable.

Basic
Note: The player can install a furniture mod to add even more realistic furniture. Carpenter's Blocks is also a good mod which lets you shape any block however you want.

Floor
Under certain circumstances, a glass floor can look excellent (for example, as a see-through bridge over a ravine or river, or a room where the ceiling and floor are identical), but in most builds, glass is not the material to use. It's recommended that the floor should not be made out of grass or dirt blocks, as they are better suited to outdoor landscaping. It is better to use a floor made of wood planks or stone (including its variants such as sandstone). Smooth stone looks good as tiles, as well as polished granite, diorite, and andesite. Wool is decorative, but again, keep it away from fire hazards. Use concrete as a fireproof alternative. Carpet is a much better alternative to wool, due to its being cheaper. Also, you can put mycelium under carpet to make the carpet look mystical or sparkly. To add a touch of oldness to your floor, for example, if it is made out of stone bricks, use some regular stone bricks (the more, the less abandoned it looks), some cracked stone bricks, and some cobblestone/gravel as very cracked stone bricks. Variation of blocks in your floor adds detail to it, you can also use the mossy variant of stone bricks/cobblestone. To make the floor look worn down/heavily trampled use stone and/or light gray wool. Sandstone floors can have cracks if a sandstone stair block is placed in an upside down position. For a tiled effect, try dark prismarine, which look good in environments such as kitchens, bathrooms and swimming pools. Terracotta and glazed terracotta blocks can form a satisfying, space age floor. Bone blocks can look good when placed sideways to make a smooth, white, lined floor. Wood or stripped wood floors can also look good.

Windows
If you are in the beginning of your survival, it's a matter of preference as to whether or not you want to go focus on aesthetics or material conservation. If you choose the latter, then it's recommended not to use glass blocks, as you can use glass panes to conserve materials. If you either chose the former or are more advanced in your world, you should use glass blocks if it looks better.

If windows are at one to two blocks above the ground, it is easy to see out of them. Make large windows that take up a section of wall for a more open feel. If you make 1x2 windows, you can add wood blocks or trapdoors at the ends for shutters. If you want your glass blocks to have a cloudier look, grab eight of them and one white dye and craft some white stained glass. The resulting blocks, if used correctly, can look amazing. Other colors can be used, for example, a muddy effect can be created with a brown stained glass, and blue stained glass blends in almost perfectly with water.

Again, depth is crucial to making your buildings stand out, and this also applies to windows. Some examples of depth being used are bay windows, which extrudes the glass out to make a mini room. The circular framed windows are another popular choice, which has an outer frame with the glass placed behind.

It is highly recommended to use the circular frame, however, if it doesn't fit your build, an arch will do the same job. Several YouTubers including Grian and MinecraftCinematics have created videos explaining the concept of depth further, they also provide easy tutorials suitable to your theme of choice.

Ceiling
If your ceiling is 2 blocks high, people can't jump. Adjust it so that it measures 3 to 4 blocks high, so your home will have a more spacious feel. Remember that endermen are three blocks tall, so keep your house well lit to prevent them from spawning; note that this will not prevent endermen that have spawned elsewhere from teleporting into your home. Or you could just make a 2.5 tall room by having a slab ceiling. A top slab floor will prevent any mobs from spawning.

Appearance wise, many would suggest 4-5 blocks high as a small room, so remember that your house should have varied room ceilings. For example, a living room in a medieval house would usually reach to 5-6 blocks high, while dining halls in a medival castle would reach up 10-12 blocks high, with the rooms reaching a mere 4-5 blocks tall. Your color palette should be used in the roof, as with the rest of your house. This means that for a house made of mainly oak and spruce planks, acacia planks for a ceiling would not fit.

To add detail, one example would be to place staircases near columns reaching to the ceiling, in order to smoothen the transition between wall and roof.

Stairs
If you have staircases that use full blocks instead of Stair blocks, it is a good idea to switch them out. It makes it much easier to walk. If you want long stairs, use slabs. For completely vertical transport use a minecart, piston, or water elevator. If you want to use up horizontal space, use slabs and blocks. You could also use a slab/stair/block recurring pattern for slightly longers stairs (1.5 blocks apart to be exact), for more horizontal travel. Also you can use slab/slab/block/block, slab/slab/stair/block/block and so on to state the stairway's shininess.

Hall
Make a hallway if you have multiple rooms. They should be three or four blocks wide for a large house, and two blocks wide for smaller ones. Use carpets for this part to add some color, though wool works as well. It is recommended to also leave a space for a window if you have the space, so it will look brighter.

Exterior
Include a garden of shrubs, flowers, a few trees, and some potted plants. Put one or two leaf blocks on top of wood to make hedges. If your garden is large enough, consider adding a tree house, pool, or even a fountain (see far below) to be the center of attention. Make sure to put stairs and other tile blocks (like stairs and slabs) to make it look even better.

Safety
When building a settlement or construction, you want a safe, useful, and reliable building. You don't want your finely decorated home, filled with diamond, plants, fountain, etc. to explode down to the ground or go down in flames. Here are a few safety precautions:


 * Be careful with wood and wool. They spread fire and will be burnt. If you are building a house with it, and a fire starts, it won't burn forever, but you will lose a significant part of your house.


 * Be careful when using fire charges, flint and steel, or lava buckets inside your house. One minute nothing's happening, then the next the whole house is alight.


 * Lightning strikes can start fires, which will luckily be extinguished quickly by the rain. However, it would be much safer if you use a lightning rod, especially if your house is built out of flammable blocks.


 * Try not to build with dirt, grass, sand, or red sand, because endermen can pick it up and let mobs into your house.

Others
Keep lots of open spaces and do not use too many doors, so your house will look more than "Designer". Light rooms up with redstone lamps or sea lanterns and glowstone instead of torches to improve lighting, or add chandeliers for a classier look. Also you can put paintings or item frames on the walls that look empty. You can "hang up" a torch by placing a torch on a block, then an item frame on the same block, before finishing it up by placing a stone button, stone slab, or an anvil inside the item frame. (Note that this will not work in Bedrock Edition due to the fact that item frames are not entities in that version.) You can also keep cats and dogs in the building.

Kitchen
Include tables. These can be made either by making an extended piston upwards, by placing a carpet/pressure plate on a fence/wall, or using upside-down stairs and slabs. The piston and slab methods allow you to place decorations on the table.

Don't forget a sink. It can be built using a filled cauldron or a hopper directed at the wall, with a down lever or tripwire hook at the top to simulate your taps. You could also place a dropper filled with water bottles behind the block bearing the lever (faucet), which when "turned on" will pour out free water.

For a cooking range you could use a smoker topped by iron pressure plates or detector rails, and put some stairs a few blocks above to simulate a range hood.

Add a crafting table as a worktop, and droppers with item frames containing rotated snow layers as cabinets that hold bowls and bottles.

You could also add an island in the middle of the room, iron bars to simulate an area to hang pans, and a table that contains normal cake and chocolate cake simulated by daylight detectors.

Although expensive, hanging a beacon block from the ceiling makes for elegant lighting.

Living Room
Include chairs and couches, and something decorative or something to do. You can also add a fireplace, but beware of fire! You can make fireplaces out of any material, but it is recommended to use stone or brick. You can also use a campfire to remove the risk, and add decorative appeal. Add a few chests and put some trapdoors on their faces, and you have a cabinet. You can also hide chests under chests here.

Bedroom(s)
Include a bed, paintings, a jukebox, and a dresser made by stacking chests behind doors. Optionally, you may wish to include an ender chest to keep safe any valuables and easily transport materials in bulk. However, it may not be recommended due to the cost of the components used in construction. A bedside table is also great decoration (see "furniture" for table construction).

Bathroom
Use dark prismarine for the floor, as it resembles small bathroom tiles. For bigger tiles, quartz does no harm. Glazed terracotta blocks can also help with tiling.

Add fences/ladders or end rods as a towel rack. Iron bars could also do good as a small radiator.

To build a toilet, put two upside down quartz stairs that are facing away from each other. On one side put a normal quartz block with a lever on top, and put an iron trapdoor on it so it lies on top of the other upside down stair.

Furniture
Chair

Note that you can make a couch by adding more stairs. Chairs can also be made using a slab of preferably oak for the bottom, armrests made of trapdoors and a door for the back to give your chairs that extra-classy feel.

Table

A village-style table can be made from a pressure plate atop a fence post. Carpets can be used the same way, and look better. Connecting more than one table when using carpets will look better also. Oftentimes, a simple slab floating at waist-height can suffice, sometimes fitting in with 'alternative style homes'. Another way of making larger tables with only four legs is to use carpets, fence posts and string, as carpets can be placed on string.

Appliances
Sink

Oven

Replace the furnace with a dispenser for a washing machine, clothing dryer or dishwasher.

Fridge

Water cooler

Fish Tank

Place the stairs upside down, and facing out the way the ice is. The player can also build an actual fish tank with using glass (not panes, as water will flow through them) and fish buckets. First, build a box out of glass, and then fill it with the fish buckets and buckets of water. It is possible to add some seagrass, kelp or sea cucumbers for decoration, or even coral blocks if the tank is large enough. A larger tank can be used to hold squid and, if it has an open top, dolphins, but will be quite hard to create in survival. A tank holding guardians is also possible, but should be only done in creative, as guardians are extremely hostile towards players. Squid should never be held in the same tank as guardians, as guardians will attack them, eventually resulting in the squid's death. Silverfish, despite their name, are not fish, and will drown if placed in a fish tank.

Large building decorations
To give beauty to your builds, you could build on of these builds down below.

Statue
Side view (Cross section)



Fountain

Side View (Cross Section)

Top View

Architectural Styles
Another easy way to make a building or group of buildings look nice is to build them according to real-world styles. The style will determine the shape of your building, the material, and possibly the location as well.

Medieval
One of the most used architectural styles in Minecraft, comes from Europe and Britain in the period between 476 and 1500. (The "Medieval" period of European history is roughly the time between the fall of the Roman Empire, and the appearance of modern-style nations.) The used materials are usually wood and stone, but stained glass and roofs with varying colors (prismarine, amethyst, and colored concrete can work well) can add a more fantastic touch.

Colonial
These types of houses were first built during American Colonial times (1600-1700 roughly) using either brick or wood, depending on what was plentiful in the area. Massachusetts has a lot of good clay, so brick is popular. Farther north you might see more wooden constructions. Real-life wooden houses can be made just about any color with paint (in-game can be a little trickier), although reds, whites, yellows, and blues are common. The house type is fairly simple, as it is a rectangular prism with a few windows and add-ons basically. These could look good in a player-made town in a forest biome.

Victorian
This style came over from England with the influx of European settlers used between 1840 and about 1900. The mainstay of the time period, most buildings were made out of mass-produced brick and looked very similar. A good example of Victorian Architecture is the row houses outside many British cites during the industrial revolution. This type of architecture was very bland looking with very symmetrical design. This style looks good on flat terrain and built around large brick factories.

Brutalism
This build style, starting in 1950s England and spreading over the next two or three decades usually involves visually heavy edifices with geometric lines, solid concrete frames (indeed, a lot of exposed concrete in general), exaggerated slabs, double height ceilings, massive forbidding walls, and a predominantly monochrome palette, brutalist buildings prioritized function over form, and stripped-back minimalism over flashy design. In Minecraft, most building materials consist of Concrete or Stone as well as Iron, Glass or Wooden Blocks. Brutalism tends to produce either iconic builds or eyesore builds.

Modern
This contemporary style is based largely on the availability of more modern building materials such as pre-stressed concrete and other composites. It can feature many different colors, layouts, and building materials, but the materials allow for more open spaces and larger windows. Normally, houses are made up of rectangles all fitted together with many windows present. Try quartz or glass.

Futuristic
This style, inspired by the ambitions of late-20th century science fiction, includes sleek-looking, space age buildings, and often includes spacecraft. In the real world, buildings can be more fanciful, with structures that seem impractical (and often would have been, with older materials). In-game, large expanses of glass blocks are often used, with concrete and terracotta as other main materials. This style usually has a lighter color scheme. Especially appropriate for The End, where it can be used for making space stations.