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Learn How →Every starter design is built on a flat plot using only basic blocks you can gather on day one — oak logs, planks, cobblestone, and glass. Each card shows the floor plan exactly the way our circle generator shows pixel blueprints, so you can place blocks tile-by-tile without guessing. Pick a footprint, count the blocks, and start building.
The fastest first-night shelter. Build it in under 5 minutes.
Top-down floor plan
Front elevation
Room for a bed, crafting bench, and a small storage wall.
Top-down floor plan
Front elevation
Adds a covered porch — feels less boxy, still beginner-simple.
Top-down floor plan
Front elevation
Same footprint, double the storage. Bedroom upstairs, workshop down.
Top-down floor plan
Front elevation
Two bedrooms split by a central kitchen. The graduation house.
Top-down floor plan
Front elevation
Tiny Starter (7×7) is enough. You only need a bed, a crafting bench, and a door. Anything bigger wastes wood you don't have yet.
Cozy or L-Shape (9×9 / 11×9). Room for a furnace stack, a small chest wall, and a 2×2 wheat plot. The L-shape's covered porch is great for safe outdoor crafting.
Two-Story or Family (9×9 / 13×11). Separate sleeping from working. The Family layout has space for two beds, a kitchen, and a small enchanting nook.
Use the L-Shape — its irregular footprint hides terrain steps better than a square. Anchor the long arm into the hillside and let the short arm cantilever out.
A single block height feels claustrophobic in first-person. Always go 2 blocks of head clearance minimum — 3 if you have the wood.
Doesn't matter for mobs, but it does matter for sunlight. The sun rises in the east, so face the door (or your biggest window wall) east to get morning light streaming in instead of hitting the back wall.
A flat slab roof is the #1 reason starter houses look like boxes. Even a single layer of stairs around the perimeter transforms the silhouette.
Mobs spawn outside in the dark and crowd your door. Place a torch on each outer corner of the house — turns the surrounding 7-block radius safe.
A 7×7 or 9×9 square with a peaked roof is the best starter design. It uses only basic blocks (oak logs, planks, glass), takes under 10 minutes, and fits a bed, crafting table, furnace, and small storage wall. Avoid anything bigger than 11×11 on day one — you won't have the wood for it.
A typical 9×9 starter house uses about 168 blocks total: 32 logs for corner posts, ~50 planks for walls and floor, ~24 stairs for the roof, and a handful of glass and accent blocks. The five designs on this page list exact block counts — between 96 and 312 blocks depending on size.
Yes. All five designs use vanilla blocks available in both editions and don't rely on edition-specific mechanics. The crafting recipes for the materials shown work identically on both — only the internal numeric block IDs differ, which doesn't affect building.
5×5 is the absolute minimum (3×3 interior fits a bed and crafting bench). 7×7 is the smallest size that still feels livable with a furnace and a small chest. Below 5×5 you save almost no blocks and lose all the quality-of-life space.
Flat ground is faster and lets you use any of these plans as-is. Hills look more atmospheric but require terraforming or a stilted foundation. If you're new, flatten a 13×13 area near water and trees and use the Cozy or Family plan.
Three quick wins: (1) add a 1-block roof overhang on all sides, (2) use stripped logs as horizontal accents between floors, (3) place fences with trapdoors as window shutters. None of this requires nether trips or villager trades.
Five medieval-styled designs with timber framing, cobblestone bases, and peaked roofs. From a humble cottage to a lord's manor.
Five modern designs with flat roofs, full glass walls, and white-and-black concrete trim. Includes a pool build and a multi-story villa.
Five defensible base designs — bunker, moat fortress, sky base, underground vault, and fortress compound. Built for hostile worlds and PvP servers.
Use our circle generator for round towers, domes, ovals, and spheres up to 256 blocks wide.