How to Make Furniture in Minecraft

Building is a key aspect in Minecraft and has always been one of the reasons players come back to the game time and time again.

Building a castle or village is easy, but it is decorating it with all the small details that becomes hard. When all you have at your disposal are large clunky blocks, coming up with ideas for furniture inside your builds can be quite a difficult task to grasp.

We will help you get a hold of the basics of making furniture that will certainly make your interiors pop and have you be on your way to making up your very own designs.

A Game of Make-belief

When making furniture in Minecraft it is important to think outside the box. There are only a few blocks in Vanilla Minecraft that are actually designed to be furniture.

So, the majority of the furniture you will be building will rely on you using what are usually just building blocks. The most commonly used blocks when building furniture would be:

• Stairs
• Slabs
• Fences
• Walls
• Trap Doors and Doors
• Signs

This furniture you won’t be able to use the same way you would use furniture in other games. You cannot sit on your chairs or sofas, but that’s ok. It is all about the way things look that matters here.

Livingroom and Dining Room Furniture

Sometimes these two rooms can be the focal point of your build. The two share a type of furniture that you will certainly be having throughout your builds and that would be seating as well as various shelving and storage spaces.

Other than seating there are many ways of filling up these two similar spaces. Tables, end tables, shelves, storage, and other decoration all go hand in hand.

Chairs and Seating

The best and most common way of building a chair, bench, or sofa is Stairs. When not viewed as a stepping block, Stairs already look like a chair of some kind on their own. Adding some other details on or around it can certainly sell the look.

If you want a regular chair, you can place Signs or Trap Doors to the sides of a single Stair to give your chair armrests.

You can also make a fancy chair using either a Stair or Slab of your chosen material, adding the armrests and then place a Door behind it to give it a tall backrest.

This is great for fancy chairs in large dining rooms.

When building a sofa you will want it to be at least 3 blocks wide. This way you can use the curve of the Stairs to make your armrests at the sides.

Stairs also work great for sofas because you can make a corner sofa.

Tables

Building tables is a challenge on its own. Most of the time it is easiest to just use Wooden Slabs, particularly for coffee tables in living places.

Though, they look too simple. In other rooms you would want to step up your game.

A simple way of making a more authentic looking table is using a Fence Post and a type of ‘thin’ block, such as a Carpet, Pressure Plate, or a Trap Door on top of it.

If you have the space in the floor, you can use a regular Piston to make a table. However for this you will need to have a constant Redstone signal keeping the Piston activated.

If you want a long and large dining table, you can feel free to stick to Slabs. Fence Posts usually connect to one another which doesn’t make for a convincing long table, and too many Pistons looks odd.

This is something I often use in my castle dining rooms and have recently used when building the large dining table in my Japanese House.

Shelves and Storage

Shelves and different surfaces or storage spaces are a great way to fill in empty space where you may not know what to put down.

The easiest way to do this is stacking either Carpets or Slabs one on top of another. Carpets or Trap Doors appear thinner and aren’t as clunky as Slabs. The only downside is that if you use Carpets you cannot place anything else on top of them.

With Slabs and trap Doors you can still place down things like Pots and Custom Head decorations.

You can also build large shelves using a mix of Slabs or Trap Doors along with Bookshelf blocks to make something more sophisticated.

For a start try alternating between Bookshelf blocks and empty spaces, surrounding them with Trap Doors.

Then try adding more elements to it. More Barrels, Buttons to make it look like they have handles for opening. Make them taller or make them wider, adding Custom Heads and other decoration to them.

Enclose it with Doors and Trap Doors like in previous designs and you have yourself a large and fancy shelf with storage inside!

Consider also adding Lecterns with a book or trying to switch the Slabs with Trap Doors to make the detail look even finer. The best thing is that you can put Potted Plants and Lanterns on these.

Bedroom

Your bedroom can be so much more than a few Chests and the regular Minecraft Bed.

Firstly, you can greatly upgrade your Bed. Putting two (or more) of them together creates a king-sized bed for you. Putting Slabs and Stairs around it you can build a solid frame for the bed.

If you wish to give it royal flare you can add Fence Posts on each corner of this bed and build a canopy, enveloping the Bed with a curtain made from Banners.

Chests and Barrels are usable for storage, but if you place them right you can use them to add details. A Double Chest at the foot of a Bed appears like a typical trunk you would see in royal castles.

But you can also use Chests, stacked one on top of each other and surrounded by Trap Doors and Doors to make a closet.

Using the same trick around an Armor Stand you can make a closet in which you can literally hang your ‘clothes’ aka armor.

Kitchen

Now that you know how to effectively make shelves and incorporate storage space into it, you can easily make a kitchen!

A few items are a must to have in a kitchen: A Furnace or Smoker, a Cauldron filled with Water for a sink, and storage.

Using similar techniques from before, we can effectively build great looking countertops and shelves above them.
For the countertops you can put down Slabs or Trapdoors. The shelves I make using Barrels with Trap Doors beneath and above them so they don’t look bare.

If you are building a more modern kitchen, you can use a type of stone like Cobblestone Walls and an Iron Trap Door for a vent above the Smoker.

Consider using stone materials, compared to the wooden ones you see in the other rooms. Think Diorite, Andesite, Cobblestone, or pure Iron.

Decoration

You can utilize so many things for decoration. Vanilla Minecraft already has some of its own decorative items, such as the Pot for Plants, Paintings, Item Frames, Armor Stands, and others.

Those who know how to often utilize Custom Heads to add as much detail as possible to their various builds. Whether they need a particular household item or a food to place on their dining table.

Of course, as Minecraft builders, we can do so much more. It is all about thinking outside of the box and challenging our creativity.

Using Plants

Let’s take plant decorations for an example.

When a simple Potted Plant isn’t really filling up a space, try using a Cauldron for a vase. Put Leaves on top of it (2 or 3 blocks of height) and you have a beautiful potted bush. Azalea Leaves make the best results for this.

If you have the space, you can even put down a Grass Block instead of the Cauldron. Surround it with Trap Doors.
Because this is Grass, it gives you the option of placing down a lot of other plants: from Ferns to Roses, to even Azalea Bushes.

You can also place a Fence Post on the Grass and just add Leaves on top to make it look like a small tree.

Additionally, plants themselves can be used not only to light up an area, but to add more detail to a build.

Try using a Sea Pickle on a table as a cup, or make a fluffy carpet using Dead Coral!

Lighting

Lighting is important in Minecraft, not just because of the way it looks. It is a necessary part of every build, because it helps prevent Hostile Mobs from spawning.

Though, just hanging Torches or Lanterns around doesn’t always do it.

When building a chandelier you have to take in the space you may have and how low you can hang it. If you don’t have much space consider hanging a Lantern from a Chain or Iron Bar and surround it with Signs.
With enough space you can even use Banners instead of Signs.

If your build has tall ceilings you can use glowing blocks, such as Glowstone or Sea Lanterns instead of Lanterns. The most basic designs surround these blocks with Trap Doors.

You can also spread this out and build a grand chandalier from just these blocks, with a handful of smaller details.

I personally prefer expanding my ceiling lights using Lanterns, Fence Posts, and Chains.

Lamp posts are another way to bring some light into a room without relying on a tall ceiling to do so.

I like this simple design of putting a Fence Post on top of some Terracotta, a light source on top surrounded by Trap Doors or Signs.

Many designs on the internet like to play around with the ‘neck’ of the lamp posts. Some people use a potted plants, End Rods, or even Twisting Vines.

Conclusion

Thinking outside the box is key with decorating in Minecraft. Anything you can place in the world can be used to represent something.

Designs can be found all over the Internet, particularly on Forums or websites like Reddit and Pinterest. Do not feel ashamed to browse these for ideas for your own builds and designs. Combine multiple styles into one and just play around.

Remember to have fun.

If you are curious about the builds shown in this post, feel free to check out our Japanese House Tutorial and Minecraft Hotel Tutorial for more ideas.