Hot tubs have always been a sign of prestige and luxury. What is more relaxing than being able to sit in a large tub of warm and bubbling water and just relax with a glass of your drink of choice?
Well, if you wish to feel just as fancy in Minecraft, you’re in luck.
Despite Minecraft’s overall lean to more historical or medieval builds, there is plenty of options in building material for us to build something that seems more modern or even futuristic. This includes a hot tub.
In this article we will show you a few tricks on how to build your very own hot tub and even sell the appearance with bubbling and steaming water.
How to Make Water Effects
The most important part of a hot tub is the water itself. It isn’t a hot tub without the hot bubbly water.
Luckily, there are several different ways to give this effect to the water inside your tub in Minecraft.
One of them is by using either magma blocks or soul sand to create the bubble effects, the other is by using campfires to create “steam” that rises from the tub.
Picking which one to use is all a matter of preference.
Making Bubbly Water
To create a bubbly effect in water you will have get your hands on either soul sand or magma blocks. These are two blocks that affect water in Minecraft and they’re usually used to make water elevators in tall builds.
These two blocks usually pull (magma blocks) or push (soul sand) the player down or up, whilst creating a bubble effect beneath water.
However, only soul sand has bubbles that appear on the surface of water because of the upward push. Magma blocks are only visible once you are underwater.
For this build it is better to use soul sand, but it is also much safer than magma blocks.
All you will need to do to get this effect is putting the soul sand under the water at whichever depth you need it. Very quickly you will see the bubbles form.
Steaming Water
To make the water seem hot and steamy you will need a campfire. Campfires are the only blocks in Minecraft that emit a smoke cloud as part of their animation when lit up.
However, the trick is that campfires can be extinguished in various ways, which includes water.
When building your hot tub you will first have to secure the campfire before putting in the water. You will have to keep the water closed off while also having a way for the smoke to rise up.
You can do this with trap doors. Iron trap doors look the best for a hot tub design.
Start by making a 2 block deep hole and putting your campfire at the bottom. Then place the trap doors above it and make sure they are closed. After that you can put down the water.
A tip for getting the most smoke for the steamiest water is to place the trap door as close as possible right above the campfire. Any higher than the first available block will leave you with very few smoke clouds coming out.
Building a Hot Tub
When you have picked the water effect you want it is time to get to building the hot tub.
Regardless which method you have chosen, you will have to start by digging either a 1 or 2 block deep hole into the ground. On the bottom is where you will be putting down your bubble blocks or campfire. For my hot tubs I chose to use soul sand.
Because I have chosen soul sand I will only dig the hole 1 block deep and make it 3 by 3 blocks in size.
I will then fill in the hole with the soul sand. Then I can immediately get to building my hot tub design right around it, with water being the last element I will add.
Around the soul sand I place down quartz stairs without connecting the corners. These will be the steps into the hot tub. Around the stairs I place down smooth sandstone in the shape you can see in the image below.
By now you can put the water down on the sand and you will see it bubble.
This design does not feel fully complete. We want to add a little more to it.
On the corners of the tub’s frame I will add fences that extend over the hot tub and create a little roof using regular carpet. I chose light blue carpet, because I personally adore the color.
Since carpet cannot actually float in the air, you will have to use string right beneath so that you can place the carpet down. Otherwise you can opt for a different type of material. Trap doors can make for interesting roofs as well.
Then I surround the area using spruce slabs so they can act as armrests or tables.
You can decorate these with flower pots to act as glasses and even place down cake for the guests enjoying the warm water. You can even use custom heads for more detail.
The rest is purely up to adding details and different decorations. I added azalea bushes and leaves to make the area prettier and seem a bit more cozy. Finally, I added white banners as towels for the guests to take on their way out of the water.
Building Other Designs
As long as you have gotten down the basics of creating your desired effects under water then you can play around with the hot tub design as much as you like.
Make them as big or small as you want, with any material at your disposal.
The hot tub may be the perfect addition to a hotel build you are preparing, because who wouldn’t love to lounge in one during their vacation.
If you are wondering how to get about building a hotel, consider looking at our hotel building tutorial which will help you grasp the basics for such a fancy and large build.
