Having to build a house on the ground can certainly leave you vulnerable when you are playing early on in the game. Any mob can spawn and simply take you and your build out in a flash.
Not only that, but sometimes you need to switch things up.
The jungle biome is very well known for its amazingly tall trees and I know for a certain I am not the only one who has looked up at jungle trees and simply wanted to live in them. Just climb to the very top and build myself a lovely little hideaway.
Well that is exactly what we will be doing in this article. I will be showing you different designs and how to build your very own treehouse.
Before You Start
Consider the size of the build you wish to make. If you want a small and cozy treehouse you can do that on almost any tree, but the jungle biome is usually the most popular for building treehouses.
Another biome to consider is the taiga, where spruce trees grow incredibly tall as well, or dark oak forests.
Before you start building you will need to secure yourself a good number of ladders, regardless where you’re building.
The ladders you will use to reach your house.
Scaffolding is also an option, but it is not always easy to find bamboo early on. Not to mention scaffolding can be pretty flimsy and too easy to break while in the process of building with it.
The next thing is to make sure you use either slabs or even trapdoors (best looking are spruce ones) to make the floor of your house. Regular sized blocks will be too big and clunky on such a small build.
Finally, try and use the tree to your advantage the best you can and blend your build in with it.
Think of using the canopy of the tree as the roof or the body of the tree as part of the interior.
Building a Small Treehouse
If you are going to be building your treehouse on vanilla Minecraft trees, then they will most likely have to be rather simple and small. My goal is to build a cozy little house without changing the tree’s structure too much.
First thing you will have to do is find the tree you wish to build on and climb to the canopy.
Make sure you have all your materials ready as you climb up. Once up, you will likely have to clear up a portion of the leaves in the tree you wish to build on, but do not destroy the whole branch.
We will firstly start off by using wood slabs to decide the size of our home. Be very careful that you are placing the slabs on the top part of the block so that you may be able to place other blocks on top of them.
Mine will be somewhat circular.
Because this build is so small, we will not be building a full set of walls. Instead, we will simply fence in the area, just to add some security.
I make poles using jungle logs and jungle fences and gates. In a few areas I use leaves to close off the build.
Then, all that is left is adding your utility blocks, like your storage, crafting table, furnace, and bed. I add these on the back to make it look like a wall.
After that I go around the build to just add some details, like trap doors and additional slabs and staircases to just make it look prettier from the outside.
Building a Big Treehouse
The problem with building bigger treehouses is not necessarily the treehouse itself, but making it fit on a tree. Vanilla Minecraft trees aren’t known to be particularly large in most cases.
For this, depending how big you wish to go, it would be wise to try building a custom tree.
That way you can have a build that will not be limited by the tree itself.
Though, for this article we will remain on our vanilla jungle trees and do what we can with the trees we have right now.
Like before we will start by building a platform that will be the main floor of our treehouse. Of course this one will be significantly bigger than our previous house. For this one I am using a plus shape with support beams holding up the roof.
Once again I am not fully closing off the treehouse with walls, because I prefer it to be open. On the front ends there will be fences closing it in.
Later on the furniture will be what closes off the gaps between the roof and the platform.
Where the roof meets the tree I will build a little terrace that can be accessed through another ladder.
On the inside: each branch of the base will be an area of it’s own. There will be a mini farm, a smelting and crafting area, a kitchen, and finally the bed area.
These are not set in stone.
The mini farm is pretty simple. The hardest part of making it is having water that stays in place.
For this build I put the water underneath the barrels and closed it in with spruce trapdoors. The water will keep the farm wet, but because the platform is made out of slabs the water will flow down under our treehouse. For this we will build something under the treehouse to stop the water.
Feel free to furnish and turn the whole thing around however you want to. You can even put your farm on the terrace above.
Once the area is secure, lit up, and furnished, I can work on adding the details. The first thing I will do is make this treehouse look more supported, rather than leaving it just floating in the air.
I do this by stacking stairs on each side of the tree and connecting them to the tree’s base in a cone shape.
Depending how big this cone is you can also use it for additional room, but it will mainly serve for aesthetic and to stop the water from your mini farm from flowing out of your treehouse. If you do the farm like I did, the slabs themselves will not keep the water in place otherwise.
A Treehouse Village
A treehouse doesn’t always have to be a singular building. If you feel confident enough with your treehouse building skills, consider building multiple different treehouses. You can even build a whole village because the jungle trees in the jungle biome can often be close together.
This allows you to easily connect one house to another with bridges and platforms.
The possibilities are endless. You can build multiple buildings as part of your megabase or you can try building your own village in the trees.
