Minecraft Forums

Hmm... you could try something out of the ordinary... Like making a giagantic pyramid and turning it into a rad house, like what I'm doing. I'll upload some screenshots in a bit.

A thing I do to jazz up my houses is a lot of arches. They almost always look good and add another dimension to the house. Like made a road or something go through your house and add an arch with stairs and slabs. They add so much depth and creativity to your houses.... I like building and I would like to hope my houses don't look like **** :P. But anyways I hoped I helped.

I've only recently became good at building good houses. Here is a tutorial of my first good house without copying someone's style. The end result should be something like this.

Use more materials. I like to use combinations of glass, logs, wood planks, and either stone bricks or clean stone.
Stay away from plain boxes. first thing being, use triangle roofs, second thing being, build into hillsides.
They last thing I would say is when you build houses on servers, take more time to get more materials, and build bigger houses. although it takes longer, it helps you get away from plain boxes.
Good luck!

@Peter: If you're going to make a foundation, just put it into the ground. Having the house's floor on top like that can look kinda silly in my opinion.

As for houses, can't say I can help much. As much as I like elves, I always take the dwarvish method, building elaborate underground bases with no more than a small wooden/dirt structure with a staircase, or else a light-ringed trapdoor.

Quote from TropicalDefeat

Here's your house, logs added, looks much better IMO.
I'd also replace the birch planks things with something else.

Do this. Looks better now.

And don't worry. I maded crappy houses a long time ago, and still do.

It's nice to add some cool and fancy entrance also a nice roof like is shown above also maybe try to add some kind of layout like wood logs around the door entrance

Quote from PeterFazekas

How many actual houses (i.e. not warehouses or stores) have you seen where the floor is on the ground level?

Touche, but from what I've seen, neither are the foundations flat on the ground. Then again, I live in Florida, where hurricanes and flooding are active concerns, so I may not have the best experiences. From what I know of buildings with basements though, most of them do have the ground floor on ground level, then build both up and down.

But that's just stuff with basements, don't know beyond that

Then again, it might be interesting to see an MC house on stilts...

I generally don't build too many houses above ground. I enjoy hollowing out large areas underground, to make some sort of underground bunker with big, 3x3 hallways. So, maybe you could try something along the lines of this. You don't worry how it looks on the outside, so all you worry about is the inside!

Alrighty, I just took a bunch of pics of my house for you. A lil backstory to it and some advice thrown in: I haven't played Minecraft in almost 7 months. Even then I was never a 'pro' at Minecraft, I know enough about it to get me by, but I'm constantly learning new things. I haven't even gotten started with redstone yet, or portals, or any other dimensions.

I currently have a lot of free time in between traveling through different countries in Europe so I picked it up again and am enjoying it more then I have 7 months ago. I created a new world and ended up spawning in a Jungle Biome, with a Winter and Grasslands Biome not too far off. From that point on I had an idea of what I wanted my house to look like. I knew I wanted to build a tree fort of some sorts that lead to the main part of my house. Now I am on Survival, and worked hard for this. The pictures below are about 5 days of actually playing (total time of approx: 72 hours). A lot of things, like the farms and current placement of my chests, crafting table, and furnaces are temporary until I finish expanding the main house.

Open up the links in a new tab so you don't have to go back to this page.
http://puu.sh/A7Iu
http://puu.sh/A7IG
http://puu.sh/A7IU
http://puu.sh/A7IZ
http://puu.sh/A7Jf
http://puu.sh/A7JG
http://puu.sh/A7JO
http://puu.sh/A7JX
http://puu.sh/A7Kq
http://puu.sh/A7KM
http://puu.sh/A7KU
http://puu.sh/A7La
http://puu.sh/A7Lk

The advice I'll give you is, go with what you wanna do in the moment. Following your heart sometimes leads to awesome creations! You can also sit down and plan out items, whether in your head or on a piece of paper that way you have an idea of what you wanna build. Build with what the terrain offers you. If your stuck on an island, build your house just off the island, or underwater. If your in the mountains, build your house into a cliff, or all out of stone. Don't worry about anything right now, because the one thing that never changes in Minecraft, is that you'll constantly be improving your character and what is at your disposal.

Quote from PeterFazekas

How many actual houses (i.e. not warehouses or stores) have you seen where the floor is on the ground level?

My house is at ground level, but then again my house is pretty modern, like the houses at:
http://www.trendir.com/house-design/