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Luckily, Minecraft offers a wide variety of blocks that players can choose from to help make their home just the way they want. While the exact blocks each player uses are up to them, there are some blocks that just seem to work well with every single build.

Updated by Chris Birsner on February 9, 2022: Minecraft continues to change as more updates are implemented to the game on an almost annual basis. But the core objectives that players tend to follow still remain in place from surviving long enough to kill the Ender Dragon to building the house of their dreams. The latter is still a big part of the game, with new building blocks introduced all the time to help broaden what can be used on any given home. The list of Minecraft building blocks grows longer, so it’s worth looking back and throwing in some additional blocks that are worth checking out to enhance any shelter.

15 Bookshelves

If playing survival mode, it is likely that players will want to obtain an enchantment table. In order to enhance enchantments, players need to surround it with Bookshelves. But even without an enchantment table, bookshelves bring out a nice indoor, cozy vibe to a room.

To acquire Bookshelves, players will need to craft them using six wooden planks and three books. While books can be crafted with three pieces of paper and one piece of leather, players can also mine up bookshelves they find in structures such as villages, strongholds, and mansions.

14 Signs

There have since been many ways for players to display words in the world, but the original method of getting a message across to others has been through signs. These rectangular, flat surfaces help convey whatever information a player wants to say such as a name for a home or just a message about themselves.

These signs can be both placed as individual stands and also hung up on the side of blocks. They can also be used as accents to makeshift furniture items, like attaching signs to a stair to make it look like a seat. All the player needs for a sign is to craft them with six wooden plants and one stick.

13 Sea Lantern

When building anything in Minecraft, the most important thing to consider is lighting. This is important from an aesthetic point of view but is also vital also to prevent hostile mobs from spawning inside the house. Out of all the lighting sources, the Sea Lantern may be the best light to use for its neutral look. This light doesn’t stand out, which means players can disguise it a lot more easily compared to others.

Players will need to visit an ocean monument to mine up some sea lanterns. They can also be crafted with ocean monument materials: four Prismarine shards and five Prismarine crystals.

12 Stone & Blackstone Bricks

Once again, it’s important to note that everyone is going to have a different vision for their Minecraft home. Those looking for a more regal build may want to invest in stone bricks. If players want to keep that regal vibe but add a sinister layer, they should try out Blackstone Bricks.

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Stone Bricks can be made by crafting them with four pieces of stone, or by taking one stone piece and putting it through the stonecutter. Blackstone can be crafted using four polished Blackstone pieces. Stone is found in the overworld, while Blackstone is found in the Nether.

11 Wooden Planks

On the other side of the home design spectrum, if players are looking for something that is a bit more representative of the cottagecore aesthetic, they should invest in chopping lots of trees. Out of all the wooden blocks that can be used on a build, wooden planks seem like the best blocks to use and easiest to obtain.

Each log of wood players have can be put into a crafting bench, which can produce four wooden planks. There are eight different wooden plank types: Oak, Birch, Spruce, Jungle, Acacia, Dark Spruce, Warped, and Crimson.

10 Slabs

Most Minecraft building blocks are about the same size to make it easier for players to build structures with. That said, there isn’t a ton of shapes that players can form their buildings into when all the best blocks are the same size. That is where slabs come in handy.

Slabs can be made with a variety of different blocks, from wooden plants to stone bricks. Whatever block players want to make a slab with, they must go to a crafting table and place three blocks along a row to create six slabs or those three blocks cut in half. It’s a good building block in Minecraft for its ability to really make builds more realistic instead of just being normal blocks.

9 Terracotta

There are plenty of blocks that stand out incredibly well as a primary part of a build. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to keep in mind the blocks out there that can provide a nice compliment and blend in with the build.

Terracotta blocks, found mostly in the Badlands, have a nice muted color palette that doesn’t overwhelm but works well with other colorful blocks. Smelting a full block of clay in a furnace will give players the default terracotta block. To dye terracotta, put eight pieces of the default block in a crafting bench and put a piece of dye in the middle.

8 Stained Glass

Glass has never been the best block in the game as even its upside of being transparent was tainted by having some non-transparent aspects until recent texture changes made it a little better. But despite these improvements, normal glass can be boring on its own. That is where Stained Glass comes in.

This decorative item can be used to add extra color to the home by dyeing the glass a specific color. To do this, players must grab eight glass blocks and put them in every box on the crafting table except the middle. Then, players should fill the middle space with whatever dye color they want. This will return eight pieces of Stained Glass.

7 Glazed Terracotta

Not many blocks are made to stand out on their own. Glazed Terracotta, however, has a very unique design that works well in small bunches and can add a burst of color to a room. There are 16 distinct designs for Glazed Terracotta, with each one associated with a specific dye color.

To get these blocks, players must get the specific colored terracotta that matches the glazed terracotta they want and put it into the furnace. Once cooked, they will have the glazed versions to place around.

6 Leaves

Some of the best blocks for building in the game are the ones that look the most natural. There is no block in this game that looks more natural than the leaves. There are a wide variety of these leaves as they come from various trees across a Minecraft world.

Unfortunately, leaves aren’t the easiest to harvest as they can’t be broken with an empty hand or many tools. The best way to collect leaves from any tree is by crafting shears, which require two iron ingots in a diagonal direction on the crafting table. Players can keep growing trees to help get as many leaves as possible.

5 Banners

There aren’t many blocks or items in Minecraft that are customizable, outside of a color change. But the item players can play the most with in terms of design is likely the banners. These tall blocks can stand on their own or be hung on walls. They can also be customized to have specific designs, specifically by using the Loom.

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Banners can be crafted by using six wool pieces and a stick, with the recipe organized in the shape of a sign. Players must use the same wool color for the recipe, and the banner will match the wool color used.

4 Paintings

Banners make nice wall decorations, but it’s hard to put a lot of details onto a banner with the help of a Loom. But when you are looking for the best blocks for building and decorating walls, players should look into paintings. There are quite a few paintings available, but they all have the same recipe.

Getting a painting is rather easy as it requires just one block of wool and eight sticks. Put the wool in the middle of the crafting table and surround it with sticks to get a painting. From here, find a wall to place a painting on. A random painting will appear, but the size of the painting depends on how big the wall is. The bigger the wall, the larger the portrait can be.

3 Carpets

While the walls and roof of a home tend to get a lot of the focus, the floors of homes need some love too. If players want some extra layers to what they walk on, carpets are a great way to go. These thin squares of wool can be placed on top of anything that is exactly one block tall.

Obtain two pieces of wool of the same color, and place them side-by-side on the crafting table to get a carpet. Players who haven’t decided on color can make a bunch of white carpets, then place eight pieces around a specific dye in the crafting table.

2 Walls

In the early years of Minecraft, the main way to keep creatures contained in a specific space was fencing. This changed with the addition of walls, which also double as a great decorative accent to a build. Unlike fences, walls can be made out of a plethora of different blocks, from cobblestone to sandstone.

By taking six blocks of the desired material and forming a rectangle in the crafting table, these walls can be crafted in batches of six. There are 21 different variations of walls that can be created.

1 Stairs

If any type of block deserves credit for its versatility, it’s the stairs block. Another item that can be made with various different materials, the stairs are obviously a way for players to move up and down specific floors, but they are also often used as seats or crucial parts of a roof.

Similar to the walls, stairs require six of the specific block that players want to use. But instead of a rectangle, these blocks should be formed into a stair pattern that goes up to down from left to right. There are 24 different stair variations to choose from.

Minecraft is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, and many other platforms.

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