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This is part of a new series I'm starting on building, specifically building cities. I'll be going over different aspects and features of building a city, like houses, skyscrapers, landscaping, and the topic of this blog: Interiors! Please note that this blog will be focused on modern/traditional interiors, sorry if you came here for medieval.
Also, I'm going to try something new with this, since this blog is kind of long, I'll highlight the key points in bold, so that you can read through quickly if you prefer a quick read.
The Basic Rules of Interior
Like almost anything, there are always certain basic rules to follow when making something look nice. So of course, this applies to interior too.
1 - Plan your interior
Even before you actually start on the interior, you want to plan the layout while doing the exterior. This way you can avoid headaches about windows and rooms not matching up, awkwardly shaped rooms, unusable spaces, etc.
2 - Fill your room
An empty looking room is a killer. When furnishing, always try to make your rooms full, avoiding empty spaces or blank areas. Great ways to fill in blank spaces are with bookshelves, painting, shelves, and carpets for the floor. Yes, an empty floor is also a problem, not just the walls.
Another good way to do this is to use larger furniture. Have a huge room? Try adding that bulky grand piano or pool table, or any other large furniture design. Maybe add a long dining table, or a water feature if it's a lobby or public area. (Preferably don't have water features inside houses). You can also do the same thing in reverse if you have a small, cramped room. For those places use smaller furniture and designs, and avoid large pieces of furniture.
3 - Make sure you have space
This involves layout, but make sure you have enough space for what you want. Just like empty interiors look bad, cramped interiors have a bad effect. This can mean using smaller furniture, less furniture, or having a layout which gives you spacious or large enough rooms, which can sometimes mean joining a few together. (Like the dining and living room, or kitchen and dining room.) But again, the most important thing is to have a spacious layout that avoids cramped areas or rooms.
4 - Choose a style and stick to it
This is an important step: choose a palette for your interior and stick to it. A good palette will include a wood block for furniture, a wall color, a floor color, and an accent color (for carpets, sofas, and beds). Another part of choosing a style is choosing your furniture style and way of decorating. Also, on the topic of palette, avoid using "dirty or "grainy" blocks, they rarely look good.
5 - Take inspiration from Minecraft and the world around you
Always take inspiration from what you see. Pay attention to layouts, where the furniture is, and concepts when looking at real life houses. Since there is no furniture in Minecraft, people make their own, and it's a big part of making your interior look great. So, go visit some creative servers in minecraft, go check out their interiors, and take a good look at their furniture. Later you can use that furniture, and put your own twists on it, or use their concepts. The biggest part of interior is to put concepts and furniture together in a nice way. To do this you need to have lots of concepts and ideas in your brain, ready for use.
Layout
An important part in making a good interior is layout, it affects how your whole interior will be presented. My best tip is to look at real-life layouts, and use them to plan yours. However, there is a basic layout which you can use when planning a house: Enter into the dining or living room, from there branch out into the kitchen and dining/living room depending on what you chose for your entrance, and in one of those room have stairs leading to the bedrooms upstairs. For some houses you might want to join two of these rooms together by knocking down a wall in between them.
For commercial buildings, you have a lot more freedom. For stores you always want to enter into the main shopping area, for offices or apartments or any other sort of building, you want to enter into a lobby/reception area. For commercial buildings with more than one floor, a design I like to use is to make the second floor a balcony, with the open area right at the entrance.
Furniture
Furniture is the second part that will bring a good interior together. Obviously, I can't show every single furniture design, so I'm only going to show the main ideas, so you're going to have to use your imagination to come up with more. I'll just give you a few guidelines, and then have some pictures of my favorite furniture designs.
A few things to keep in mind when making/adding furniture:
- Don't use full blocks for tables.
- Don't use stone blocks, the only possible stone block you could use is sandstone, and only as counters or shelves at that.
- White, gray and light gray are good standard colors to use, with whatever other chosen color as an accent in certain pieces of furniture. (For example: Sofas, Beds, and Carpets)
- Don't be afraid to make something that isn't functional, in the end it'll usually look better.
- Potted plants (pictures below) are great thing to fill in corners, plus they look fancy.
- Bookshelves are also great space-fillers, and look great with a flower-pot on top.
Now here's pictures of furniture designs for inspiration.
Things to do:
- Use carpets to fill in empty floor space. Blank floors look bad, and carpets can fill that space, plus they add more detail to a room. Make sure to use creative patters too, they look much more interesting. You can also use solid blocks or terracotta if you have double-thick floors or no floors underneath you.
- Fill in corners with furniture. Corners tend to be a great space to fill in with furniture, you can simply do a little bookcase with a flowerpot, or a potted plant, etc.
- Think realistically, it can help you to plan your layout, and can also give you ideas for rooms. What would this family be likely to have? Do they have bathrooms? A guest room? Would they have a door here, or an arch? Which, leads me to my next point...
- Replace doors with arches for family rooms. A family room, like a living room or kitchen, shouldn't have a door, instead replace it with an arch. Plus, they make a house look more spacious.
- Add a rim (molding) to the ceiling, this is simply a ring of upside-down stair blocks or slabs all around the ceiling edge, to give it a smooth transition from floor to ceiling. Wood or quartz is a good material for this.
- Think realistically, what would I find in this place? It helps for both figuring out what to put somewhere and what shouldn't belong somewhere. An example where I used this was making my metro station in my now accidentally deleted city :(. I added vending machines and newspaper dispensers, because it seemed like something you would find in a metro station.
Things to avoid:
- Using the same blocks for ceilings and walls, or walls and floors. Use a different material for each. However using the same material for ceilings and floors is fine.
- Exposed glowstone. If it's for a lamp surround it by trapdoors or signs, just don't have the raw block exposed.
- Torches. They look n0oby, and don't make sense in a modern setting. Just avoid them, the only place you can use them is in chandeliers. Besides that I just recommend to stay away from them.
- Leaving too much empty space. Sometimes the walls seem too empty. To fix this you can add furniture along the wall, or simply place a painting there.However, don't go overboard and fill in every empty space, too much furniture isn't good either. 1-2 blocks of empty wall space (together of course) is good if you ask me, both horizontally and vertically.
- Having walls in front of windows. I haven't seen much of this, but it's still good to remember to never have a wall right in front of a window. This looks weird, and takes away a lot of the potential for windows. Windows should be in the middle of a room wall, or at least have one block between it and the interior wall.
- Weird hallways, try to keep them as simple and easy to navigate as possible. This usually just means a straight corridor, with whatever turns you need to accommodate for building shape.
So, that's all for now, after hours of editing and revising, my blog is finally done! I hope you enjoyed it, and most of all, found it helpful. Any constructive feedback is appreciated. Also, to finish it off, I have some of my favorite interiors that I have made, for inspiration and idea.
Once again... Hope you enjoyed!
Other blogs in the series
#1 - General tips on how to build a city, plus basics of building.
How to improve your city (ft. my ideas) - How to Build #1
#2 - How to build good suburban/traditional houses. For this blog I interview Colfetters.
Suburban/Traditional Styled Houses (ft. Colfetters) How to Build #2
(Will be updated as more come out.)
How to improve your city (ft. my ideas) - How to Build #1
#2 - How to build good suburban/traditional houses. For this blog I interview Colfetters.
Suburban/Traditional Styled Houses (ft. Colfetters) How to Build #2
(Will be updated as more come out.)
The Basic Rules of Interior
Like almost anything, there are always certain basic rules to follow when making something look nice. So of course, this applies to interior too.
1 - Plan your interior
Even before you actually start on the interior, you want to plan the layout while doing the exterior. This way you can avoid headaches about windows and rooms not matching up, awkwardly shaped rooms, unusable spaces, etc.
2 - Fill your room
An empty looking room is a killer. When furnishing, always try to make your rooms full, avoiding empty spaces or blank areas. Great ways to fill in blank spaces are with bookshelves, painting, shelves, and carpets for the floor. Yes, an empty floor is also a problem, not just the walls.
Another good way to do this is to use larger furniture. Have a huge room? Try adding that bulky grand piano or pool table, or any other large furniture design. Maybe add a long dining table, or a water feature if it's a lobby or public area. (Preferably don't have water features inside houses). You can also do the same thing in reverse if you have a small, cramped room. For those places use smaller furniture and designs, and avoid large pieces of furniture.
3 - Make sure you have space
This involves layout, but make sure you have enough space for what you want. Just like empty interiors look bad, cramped interiors have a bad effect. This can mean using smaller furniture, less furniture, or having a layout which gives you spacious or large enough rooms, which can sometimes mean joining a few together. (Like the dining and living room, or kitchen and dining room.) But again, the most important thing is to have a spacious layout that avoids cramped areas or rooms.
4 - Choose a style and stick to it
This is an important step: choose a palette for your interior and stick to it. A good palette will include a wood block for furniture, a wall color, a floor color, and an accent color (for carpets, sofas, and beds). Another part of choosing a style is choosing your furniture style and way of decorating. Also, on the topic of palette, avoid using "dirty or "grainy" blocks, they rarely look good.
5 - Take inspiration from Minecraft and the world around you
Always take inspiration from what you see. Pay attention to layouts, where the furniture is, and concepts when looking at real life houses. Since there is no furniture in Minecraft, people make their own, and it's a big part of making your interior look great. So, go visit some creative servers in minecraft, go check out their interiors, and take a good look at their furniture. Later you can use that furniture, and put your own twists on it, or use their concepts. The biggest part of interior is to put concepts and furniture together in a nice way. To do this you need to have lots of concepts and ideas in your brain, ready for use.
Layout
An important part in making a good interior is layout, it affects how your whole interior will be presented. My best tip is to look at real-life layouts, and use them to plan yours. However, there is a basic layout which you can use when planning a house: Enter into the dining or living room, from there branch out into the kitchen and dining/living room depending on what you chose for your entrance, and in one of those room have stairs leading to the bedrooms upstairs. For some houses you might want to join two of these rooms together by knocking down a wall in between them.
For commercial buildings, you have a lot more freedom. For stores you always want to enter into the main shopping area, for offices or apartments or any other sort of building, you want to enter into a lobby/reception area. For commercial buildings with more than one floor, a design I like to use is to make the second floor a balcony, with the open area right at the entrance.
Furniture
Furniture is the second part that will bring a good interior together. Obviously, I can't show every single furniture design, so I'm only going to show the main ideas, so you're going to have to use your imagination to come up with more. I'll just give you a few guidelines, and then have some pictures of my favorite furniture designs.
A few things to keep in mind when making/adding furniture:
- Don't use full blocks for tables.
- Don't use stone blocks, the only possible stone block you could use is sandstone, and only as counters or shelves at that.
- White, gray and light gray are good standard colors to use, with whatever other chosen color as an accent in certain pieces of furniture. (For example: Sofas, Beds, and Carpets)
- Don't be afraid to make something that isn't functional, in the end it'll usually look better.
- Potted plants (pictures below) are great thing to fill in corners, plus they look fancy.
- Bookshelves are also great space-fillers, and look great with a flower-pot on top.
Now here's pictures of furniture designs for inspiration.
Smaller pieces
Sofa and TV
Tables/Chairs
Bed design
Potted Plants
Things to do:
- Use carpets to fill in empty floor space. Blank floors look bad, and carpets can fill that space, plus they add more detail to a room. Make sure to use creative patters too, they look much more interesting. You can also use solid blocks or terracotta if you have double-thick floors or no floors underneath you.
- Fill in corners with furniture. Corners tend to be a great space to fill in with furniture, you can simply do a little bookcase with a flowerpot, or a potted plant, etc.
- Think realistically, it can help you to plan your layout, and can also give you ideas for rooms. What would this family be likely to have? Do they have bathrooms? A guest room? Would they have a door here, or an arch? Which, leads me to my next point...
- Replace doors with arches for family rooms. A family room, like a living room or kitchen, shouldn't have a door, instead replace it with an arch. Plus, they make a house look more spacious.
- Add a rim (molding) to the ceiling, this is simply a ring of upside-down stair blocks or slabs all around the ceiling edge, to give it a smooth transition from floor to ceiling. Wood or quartz is a good material for this.
- Think realistically, what would I find in this place? It helps for both figuring out what to put somewhere and what shouldn't belong somewhere. An example where I used this was making my metro station in my now accidentally deleted city :(. I added vending machines and newspaper dispensers, because it seemed like something you would find in a metro station.
Things to avoid:
- Using the same blocks for ceilings and walls, or walls and floors. Use a different material for each. However using the same material for ceilings and floors is fine.
- Exposed glowstone. If it's for a lamp surround it by trapdoors or signs, just don't have the raw block exposed.
- Torches. They look n0oby, and don't make sense in a modern setting. Just avoid them, the only place you can use them is in chandeliers. Besides that I just recommend to stay away from them.
- Leaving too much empty space. Sometimes the walls seem too empty. To fix this you can add furniture along the wall, or simply place a painting there.However, don't go overboard and fill in every empty space, too much furniture isn't good either. 1-2 blocks of empty wall space (together of course) is good if you ask me, both horizontally and vertically.
- Having walls in front of windows. I haven't seen much of this, but it's still good to remember to never have a wall right in front of a window. This looks weird, and takes away a lot of the potential for windows. Windows should be in the middle of a room wall, or at least have one block between it and the interior wall.
- Weird hallways, try to keep them as simple and easy to navigate as possible. This usually just means a straight corridor, with whatever turns you need to accommodate for building shape.
So, that's all for now, after hours of editing and revising, my blog is finally done! I hope you enjoyed it, and most of all, found it helpful. Any constructive feedback is appreciated. Also, to finish it off, I have some of my favorite interiors that I have made, for inspiration and idea.
Once again... Hope you enjoyed!
Spoiler - click to reveal
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