When building houses or other structures, it's important to choose the right materials for construction. Otherwise, you may end up having a house that can be burned down or blown up easily, or you may spend unnecessary time looking for supplies to build a house out of rare materials and lastly, if no consideration is taken to building materials, the end result can end up looking strange at best and unappealing/haphazard at worst. This tutorial page contrasts different building materials, and additionally gives an overall view of the quality of the material.
When picking a material to build with, there are three main considerations: Obtainability, durability, and decoration.
Some materials are easier to get, while others are extremely difficult and many are somewhere in between. For example, in survival, making a house of cobblestone is certainly easier than making one of diamond blocks. Also to consider is the renewability of the material you would like to use. Some materials can be replicated through various means and thus gained infinitely, while others must be sought after over increasing distances from spawn.
The durability of a material is important, especially in PVP. The main considerations to make are hardness, blast resistance, and flammability. Maximum durability is not always necessary. If you don't expect to be attacked by players, then hardness shouldn't be a problem. If you can stop creepers from getting close, blast resistance isn't as important. If there is no nearby lava or trees to spread fire and you aren't concerned about lightning, flammability isn't a problem either. Just remember that it is usually better to have too much durability than too little.
Unless you are building strictly for function, then decoration blocks are a big part of enhancing your builds when you've done all that you feel you can with normal building blocks. Ultimately what looks the best is a matter of opinion, and there is no right or wrong way to decorate.
- Common and renewable via smelting the output of a cobblestone generator.
- Has a relatively high blast resistance of 6; takes minimal damage from creeper explosions.
- Slightly faster to mine than cobblestone.
- Not flammable.
- Can be used to hide or camouflage underground bases.
- Must be smelted or mined with a Silk touch pickaxe.
- If misplaced, turns back into cobblestone (unless you use a pickaxe enchanted with Silk touch), which then must be smelted again.
- Can be tricky to decorate with.
- Very common and easy to obtain.
- Not flammable.
- Renewable via crafting and then tilling coarse dirt, or by trading with a wandering trader.
- Low blast resistance of only 0.5.
- Easily broken by hand.
- Turns into grass blocks if exposed to sunlight (unless converted into coarse dirt), which may not be desirable.
- Inexpensive and renewable via replanting trees.
- Large variety of styles.
- Decent blast resistance of 3.
- Flammable.
- Easily broken by hand.
- Very common and renewable via cobblestone generators.
- Has a high blast resistance of 6; takes minimal damage from creeper explosions.
- Not flammable.
- Takes slightly longer to break than stone.
- Obtained by crafting it from Stone (which in turn is obtained by smelting cobblestone), making it renewable.
- Has a good blast resistance of 6.
- Not flammable.
- Is somewhat expensive and time-consuming to acquire, as every batch of 4 blocks of Stone Bricks requires 4 blocks of Stone which must be smelted from cobblestone. However, if you have a Silk Touch pickaxe, you can simply craft a stonecutter and use it to make stone bricks.
- Cracked stone brick requires a second round of smelting and mossy stone brick requires vines, to further add to material
- Has a high blast resistance of 6.
- Has a detailed and polished look, but not a wild look, making it great for many styles of buildings.
- Renewable via trading with mason villagers.
- Costs 4 clay balls per block, and they must be smelted, or bought from masons, making it expensive.
- Invincible to vanilla explosions with a blast resistance of 1,200.
- Very hard to mine through, even with proper tools.
- Renewable via bartering.
- Difficult to collect and build with due to the long breaking time.
- Cannot be moved by pistons.
- Ancient debris or block of netherites are blast-proof alternatives that can be moved by pistons, but both are extremely expensive and difficult to obtain.
- Somewhat challenging to build with on lower brightness settings as the dark appearance of the block can make it hard to see exactly how a given block is placed.
- Easy to obtain.
- Not flammable.
- Renewable via trading with a wandering trader.
- Affected by gravity.
- Blast resistance of 0.5.
- Can be easily destroyed by hand.
- Fairly easy to decorate with and has several variants for different textures.
- Easily found and mined in the desert biome.
- Renewable via the sand purchased from wandering traders.
- Has a low blast resistance of only 0.8.
- Easily mined through.
- Comes in many different colors, providing many variations for decoration.
- Has a decent blast resistance of 4.2.
- Not flammable.
- Colorless terracotta is renewable from being made by smelting clay, which can be made with renewable clay balls gifted from masons after raids[Java Edition only] or mud convert to clay block, while colored is renewable by trading with masons.
- Is expensive and time-consuming to acquire, as it requires lots of clay, smelting, and dyes, or access to a badlands biome.
- Has no stairs or slab versions
- Comes in many different colors, providing many variations for decoration.
- Not flammable.
- Competely smooth surface, making for a much cleaner look.
- Displays its color perfectly, without any distortions (compare terracotta).
- Somewhat expensive and time-consuming to make:
- Made from concrete powder, which is itself made from sand, gravel, and dye.
- Concrete itself is created when concrete powder comes into contact with water.
- Has no stairs or slab versions.
- Has a fairly low blast resistance of 1.8.
Nether Gold Ore, an ore variant of Netherrack, combines the reddish color with added golden details, making it give off an atmosphere of greed or avarice (red for diabolical, gold for wealth, combining to greed). It can be used as an analogue to Gilded Blackstone for creating a "gold-under-the-surface" look.
- Very easy to obtain when Nether is available.
- Not flammable.
- Renewable. [Bedrock Edition only]
- Very easy to break. A Diamond pickaxe enchanted with Efficiency II or stronger will instantly break this block.
- Extremely low blast resistance of 0.4; can easily be destroyed by Ghast fireballs.
- Not renewable. [Java Edition only]
- Nether Gold Ore cannot be obtained with Silk Touch.
Red Nether Bricks are identical to Nether Bricks, but have brighter red color, so they can give off a similar, but more "fiery" impression than normal Nether Bricks.
- Has a good blast resistance of 6; immune to explosions from Ghast fireballs.
- Not flammable.
- Can be obtained by smelting netherrack, making it easy to obtain once the Nether is available.
- Renewable via bartering.
- Requires access to the Nether in order to be obtainable.
- Red Nether Bricks alleviate this somewhat, with a brighter color.
Basalt and Polished Basalt have a rather dour, gloomy and sickly grey color, so they should be used sparingly, or in conjunction with brighter color blocks, as by themselves they set a somewhat depressing mood.
- Renewable via basalt generators.
- Not flammable.
- Easy to obtain when player finds a basalt deltas.
- Moderate blast resistance of 4.2.
- Don't have stairs, slabs and wall variants.
- Looks quite gorgeous with its clean white texture and sets itself apart from most other building materials.
- In addition to the full block, stairs and slabs, also has pillar-, brick, and chiseled block variants for added decoration.
- Relatively easy to obtain when mining Nether Quartz Ore with a pickaxe that has the Fortune enchantment.
- Can be difficult to obtain in large quantities, as it must either be mined in the Nether, bought from Mason Villagers, or bartered from piglins.
- Has a rather low blast resistance of just 0.8, making it a poor material for building fortified structures.
- This caveat can be partially bypassed with Nether Quartz Slabs which have a blast resistance of
- Renewable via bartering.
- Not flammable.
- High blast resistance.
- Easy to obtain, especially in Basalt Deltas.
- Many variants.
- Only obtainable in the Nether.
- Gilded Blackstone can only be obtained with Silk Touch, and only spawns in Bastion Remnants.
Nether Wood has an unusual color palette of cyan and magenta, so it can be used to create fantasy-esque wooden structures.
- Inexpensive and renewable.
- Large variety of styles.
- Non-flammable.
- Decent blast resistance of 3
- Requires bone meal to grow new fungi.
- Easily broken by hand.
Appearance-wise, raw End Stone looks somewhat like stereotypical Moon rock, so it can be utilized to create structures with an unusual "Lunar" look.
Compare with Red Sand which somewhat resembles Mars dust.
- Has a very high blast resistance of 9.
- Renewable via re-summoning the Ender Dragon.
- Not flammable.
- Easy to obtain when the End is available.
- Cannot be picked up by enderman and cannot be destroyed by the ender dragon.
- Requires access to the End in order to be obtainable.
- Takes longer to break than stone or cobblestone.
- Easy to obtain
- Renewable via End Stone
- Not flammable
- Has a very high blast resistance of 9.
- Can be destroyed by the ender dragon
- Has a high blast resistance of 6.
- Renewable, as it can be obtained by growing chorus fruit and smelting it into popped chorus fruit.
- Very difficult to collect and build with as one must access the End, kill the ender dragon and either find chorus Fruit or an End city.
- Chorus Plant farming can be a bit of a complicated affair due to the unusual growth patterns.