Examples of how to make simple builds look good?

[Tarluk]

I've found the bar for making cool builds to be very high and intimidating with the thousands of blocks, objects and paint combinations to pick from, especially since I mostly play in pre-hardmode where getting the materials for each and every individual object can cause some friction. And I haven't really seen many instances of the more grounded, simplistic style of building that was popular in Terraria 1.0/1.1 or something like the Minecraft Beta; trying to find simple builds online either results in barebones shacks or builds that aren't simple at all, using all sorts of advanced blocks and building techniques.

What are some builds that do a lot with just some simple materials like wood, stone, and gray/red/ore bricks, or can serve as quite charming starter builds even in the earliest stages of pre-hardmode?

 

[Coleyohley]

Hello! Here's a very simple (and poorly formatted) guide I made years ago for this very subject. I asked someone very new to building to make me something and then I would try to transform it into a simple but good-looking house with early-game materials. The columns are Ebonwood Walls, the Chairs are Rich Mahogany, the Tables are Boreal Wood, and all are painted brown.

Honestly, the most important small changes you can make to improve your house are to add windows (they make the room look a lot less cramped and depressing), have at least a little bit of variety in the walls you use, and rely on light sources that aren't basic torches. Seriously, there are like 8 million different furniture sets and every single one has 5 different light fixtures and they all look miles better than torches; use them! (Please ignore the 4 random torches I forgot to remove).

If I made this little guide again nowadays it'd be quite a bit more detailed and have many more steps, as I'm a much better builder now than when I first made this, but I still think this is a good place to start. I'd be thrilled to talk more about this but I just don't have any more examples of basic, good-looking houses on hand at the moment to show.

 

[Rezerkity]

I find that the most important basic concepts to remember are these:
Add foundation blocks underneath the housing.
Make walls two-thick for sturdy-looking homes, or even three-thick.
Instead of just making a big rectangle house, use multiple different shapes of varying sizes.
Don't be afraid to build in a way that isn't practical for gameplay (i.e run in, talk to npc, run out).

For example in the below image, I'm just using wood, living wood, dynasty wood, palm wood, and ash wood. You can get a ton of mileage out of just using various wood types together because they tend to blend nicely. I like to use palm wood for anything vertical, and regular wood for anything horizontal, as the lines in the textures help imply wooden beams.

Meanwhile in this image I use stone bricks, boreal wood, and a little bit of regular wood. They have a nice cold feeling to them that fits the snow biome, and using ice bricks around the outside of the building helps it feel embedded in the ice. I left an open gap between the building and the ice to put platforms, boreal fence, and ice bricks, to look like a really sturdy insulated foundation.

Down below I used stone bricks, wood, living wood, and some tin bricks. Don't forget how useful ore bricks are! They're pretty cheap to make even earlygame, and you'll have a ton of stone and spare ores lying around eventually. Don't forget to keep paintings and use decorative crafts.

 

[ocnr]

if i want to sandbox builds, i head over to tmodloader and jump in my world with heros mod on, so i can essenstially be in "creative mode" and then transalte that to my world in the base game. just being free to be creative really took my building to another level.

 

[TwentY!]

dont go looking at pro builds while you build, because if you see something like the ultimate skyblock mod you'll get spoild and wish you had the patience for that.

 

[Salty_]

Here's a really basic house I made of primarily just wood and stone. Big highlight here is mixing in regular stone blocks with the grey stone bricks to get a cracked stone texture, with the added bonus of saving on resources. I think houses look best when I'm not staring at just background wall, so I try to fill up the rooms with furniture and shelves.

 

[Tarluk]

Here's a really basic house I made of primarily just wood and stone. Big highlight here is mixing in regular stone blocks with the grey stone bricks to get a cracked stone texture, with the added bonus of saving on resources. I think houses look best when I'm not staring at just background wall, so I try to fill up the rooms with furniture and shelves.

Late to responding back to the thread, but thank you, this looks extremely charming! And very easy to build as a starter base to boot; I think this will be what I show my friends when we play on servers in the future.

I also really like Cohleyohley's design, it feels quite reminiscent of a ski resort. Might combine that with TerraMonolith's base design with the built-in workshop at the bottom for a larger snow biome base.

 

[Hickory]

A few important points:
-Make your house in an interesting shape. It doesn't have to be super free-form, and it can be as simple a shape as just multiple boxes next to each other as long as you're willing to experiment with material choice and intentional detailing, but it really helps to start with a frame for the house then swap out materials, make tweaks, and decorate until you're satisfied.
-Consider multiple block thick walls. This is optional and some builds do look better without it, but the larger the build the more likely it is to look leagues better than just single block walls. You also don't need to use the same wall thickness throughout the entire build, especially if you're going for something that's meant to appear asymmetrical and less rigid.
-Fill empty space. Finding some simple furniture to add wherever you have empty space goes a long way, and furniture isn't the only way to break up large open patches. Windows, stairways, and differing patterns in the walls can go a long way as well.
And speaking of differing patterns, that brings me to my final point:
-Use more than one wall type. Vertical walls like ebonwood and large bamboo make for good support beams; stone walls suck as grey brick and stone slab make for good lower foundation walls.

And for a couple miscellaneous notes:
-Brown paint is a godsend for keeping a cohesive palette when using multiple kinds of wood and singlehandedly makes large bamboo into a great and widely applicable building block.
-More colorful blocks generally take paint better; that's why in the example build I painted red brick wall for the roof instead of grey brick wall. Use deep paint if you need to paint a duller material, as it applies the paint shader in a way that benefits less colorful blocks.

 

[Coleyohley]

Hello! I've taken several screenshots of what I've been working on recently, just a few parts of a much larger structure. It's from a modded playthrough of the game, but the only modded tiles are the potions on the shelves, some of the food on the tables, and the background wall I like to use in the kitchen, which you can almost certainly find replacements for if you're creative enough. Each "house" has several different rooms (equipped with Stinkbugs so NPCs don't move into the bathroom lol), which are immensely helpful to the believability and overal detail of the build. To be honest, making multi-room apartments has kind of poisoned my perception of building now (including my own past creations), as whenever I see a house without a bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom it feels too small and unbelievable.

Here's the Demolitionist's house. I very nearly searched "What do you need to create explosives" when I was thinking of things to put in his workshop before I caught myself; I don't want to be put on any lists.

Here's the Pirate's Apartment. A lot of my building "style" is just putting furniture where it logically should go: Pot, Countertop, and Sink next to the Wood Stove in the kitchen. Food and drinks on the table or on a shelf. Piggy Bank, Chest of personal affects, books, and a Dresser in the bedroom. Sink, Bathtub, Toilet in the bathroom, maybe some bottles on the shelf for soaps.

Tavernkeep and Party Girl's Apartment. They really like to throw parties, so I made them an extra large living/dining room and Kitchen Combo for that exact purpose! They even have a coatroom for guests to hang up their hats and coats (Now that I think about it, maybe that'd make more sense if that door led outside, rather than the hallway) .

Here's a few more, built with mostly the same layout. Nothing fancy here.

I know I've crammed an absurd amount of detail into these, but really all I've done is put things in places they'd logically go. Glasses and Food on the table. Sink and Cookpot in the kitchen. Dresser, Bed, maybe a Couch in the bedroom. Sink, Toilet and Bath in the bathroom, with maybe a bottle of soap or two on the shelf above. It's really not that advanced, but it looks fantastic and you can build it out of very simple materials without any crazy building techniques. It does require effort and patience, but I've been really enjoying putting them together, and completing each apartment is extremely satisfying.