Terraria: Houses

Building Tips & Valid Housing Requirements

Housing your NPCs is a key part of Terraria. The vendors who live in your town are sometimes necessary to craft powerful items that help you advance the game. Many new players will get a tutorial to build their first house, but may not realize other sizes work as well. For those who skipped this or wonder what works, I'm going to provide some clear and simple answers.

Because most people will build an apartment building, mansion or castle in which to house all their NPCs, it's worth noting we're really talking about individual room requirements here although the game refers to it as housing. Building individual houses for each NPC takes more materials than combining them into a home and takes up much more space in your world. Having lots of little cottages is doable, but it will take time! Not only in construction, but also in getting to vendors when you need them.

You can move NPCs in and out using the housing interface, you cannot simply swap where they live though. If every house is full, you'd need an empty room to send one to in order to adjust where they live. Also, if NPCs die, they will not necessarily move back into the same place when they respawn. Use the '?' Housing Query tool to click a space and determine if it meets the housing requirements.

Building Checklist
Housing requires the following, in additional to being of sufficient size:

• Structural walls and ceiling - stone, wood, dirt or nearly any other block that isn't corrupt
• Background walls that are player-made, which prevent monsters from spawning inside
• An entrance - usually a door, but may be a platform or trap door set in the floor or ceiling.
• Something flat - typically a table, work bench, or even a piano
• A chair
• A light source of any kind

At the very minimum, you need dirt, wood, and gel. You can make the entire house out of dirt but grass will grow (and vines). Wood is necessary as you require a workbench to make background walls and chairs.

Size Requirement

I played around in 1.3.0.8 and found that certain sizes listed on other sites do not seem to work. An NPC needs 30 blocks' worth of living space to be satisfied. When we include the walls, floor, and ceiling, this becomes 60 but may vary depending on the dimensions. It's worth considering the floor because you can build a home in midair in Terraria and an NPC will happily live there. In fact, it's one way to keep monsters from getting inside. Just put it above their jump height.

Smallest Possible Height
For a home that is wide as opposed to tall, 12x5 works. This gives exactly 30 spaces of room to live inside, because we take the walls and ceiling off and get 10 wide by 3 tall - exactly the height of your character. I prefer shorter buildings like this early on, because they're easier to jump over. Later, you can have taller buildings. If you do build a tall house, make sure to use platforms so that you can go through or over it.

Smallest Possible Width
For a home that is tall, this formula doesn't work - I was not able to get a 5x12 home to work. Even raising its height to 13 did not do the trick. The room had to be expanded to make the home 6 wide. I suspect the living space inside must be at least 4 blocks wide as of a recent patch. At that, I was able to make this house shorter and make it only 6x10. This provided the NPC 32 squares of living space (4x8). This is actually a little roomier.

Therefore, any room that is at least 12x5 or taller than 6x10 will work as a part of a larger house, so you can feel free to use your imagination. Combine these rooms and make a great building that serves your adventuring needs!

Largest Possible - a Common Cause of Unsuitable Housing
Some players find that their house is actually too big! If you have a large, well-designed house and it is not valid housing, consider the math - if the dimensions including walls, floor, and ceiling add up to 750 or higher, that's your problem. a 50x15 house would be too big, but 49x15 should work. You may simply need to move one wall to the left or right and find that it is now suitable.

Individual Components & Valid Housing Tips

Structure
The walls that make up the house itself can be platforms, but are typically solid blocks (any kind but corruption, even dirt!) so as to keep monsters out and to be more pleasing aesthetically. Using platforms stacked vertically for a wall (can't be stairs) you can actually skip a door because the home only needs an Entrance, not a door specifically. This means you can make a huge building and not use even one actual door, though you'll be inviting your NPCs to die often.

For inner rooms in a larger home you may wish to use platforms for the ceiling so that you can jump up floors, as opposed to building stairs. If an NPC is going to live in the room above (with platforms for a floor), be sure to place at least one solid block that is not next to the door so they have a place to stand. This will meet the flooring requirement since platforms count as entrances and NPCs don't want to stand in front of doors and get knocked in the face every time you come to sell loot.

Wall Segments
If there are naturally-occurring dirt walls you must break them with a hammer and replace them with your own walls, even if you're making dirt walls. The exception are treehouses that come with wood walls. Sometimes you can find a home that is already built, just add a torch and good to go - even underground, for example treasure rooms, so long as they are big enough.. but it will be annoying to visit that vendor. You can have a few holes in the wall, but it's better to wait for glass (made with sand at a furnace) if you want proper windows - they count as walls, and you can make houses out of glass.

Placing Chairs, Tables, and other Objects the right direction
This trips people up sometimes. In order to make a chair or other object face the way you want, for example up against a table, the direction it faces is based on the direction your character is facing.

Lighting
Simple torches stuck on a wall work, and you only need one light in a room. But so too do tiki torches, ultrabright torches, and things like heart lanterns and stars in bottles. If you want your houses to look better (I barely care at this stage but plan to try my hand at it) you can use precious materials to craft things like chandeliers and candles to light rooms.

Build Anywhere
It is safer to build houses in the central portion of the map so that you do not risk meteorites landing on your precious constructs. You can build in the air, as previously stated, and destroy the supports to make floating houses. You can totally build underground if you want, but you'd have to eliminate all the dirt walls in the background only to replace them with your own. Some players like to make basements and such to store their treasure or crafting rooms, so this is definitely worth knowing. You can put your most important NPCs in the back or center of a mansion where they will be safer against blood moons (during which zombies open doors) and other events, although a lot of bosses can go straight through walls - that's a good reason to have an arena for fighting bosses as opposed to doing it near your spawn point.

Building Nice Homes
I know very well from all the beautiful homes I've seen on the Terraria subreddit and elsewhere on the web that one of the best ways to make a nice looking home is to use better materials and not simply build in rectangular boxes. Make columns, staircases, and craft actual decorative items if you're interested in making a nice looking house for your Terrarians. My buildings here, made of stone and wood, just do not look as good as a granite or marble building might. Basic stone walls are also kind of drab. When I overhaul my main housing and make a new world that isn't butchered from all my testing, I will show something a little nicer here!

Customize - Paint and Wallpaper
The Painter NPC will allow you to purchase the paint brush (for painting blocks and objects), paint roller (for painting walls), and paint scraper (paint removal). Use these to customize your housing. I've yet to get into building immaculate palaces, but it can improve the look of even the most basic room to simply lay on a coat of paint and get away from the brown and grey of wood and stone. Some paint colors he sells just do not seem to work on certain materials - like stone walls taking blue paint. However, other colors work fine. Wallpaper functions as a wall and will remove the existing wall. Use your imagination and create matching rooms, or even rooms that catch the eye and fit the theme of the NPC that lives there.

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Share Tips and FAQs (2)

Our Sims Forum is the place to go for faster answers to questions and discussions about the game. Use the form below to share your own experiences and provide helpful tips to other readers.

Yamamoto says...

I usually do not utter a word while digging through various internet sites and guides such like this, but man, this is something! I feel obliged to thank You for Your awesome work and creating this awesome articles. I found out so much about Terraria and the ways to develop and go further in the game, as well as just read interesting facts and awesomely written articles. You man are just awesome!!!! Thank You for Your will to create and help the others :). Keep up the good work bro!

Admin:

Hey you're welcome. I just did this one as it helped me to enjoy the game a bit more to learn most of how it worked, so why not share it :) Thanks for writing to tell me!

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26th July 2016 7:38am

WandaYT says...

This guide is very helpful!

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3rd July 2016 8:20am

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