How To Make Suitable NPC Housing

This guide explains all requirements for a house to be NPC suitable as well as a step-by-step guide on how to make a simple NPC house with pictures throughout.

Housing Requirements

Many of you may be wondering, "WHY THE HECK ISN'T MY FREAKING NPC HOUSE SUITABLE"

Ahem.

DIMENSIONS:

It's quite simple, it has to have a minimum total area within your house of 30 blocks and a maximum of 600 (verified on PC version as of 1.2.4). Meaning the smallest suitable NPC house you could have would be 6x5 (excluding ceiling and sides) and the biggest NPC house you could have would be 60 tiles wide by 10 tiles high. (Again not including ceiling or sides, just area within the house)

(And clarifying something else... Your house can be extremely wide with a 3 block high ceiling. AS LONG AS IT STAYS WITHIN A 30 BLOCK AND 600 BLOCK AREA. Or it can be 4 blocks wide but super tall. As long as it follows the basic rules. My below guide is simply a way to make a very simple, suitable, NPC house, intended for beginners or those who just don't know how to make one suitable.)

If you have done area measuring in school yet, than this should be easy. Just measure how tall and wide it is to see if your house is to big or to small to be suitable.

BUT your house cannot be suitable because of a few different reasons:

FRAMEWORK:

You have to have correct framework in your house. Meaning, the floor, ceiling, and side walls. No sorry, just a ceiling won't work for multiple reasons.

SIDE WALLS: Side walls can be made of blocks, doors, and even platforms.
FLOOR: Floors must be made of platforms and/or blocks.
CEILING: Ceilings must be made of platforms and/or blocks.

NON CLUTTERED SPACE:
Who wants a CLEEEEAN House?

A house must have at least 4 tiles of un-interrupted, empty floor space, with no furniture abstructing that and at least one tile of the 4 tiles being a solid block. Statues are a decorative item and do not affect this rule however.

ENTRANCE:
Yeah. Strangely your house needs a door.

To have a valid entrance, you need to have at least one door, or wood platforms in the floor or ceiling.

FANCY BACKGROUND:
As nice as it is to have a house with just a couple of pillars and ceiling, having walls is better and highly important if you want Gus the Merchant to come.

Any NATURAL BACKGROUNDS DO NOT WORK except for the Floating Island cabin background, underground cabin background, and Living Wood Wall. Otherwise you have to place your background BY HAND. Create backgrounds by crafting them or looting them from various places.

FURNITURE:
You expect peeps to sit on the ground?

To have a valid house you need a comfort item and a surface item.
COMFORT ITEMS INCLUDE:

• Any types of chairs
  
• Throne
  
• Any types of bench
  
• Bar stool
  
• Any types of bed
  
• toilet
  
• golden toilet
  
• or any type of sofa.

FLAT SURFACE ITEMS INCLUDE:

• Any type of table
  
• any type of workbench
  
• any type of dresser
  
• any type of bathtub
  
• any type of bookcase
  
• any type of piano
  
• or a bar.

LIGHT SOURCE:
YES YOU NEED A LIGHT. You expect your NPC's to sell stuff in the dark?

VALID LIGHT SOURCES INCLUDE:

• Any type of torch
  
• any type of candle
  
• any type of chandelier
  
• any type of candelabra
  
• Tiki Torch
  
• Skull Lantern
  
• Jackeliers
  
• Jack 'O Lanterns
  
• Hanging Jack 'O Lanterns
  
• Water Candle
  
• Christmas Lights
  
• or a Star in a Bottle.

FINALLY, LOCATION
Yes location does matter too. Your house cannot be to close to the Corruption or Crimson. Hallow however does not matter.

YUP I bet you weren't expecting that a house was this hard to make eh. There's quite a few factors and you can slip on any one of them pretty easily. Below is a step-by-step guide where I make a very basic, suitable NPC house.

Creating A Simple Suitable NPC House

STEP 1:
Start out by collecting a certain type of block. The easiest is trees as they give quite a bit of wood when cut down and are used to make a lot of basic items needed in the house. You'll need around 150 wood in all.

Then, clear a small area by getting rid of boulders, trees, or small bumps in the ground. Make sure that it's flat.


STEP 2:
Start out by making the frame of your house. Make it 10 blocks wide in total with 5 block-high side walls.


Then mine a 3 block-high hole in one or both sides of your frame. This is where the door(s) will eventually go.


STEP 3:
Press the "Esc" button on your keyboard and craft one work bench. Then, place it in your house. Make sure to place it on the far right or far left side of the house though, not in the middle.

After placing it in your house, stand by it and craft 2 doors. When crafted, place them in the holes on the left and right side of your house. If you only made one hole, than you only need one door.

After that craft 1 chair and place it next your work bench. When you're done you should see something like this.

Finally, stand by the work bench again and craft around 200 wood wall. This much is not needed but is nice to have extra as you can always craft it back into wood if you need to.

Then start to place it. Don't worry if you misplace any, we'll get to that in a bit.

When you're done you should have something roughly similar to this, make sure there's no gaps within the actually house.

Notice how it's not very clean. There's some wood wall sticking out of the house. To get rid of that, craft a Wooden Hammer and use it on any wall you don't want. It works similar to a pickaxe except destroys wall instead of blocks.


STEP 4:
You're so close! You now just need a light source. Craft a torch out of gel and wood. You get gel from killing slimes.

After you've crafted the torches, place one, two, or all three in your house. You only need to place one however for it to be suitable, but more adds a nice effect. When done your house might look like this:

NOW! Check for house suitability! To see if your house is suitable, press "Esc" and click the little house icon located on the right and click the little white question mark and your cursor will turn into that. Then, select the room inside your house and it should say suitable, if not it usually gives a reason, but if it says "This housing is not suitable" look at all the requirements again and see where you went wrong.

When you're done, sit back and relax while an NPC moves in. If this was your first house though, then the guide will move into it by default... But at least now you know how to make more suitable houses now!

Additional Information

(NOTE: ONLY ONE NPC PER SUITABLE HOUSE. YOU CANNOT HAVE MORE THAN 1 NPC IN A HOUSE AT THE SAME TIME)

The above example was VERY small and one of the simplest ways to make a house. You can get creative though and make much larger NPC houses and even personalize them based on the NPC.


Be creative and have fun :)

Hope you liked this guide! And if you didn't, please say why and offer suggestions. If you have any additional questions on housing, or Terraria in general for that matter, feel free to ask, I am glad to help.

Have fun terraring,
Timblegoorn

[Waffle2.0]

Instructions unclear,hit my dick with the hammer.

[Azzy Dreemurr]

Speedwuin strats!
BAAAa.

[Hg Greyhorse]

Nice guide. I'm sure others have said so, but: Can be 10 tall x 3 wide, just need to use a solid block in the middle of floor and a chair/workbench. Also, weird things can happen with doors not letting a room count with this configuration, so using platforms instead is advisable.

[aust]

This Guide is EPIC!!! Save to favorite and I will try to come back to comment!!

[Danza62]

it does work i tested it and my housing was deamed suitable by the game

[Shogun]

are you sure this will work

[Timblegoorn]

@Yarn, yes. Any block works (except some naturally placed ones) and all rules still apply to them

[Yarn W. Cotton]

does the rule also effect you house if it is made 100% out of glass?

[itsFabby]

that is realy good. but i already knew i bet this will be a realy good tutorial for those who want to try but dont know how to make a house this is verry good and kind. THANK YOU

[Symbol VI: DynastyScans]

sorry. it was the first release of terraria when they had it. that was 1.1