Beginner building techniques

Following instructions gets you a finished model. Understanding why each piece goes where it does gets you fewer mistakes and, eventually, the confidence to change a design or build your own. This guide covers the techniques that appear in almost every build on Brick Recipe, with examples you can inspect in the 3D viewer.

Overlap your joints

The single most important idea in brick building is the same one bricklayers use: never stack a joint directly on top of another joint.

If you build a wall from 1 x 4 bricks and every row starts at the same place, the wall is really several separate columns standing side by side, and it will split along those seams. If each row is shifted so that every brick bridges the gap between the two bricks below it, the wall locks together into one solid piece.

A few habits that follow from this:

Alternate the starting point of each row, for example by beginning one row with a 1 x 4 and the next with a 1 x 2.
Bridge seams with longer pieces wherever you can. A long plate across the top of a wall ties everything beneath it together.

The Log Cabin is a good place to watch this: its walls go up one log course per step, so you can step through slowly and see where each row starts and how it sits on the row below.

Plates, bricks and the rule of three

Bricks and plates share the same footprint system, measured in studs, but differ in height: three plates stacked together are exactly as tall as one brick. That simple ratio does a lot of work:

It lets you fine-tune height: a plate or two under a window raises it slightly.
It lets you mix plates and bricks in a wall and still end up level.
Plates are excellent for tying things together. A single plate laid across several bricks connects them all.

Many builds start with large base plates joined by smaller plates on top: the same overlapping idea, applied to floors.

Tiles for a smooth finish

A tile is a plate with no studs on top. Use tiles where you want a finished surface: floors, paths, counter tops, road markings and the tops of walls. Because nothing can be attached to a tile, they also mark where building stops.

Look at the paved path in the Park Corner or the paving around the Bus Stop: rows of flat tiles turn a studded base into something that reads as pavement.

One caution: nothing can be attached on top of a tile, so never tile over an area before the instructions do.

Slopes for roofs

Slope bricks give you angles without leaving the stud grid. A typical roof is built in courses: a row of slopes along each side, then a row set further in on top, and so on until the two sides meet at a ridge.

The Garden Shed is a gentle introduction, with a roof of a few courses and a ridge. The Udon Shop uses many shallower 33-degree slopes for its long tiled roof, which gives a lower, flatter pitch than the common 45-degree slope.

Tips for roofs:

Check which way each slope faces before pressing it down. A slope turned the wrong way is the most common roof mistake, and it is easy to miss until the next course will not fit.
Build both sides of a course before moving up, so the roof stays balanced.
Corner slopes (often called convex or concave double slopes) turn the roof around a corner without a gap.

Building around corners

Where two walls meet, avoid simply butting one wall against the other. Instead, let the walls take turns: in one row the front wall runs the full width and the side wall stops against it; in the next row the side wall runs through and the front wall stops. The corner becomes a woven joint that holds both walls together.

To study corners, open a building such as the Beach Hut or the Garden Shed, rotate the viewer to look straight down at a corner, and step through a few wall courses to see how the pieces meet.

Supporting overhangs

An overhang is any part that sticks out past what is below it: eaves, balconies, awnings, decks. A piece held by only one row of studs at its edge is weak, so good overhangs follow two rules:

Anchor more than you hang. The part sitting on the structure should be at least as long as the part sticking out, and preferably longer.
Lock it from above. Once the overhang is placed, the next layer should cover both the overhang and the wall beneath, clamping it in place.

The eaves of the Udon Shop are a good study: the eave plates reach two studs past the front and back walls before the roof courses go on top and hold them down. The Windmill does something similar at a larger scale with its stage deck, which extends two studs past the brick base, and the Lemonade Stand builds its striped awning in courses, with the front course overhanging by one stud.

Corbelling is the same idea stacked: each layer sticks out a little further than the one below. The tops of the Watchtower and the Castle Gatehouse towers use it to widen the battlements.

Round parts for organic shapes

Not everything is a box. Round bricks, round plates, cones and dishes let you build trunks, towers and soft shapes:

Stacked round bricks make towers and trunks. The Lighthouse tower is built from large round bricks stacked in alternating red and white bands.
Large round bricks and dishes make soft curves. The Snowman builds its three balls from round bricks, dishes and stacked plates, which is a good lesson in shaping something curved out of square-edged parts.
Inverted dishes make canopies. Several trees on the site, such as the snowy pine next to the snowman, use dishes facing down to suggest layers of branches.
Small round plates and tiles add detail such as buttons, eyes, flowers and lamps.

Practice on real builds

The best way to learn these techniques is to watch them happen. Pick a beginner build, rotate the model at each step and ask what each new piece is holding together. Our guide to choosing your first build suggests where to start, and how to read the instructions explains the viewer controls.