If you’ve ever wandered through a Minecraft village and admired those cozy, weatherproof cottages, or tried to build a fireproof base that doesn’t look like a boring cobblestone box, you’ve probably wondered how to make brick in Minecraft. Bricks are one of the most versatile building blocks in the game, with a warm red tone that works for everything from small chimneys to full castle walls. They’re also immune to fire and far more blast-resistant than wood, making them a smart pick for survival bases in high-mob areas. This guide walks you through every step of the process, plus common mistakes to avoid so you don’t waste time or resources.
What Materials You Need to Make Brick in Minecraft
The brick crafting process is surprisingly simple, but you’ll need to gather a few key supplies before you get started. Most resources are easy to find even in the early game, so you don’t need to beat any bosses or find rare biomes to make bricks. You can adjust the amount you gather based on the size of your build, but these are the core items you’ll need for any batch:
- Clay balls (1 per individual brick, 4 per full brick building block)
- A functioning furnace (either regular furnace or blast furnace works)
- Fuel source (coal, charcoal, wood planks, dried kelp blocks all work)
Clay balls are the most important component, and you can find them by mining light gray clay blocks that spawn under shallow water in rivers, lakes, and swamp biomes. Any tool will break clay blocks, but a shovel is the fastest, and each standard clay block drops 4 clay balls when broken without silk touch. Blast furnaces smelt clay balls into bricks twice as fast as regular furnaces, so it’s worth crafting one if you plan to make large batches for a big build.
You might be tempted to use a silk touch shovel to grab whole clay blocks for easier transport, but hold off on that if your end goal is bricks. Clay blocks smelted in a furnace turn into terracotta, not brick items, so you’ll have to break them back down into clay balls anyway if you skip mining them normally.
Step-by-Step Brick Crafting Process for Survival Mode
Once you have all your materials gathered, the actual crafting process only takes a few minutes for small batches. I once spent 20 minutes mining a huge clay deposit underwater without any water breathing buffs, and I had to swim back to the surface every 30 seconds to catch my breath. It was a huge waste of time, so I always keep a stack of doors in my inventory when I’m digging for clay now. You can place a door on the riverbed to create a temporary air pocket, no potions required.
First, open your furnace and place your chosen fuel in the bottom slot of the furnace interface. Next, place your clay balls in the top smelting slot, and wait for the progress bar to fill. Each clay ball takes 10 seconds to smelt in a regular furnace, 5 seconds in a blast furnace, so plan your fuel accordingly if you’re smelting hundreds of bricks at once. The item that pops out of the furnace is a single brick item, not the full building block you use for construction.
To turn those individual bricks into usable building blocks, open your inventory crafting menu or a standard crafting table. Place 4 brick items in a 2x2 grid in the crafting area, and you’ll get 1 full brick block. New players often confuse individual brick items with the full brick building block, so don’t panic if your furnace only gives you small brick items at first. You can also use brick items to craft flower pots, which is a nice bonus if you like decorating your builds.
Creative Mode Shortcuts and Unique Brick Variations
If you’re playing in creative mode, you don’t need to go through the smelting process at all. You can find all brick variants in the building blocks tab of the creative menu, or search “brick” in the menu search bar to pull up every related item. That means you can skip digging for clay and start building right away, which is perfect if you’re working on a big creative project and don’t want to waste time gathering resources.
There are tons of brick variations you can use to add texture and depth to your builds, beyond the standard solid brick block. You can craft brick stairs, slabs, and walls using the standard crafting recipes for those item types, which work great for roofs, path edges, and decorative borders. If you want a worn, aged look, you can smelt a standard brick block in a furnace to get cracked bricks, which look perfect for old castle ruins or rustic village homes.
Brick blocks have a blast resistance of 6, which makes them far more resistant to creeper explosions than wood or regular cobblestone, so they’re ideal for building bases in areas with lots of hostile mobs. They also don’t catch fire, so you can safely use them for chimneys, fireplaces, or builds near lava lakes without worrying about your base burning down. If you want a softer, earthier red tone, mud bricks are a great alternative, though they use a different crafting recipe with packed mud and wheat.
Common Brick Crafting Mistakes to Avoid
Even though the brick crafting process is simple, there are a few common mistakes that can cost you time and resources, especially if you’re playing in survival mode. The first mistake I see all the time is miscalculating how many clay balls you need for a build. For example, a 10x10 solid brick wall needs 100 brick blocks, which requires 400 individual bricks, which adds up to 100 full clay blocks mined. Always calculate your material needs 10% higher than you think you’ll need, because you’ll probably make mistakes while placing blocks, or want to add extra details like stairs or slabs at the last minute.
Another common mistake is using low-efficiency fuel for large batches of bricks. If you’re smelting 1,000 clay balls, using individual wood planks will waste way more resources than using coal blocks or dried kelp blocks, which burn for much longer per item. It’s also easy to mix up furnace types when you’re in a hurry. Smokers and campfires can’t smelt clay balls into bricks, so stick to regular furnaces or blast furnaces for this recipe. Smokers only work on food items, and campfires can only cook small amounts of food over time, so they won’t process building materials at all.
The last mistake to watch out for is wasting enchants on clay mining. You don’t need any fancy enchants to get clay balls, and fortune enchants don’t work on clay blocks, so you’ll only ever get 4 clay balls per block no matter what level of fortune you have. Save your enchanted shovels for mining dirt, gravel, or sand, where fortune actually gives you extra drops.
Whether you're building a small cottage chimney or an entire medieval castle, knowing how to make brick in Minecraft opens up tons of new design possibilities for your world. Bricks are one of the few building materials that look good in almost every build style, from modern suburban homes to rustic nether portals framed with brick and obsidian. If you plan on doing a lot of building with bricks, set up a small base near a large river delta with a bank of blast furnaces, so you don’t have to carry hundreds of clay balls back to your main base every time you go mining. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve switched from cobblestone to brick halfway through a build just because that warm red tone makes the whole space feel so much more welcoming, even when creepers are lurking right outside the walls.