How to Build a Door in Minecraft

Co-authored by Zac Churchill

Last Updated: March 21, 2023

Doors are a basic essential to all buildings in Minecraft. Every house should have a door, including your first one. Without one, hostile mobs would be purging in to kill, even if you already have a strong weapon. Later in the game, you may start moving towards fancier piston-powered doors, but in the early and middle of the game, it's best to just stay with the basic door.

Method 1

Method 1 of 3:

Crafting a Wooden Door

Wooden doors are the basic doors that everyone starts with. They might not be as strong as iron doors, but they are still adequate.^{[1]
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1
Make a wooden door by using 6 wooden planks. Create wooden planks by placing wood in your crafting menu and crafting the planks.^{[2]
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- If you do not have a crafting bench, use 4 planks, placed in a square, to create a crafting bench.
2
Place 6 wooden planks, 3 high and 2 wide, in your crafting menu. This will create one wooden door. Note that you can change the appearance of the wooden door based on which wood you use. You could therefore have an oak door, spruce door, birch door, or a jungle wood door.^{[3]
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- Also note that any door types other than oak and iron only exist from 1.8 and onwards.

Method 2

Method 2 of 3:

Crafting an Iron Door

Iron doors are stronger doors that don't break as easily as wooden doors. The short downside it that it must be activated in some way to open, such as buttons, levers, and pressure plates.

1
Make an iron door by using 6 iron ingots. To get iron ingots, you have two options:
- Crafting: craft iron ingot from a single block of iron.
- Smelting: smelt iron ingot from a block of iron ore.
2
Arrange the iron ingots in the same shape as the wooden planks, filling two vertical columns. You now have an iron door.

Method 3

Method 3 of 3:

Placing the Door and Other Specs

1
Place the door on the side of the block you want it to be on. If you're standing on the outside of a block, a placed door will end up on — you guessed it — the outside of the wall. If you're standing on the inside of the block, a placed door will end up on the inside of the wall.
2
Place two doors side by side to create double doors. Two adjacent doors will automatically orientate to become double doors.
3
Use pressure plates to open doors automatically. A pressure plate placed on either side of the door will automatically open and close the door as you pass through it. If you're worried about mobs, however, only place the pressure plate on the inside of the door to keep mobs out.
- Wooden doors can also open and shut easily by right-clicking the door.
4
Know that iron doors will not open by right-clicking. It is impossible to open an iron door without a mechanism nearby. Use this knowledge to keep mobs and other griefers out of your private space.
- Make a redstone pattern to your door and use a lever to open it.
- Place a pressure plate on the inside hinge of your iron door to open.
- Before the village and pillage update of Minecraft, villagers would breed independently based on the number of doors in the village.^{[4]
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- The villagers would breed if the population happened to be 35% or less than the number of valid doors.
- Villager breeding also depended on the willingness of the villagers. A player could manipulate it by giving specific amounts of food to the villagers.^{[5]
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Community Q&A

Question

Is there a gold, emerald, or redstone door?

Joshua

Community Answer

No, there isn't, only wood and iron. A redstone door wouldn't be useful because it would always be open, unless you're using it for a redstone circuit. In that case you can just use redstone and redstone torches, etc.
Question

Is a trapdoor a door?

Rtao

Community Answer

It has a similar functionality, but a different crafting recipe.
Question

You can make an infinite amount of doors?

Kenny

Community Answer

Yes, you can actually make an infinite amount of doors, even in the infdev (infinite devolopment) version. You can make as many doors as you want, but there's no benefit to it, especially given the fact that your computer will start lagging if you get carried away.

Warnings

Zombies can break wooden doors in hard difficulty. If you hear a knocking sound, make sure you go and kill the Zombie.

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If you use a pressure plate with a door, make sure the pressure plate is on the inside of your house, as mobs can trigger the pressure plate and open the door if it's on the outside.

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Buttons work better if you don't want mobs purging in.

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