Doll House Building

There are many different ways to start doll house building, you could start from scratch making up a plan yourself, you could build a house from an existing plan or build a doll house from a kit.

By far the easiest way to get started is to build a dolls house from a kit. Building a doll house from scratch or from a plan is much harder than it looks and if you have no experience I would not recommend it. If you are a novice try building your first house from a kit and see how it goes. Click here for information on doll house kits.

If you do decide that building a doll house from a plan is right for you you may decide to design the dolls house yourself. There are ready made doll house plans available - Click here for details - but it is sometimes nice to actually design the dolls house yourself. There are a few things you will need to take into consideration.

The size of the house

The standard size for dolls houses is 1/12th scale. That is there is one inch in a dolls house to every 1 foot real size. If you build your dolls house to this scale you are sure to get furniture to fit.

Room sizes vary but a standard dolls house room is usually 8 inches high. If you want to create a spacious airy dolls house you could raise the room height by an inch or two.

Components

You can purchase standard components for dolls house building such as doors and windows that you could use in your house instead of making them yourself. They are all made to a standard size so you will need to make sure they will fit your dolls house if you decide to use them. Click for more information on doll house building components.

Material

There are several different woods you could use when doll house building, ply, MDF, oak. The majority of dolls houses are now made from MDF as it is a very easy wood to work with and cost effective. Ply tends to be very thin and I would not recommend it for a large project as it is often not strong enough.

If you want to build a top quality collectors dolls house you could use a wood like oak and leave it unpainted. Some of the nicest collectors houses are made from oak but again if you have no experience of using this wood I would not recommend it. You will need more tools to cut it and it is harder to work with.

By far the easiest wood to work with when doll house building is MDF.