Torches are fine for a dirt hut, but honestly, they look kinda trash once you start building something you actually care about. You've spent hours mining quartz or hauling deepslate back to your base, and then you slap a stick with some burning charcoal on the wall? It doesn't sit right. If you want your build to look like a professional lived-in space rather than a temporary cave, you need to know how to build a lantern in minecraft.
It’s a vibe shift.
Lanterns provide a much "cleaner" light. They hang from chains. They sit on fences. They don't have those weird little ember particles flying off them constantly. Plus, they have a higher light level than those dim soul torches or redstone lamps that require a whole circuit just to turn on.
The Shopping List: What You Actually Need
You don’t need much. That's the beauty of it. To get this done, you basically need one torch and eight iron nuggets.
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Getting the torch is the easy part. Just shove a piece of coal (or charcoal, if you’re desperate) on top of a wooden stick in your crafting grid. Done. But the nuggets are where people sometimes get confused, even though it's incredibly simple. You don't go mining for "nugget ore." You just take a single iron ingot and toss it into a crafting table. That one ingot explodes into nine nuggets. Since you only need eight to wrap around your torch, you’ll even have one nugget left over. Keep it. Or throw it in a lava pit. Whatever.
If you’re feeling fancy and want the blue version—the soul lantern—you just swap the regular torch for a soul torch. You make those by adding soul sand or soul soil to the bottom of your torch recipe. It’s the same layout, just a bit spookier.
Crafting the Dang Thing
Open your crafting table. Put the torch right in the dead center. Now, surround it completely with those eight iron nuggets.
It should look like a little iron cage around your light source. Once you see the lantern pop up in the result box, drag it into your inventory. That’s it. You’ve successfully figured out how to build a lantern in minecraft. It sounds almost too simple to be a "pro" tip, but the impact on your interior design is massive.
Why You Should Stop Using Torches Immediately
Let’s talk light levels.
In Minecraft, light levels are the difference between a peaceful night’s sleep and a Creeper exploding your storage chests. A standard torch puts out a light level of 14. A lantern? It hits the maximum of 15. While that sounds like a small difference, it actually gives you a slightly wider radius of safety. You can space them out a bit more than torches, which keeps your walls from looking cluttered.
Beyond the math, there’s the aesthetic. Lanterns are "full blocks" in terms of how they interact with the world, but they don't fill the whole space. They have a hitbox that’s smaller than a full block, which makes them feel like actual objects hanging in the air.
Hanging vs. Standing
One of the best things about the lantern is its versatility. You can place it on top of a solid block, sure. It looks great on a nightstand or a stone wall. But the real magic happens when you attach it to the bottom of a block.
When you hang a lantern, it automatically grows a little ring on top. It looks like it’s actually hooked onto the ceiling. If you want to go full "medieval castle," hang it from a chain. Chains were basically made for this. You can create long, vaulted ceilings with lanterns dangling at different heights. It adds depth. It adds drama. It makes your base look like something out of a cinematic trailer rather than a random collection of blocks.
The Soul Lantern Alternative
Sometimes, the warm orange glow of a standard lantern is too much. Maybe you're building an ice palace. Maybe you're building an underground necromancer's lair. This is where the soul lantern comes in.
It’s crafted exactly the same way, but with that blue soul torch in the middle. Here’s the catch: it’s dimmer. A soul lantern only puts out a light level of 10.
Don't use these if you're trying to stop mobs from spawning in a massive dark room. Use them for the aesthetic. Use them to mark paths in the Nether where the blue light stands out against the red hellscape. They also won't melt snow or ice, which is a niche but vital tip for anyone building in a cold biome who doesn't want their house to turn into a puddle.
Hidden Mechanics Most Players Ignore
Did you know lanterns are actually one of the most efficient ways to light up an underwater base?
Unlike torches, which immediately pop off the wall the second a water source block touches them, lanterns can be placed underwater. They don't care. They’ll just sit there on the sea floor or hang from a piece of prismarine, glowing away. If you're tired of using sea lanterns (which can be a pain to farm) or glowstone (which is ugly), standard lanterns are your best friend for aquatic lighting.
Also, if you're playing on a server and trying to keep your lag down, lanterns are generally better for performance than a bunch of active redstone lamps or flickering fires. They are "static" light sources. They just exist.
Finding Them in the Wild
If you’re too lazy to craft them—or you just haven't found iron yet—you can actually find lanterns spawning naturally.
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Check out snowy tundras. The villages there often have lanterns hanging outside the houses. Some buildings in bastion remnants in the Nether also have them, though usually, they're the soul variety. You can just break them with any pickaxe and take them home. If you break them with your hand, you still get the item, but a pickaxe is way faster.
Pro-Level Decoration Ideas
Stop putting lanterns on the floor. It looks messy.
Try this instead: place a fence post, then put the lantern on top. It looks like a lamp post. Or, place a fence post coming out of a wall, and hang the lantern from it. It looks like a street lamp from old London.
Another trick is using them with trapdoors. Put a lantern on a block, then surround it with four wooden trapdoors and flip them up. It creates a "caged" look that works perfectly for industrial builds or mineshafts.
If you want to get really technical, use them to hide your light sources. You can place a lantern under a moss carpet or a slab (in some versions) to get light bleeding through without seeing the actual block. It makes your gardens look magical at night without having visible torches everywhere.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
The biggest mistake is the "Iron Waste."
If you are early in the game, don't go crazy with lanterns. Each one costs almost an entire iron ingot. If you’re trying to light up a 100x100 perimeter to stop slimes from spawning, stick to torches. Save the lanterns for your actual house.
Also, watch out for the "floating" lantern. If you hang a lantern from a block and then break that block, the lantern will break too. It has to be attached to something. However, you can hang them from things like iron bars, walls, and even lightning rods.
Advanced Lighting Strategies
In the 1.20 and 1.21 updates, the way we think about light changed slightly with the introduction of new blocks, but the lantern remains the gold standard. When you are planning your build, think about the "temperature" of the light.
Warm light (standard lantern) makes a room feel cozy and safe.
Cool light (soul lantern) makes a room feel cold, mysterious, or hostile.
Mixing them in the same room usually looks bad. Pick a theme and stick to it. If you're building a library, go warm. If you're building a laboratory, go soul.
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Summary of Actionable Steps
- Gather Iron: Smelt your ore into ingots, then turn those ingots into nuggets. One ingot = 9 nuggets.
- Make Torches: Stick + Coal. Simple.
- Craft: Torch in the middle, nuggets all around.
- Placement: Use chains for hanging to get that "elite" look.
- Optimization: Use regular lanterns for max light (level 15) and soul lanterns for decoration (level 10).
- Underwater: Use them for sea bases since they don't break in water.
Next time you're looking at your Minecraft house and it feels a little "basic," swap out those torches. It’s the single easiest upgrade you can make to your interior design. Go get some iron, start a small furnace line, and start replacing those sticks on the wall with something that actually looks like it belongs in a master builder's home.