House



A house is a structure that meets the following criteria:
 * Has side and back walls, a floor, and a ceiling. The back walls can be made of dirt and out of dungeon wall tiles (e.g., Green Brick Wall) as of patch 1.0.6.
 * Has a chair.
 * Has a Wooden Table or a Work Bench.
 * Has a Wooden Door in a wall or a Wood Platform in the ceiling or floor.
 * Has a light source.
 * Is at least 4 blocks tall and 8 blocks wide or 5 blocks tall and 7 blocks wide, not including walls, floor or ceiling.

A house can have holes in the background wall to serve as windows. The hole can be no larger than 4x4 tiles (i.e. 4 background tiles across and down) which is 2x2 wall pieces. You can have multiple windows, as long as they are separated by at least a single row of background walls. However, having windows will sometimes allow monsters to spawn in your house. When making houses, they may be attached together and share a common walls, floors, or ceilings; as long as all requirements are still met and there is some way to get inside.

To set the player spawn point using a bed, the size and wall requirements must be met. This can be used to check if a room is big enough to house an NPC by placing a bed in the room and attempting to set the spawn point. If it works, the room is big enough. If it doesn't work, the room needs to be bigger.

An NPC requires an unoccupied house to spawn and move in. To forcefully move an NPC to another house, simply destroy any of the house requirements listed above (e.g. table) and make sure to have an unoccupied house available for the NPC to move into.

Surface mobs cannot normally enter a room through the door. The exceptions are that zombies can bash open doors during a Blood Moon, and goblin thieves can open doors during a Goblin Army invasion. Many mobs in lower layers can open doors freely, such as Skeletons and Dead Miners in the Cavern layer. Greater care should be taken in securing such houses.