The 10 Best Minecraft Secret Base ideas, designs, and concepts

Minecraft is a great game to play solo, but it can be an even better experience when playing on a server with other players. Getting together with a group of friends to cooperate in building a village or even a city together is a unique experience, but sometimes you want to play with other players that you don’t necessarily trust. It could be an “everyone for themselves” challenge with friends, or a public server filled with strangers. In those instances, it is useful to know how to hide your base and protect your valuables. Here are ten methods, ideas, and concepts to hide your base from others in Minecraft.

The best 10 Minecraft secret Base ideas

10. Bed as secret entrance

One of the simplest ways to create a secret entrance to a base is by using a Bed. This method works great but has a few disadvantages attached to it. If you position your Bed surrounded by blocks, with the secret base on the other side of the wall, you can glitch through it by laying down and getting up. The spawn mechanics will always position you to the west on the pillow side, even through blocks. The two main disadvantages are that your Bed will be out in the open and that you can only use this method during nighttime when sleep interaction is available.

Related: The 8 Best Minecraft Bedroom Ideas, Designs and Builds

9. Dirt wall block

The oldest and probably simplest way of hiding your base is building into a dirt wall. Look for a hill with dirt wall sides, and remove two blocks to get through them, then replace them quickly behind you once you’re inside. You can mark the entrance with something that blends in, such as a piece of vegetation, so that you can remember which blocks to remove.

8. Two base decoy

This concept revolves around building a base outfitted and equipped with basic furnishings that you would expect but then hiding a true secret base nearby. That way, if someone comes upon your decoy base, they could think that they’ve found the real one and that it’s nothing special, while your true base is hidden somewhere nearby and that’s where you stash all of your precious items, crafts, and resources.

7. Flush Piston doors

If you’re building your base into the mountain and want to create a fancy flush doorway, then Flush Piston doors are an elegant solution. Be warned though, this method uses a lot of Redstone, so that doesn’t make it the most convenient option. It revolves around a dual mechanism with Redstone dust, pistons, and Repeaters, with two buttons to open and close the doors. Naturally, you’ll want to hide the outside button behind some vegetation for extra security. The Minecraft YouTuber Mysticat has provided a detailed explanation of how to build this method.

6. Treetop Base

Most Minecraft players won’t think twice about looking up at tree canopies. That’s why they’re great for hiding your base up where nobody is going to look. You have two main options for treetop bases. The simpler option is building into a single big tree, by hollowing out the foliage to build a small hidden base, furnished with bare necessities.

The other option lets you build a more sprawling treetop base. You can do this in a Jungle biome, where the canopy of trees is connected with each other. In this instance, you would leave the bottom of the canopy intact, while building above it, connecting the trees into an Ewok village-like base.

5. Paintings as secret doors

You probably know that in Minecraft, you can walk through cleverly positioned paintings, such as those positioned on signs instead of blocks. That way, you can use a large painting (for example, 3×3 or 4×4), to cover an entrance to your hidden base. Similarly, you can use paintings to hide other features, such as buttons, compartments with mechanisms to open secret doors, and more. If you position them above ground, remember to add blocks that you can climb onto to reach the nook you use to pass through the painting.

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4. Minecart glitch

This method of base entry is an upgrade to the above-mentioned Bed method. You’ll be using a hidden Minecart to enter the base, and another one to exit. You’ll also need a Hoe equipped to reveal the entrance. Here’s how it works. 

Place a Minecart one block away from your hidden underground or hillside base, then place a first block in front of it. Very quickly, a grass patch will form on top of it, obscuring the cart behind it. Use the Hoe to remove the grass, making the Minecart interactable. Now enter the cart and then exit, and you’ll find yourself in your base. Similarly to the Bed method, orient it so that west side is where you want to exit, as it’s the main direction to eject. Do the same with another Minecart to build an exit from the base, leaving a diagonal space empty on the outside.

3. Ocean floor Base

If you want to hide your base from everyone, then the best solution is to use Minecraft’s oceanic depths to your advantage. The waters in the game become darker the deeper they get, so look for a suitably deep trench and build a base there. You can protect it with walls and glass panels, and even build a hidden elevator shaft to reach it if you don’t want to dive to get there each time.

For shallower water bases, another option is to build in a terrain feature in the water, hide it with algae, and make the corridor curve around to protect your base from internal light peeking through.

2. Crawlspace entrance

This method only works in the Java version of Minecraft, where crawling is enabled so that you can use a one-block hole to mask your entrance. There are many ways to hide this simple yet effective crawlspace, such as timed pistons, or even trapdoors that you use to decorate the outside perimeter. The trapdoor method works best for a secret base built within a simpler decoy base, for example. You can even use scaffolding from a certain point, building the crawlspace into a vertical shaft for an underground base.

1. Lava roof secret entrance

No one would suspect that under a dangerous pool of lava is an underground hidden base. You can set up a method of jumping through lava, extinguishing yourself, and falling into the base. This can be done with structures such as Oak Fence Gates (all open), that will keep lava from spilling down, followed by a layer of water, then another layer of open gates. You’ll take a little bit of damage in the process unless you use a Fire Protection potion before jumping in. To get out of the base, you can build a different secret exit, or use a Forework Rocket to get out the way you came. Just remember to have a water pool nearby to extinguish yourself once again.