There are many wonderful LEGO location sets, including castles and sci-fi command centres – but some of the best and most charming are real-world houses, providing a delightful slice of everyday life. Here are six LEGO houses that it would be great fun to live in.
LEGO houses have been part of the building System sets from the beginning. There’s more variety than ever before, with a wide range of properties in themes like Friends, City and Creator. Such sets can inspire builders to imagine rooms, décor and even entire homes of their own, all with a few bricks and tiles.
Here are five LEGO locations we’d love to call home…
10292 The Friends Apartments
Based on the classic sitcom, 10292 The Friends Apartments promises a life in the big city that reality just can’t match. Comprised of two apartments – one for the girls (Monica and Rachel), one for the boys (chick, duck) – the retired set is as faithful a recreation as the earlier 21319 Central Perk, with prop and furniture placement so perfect you could find your way round with a turkey on your head.
The flats are spacious, allowing for plenty of storytelling options, and while there are no bedrooms or bathrooms, there is a balcony. The accompanying minifigures do a mostly decent job of capturing the feel of being young, where your social life is your only life and adulthood happening to you rather than because of you. And like most flats in big cities, the price is out of reach of all but the highest-tipped waitresses.
77050 Nook’s Cranny & Rosie’s House
First homes can often be more modest than first flats. You’re paying rent, but you’re saving for a deposit. There’s two of you (if you’re lucky) with two incomes (ditto), but maybe you’re saving for something else. So in the LEGO world, you might be able to afford the front of a house, but not the back.
77050 Nook’s Cranny & Rosie’s House offers a single-storey property with a breezy, rustic aesthetic. The interchangeable windows offer more style than security.
This charming cottage build manages to fill almost every stud with detail. The torso prints make the minifigures the envy of other themes, but the moulded heads are just too adorable to deprive them. The exterior offers just enough backdrop to feel satisfying and while it looks cramped with one, with two it’s cosy. At least it’s handy for the shops.
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60398 Family House and Electric Car
Fast forward and you’re properly settled. 60398 Family House and Electric Car needs space for the child and the dog. You’re in a routine, but that’s no bad thing. You’ve got your new kitchen, nice and big, where you can cook dinner while your better half zooms their way through another day not at the office. And if you’re very lucky, they’ll have remembered to plug the chariot in to charge, as well as their phone. Meanwhile, the boy is in his pit, ‘livestreaming.’ Fortunately, the new greenhouse/conservatory has been fitted so you can kick off your shoes, open a window and exhale, knowing that just for a moment, all is right with the world.
60454 Holiday Camper Van
You spoke too soon. A few years later still and baby number two is living up to its name. The boy is elsewhere, having decided that camping with the codgers would ruin his rizz.
60454 Holiday Camper Van is the newest version of this reliable LEGO City vehicle. Where 2021’s 60283 Holiday Camper Van had presence, 60454 has presumption. The dark red front blends into the white back end via stickers that push the branding. The swing-door rear cabin reveals plenty of space for the parents to relax while junior takes the wheel – and unlike the otherwise excellent 60283, you’re able to sleep in the van and don’t have to take turns in the roof like you’re hiding from the bailiffs.
That being said, you’re watching the clock, now. You’ve started craving the quieter life. Somewhere far removed from the squeezing pressure of the schedule. Where is it all going? What are you going to do when you retire?
42639 Andrea’s Modern Mansion
The myriad domestic properties in the current LEGO portfolio range from simple bedroom playsets to full-on lotto jackpot, such as LEGO Friends 42639 Andrea’s Modern Mansion. The mansion goes all-in with fascinating rock work, confident shaping and plenty of room for the OG Heartlake City cast in the pool, kitchen and recording studio.
Licensed themes aren’t slacking this season either, with the vibrant colour palette and lived-in feel of 43268 Lilo And Stitch Beach House. Meanwhile, 43242 Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs’ Cottage presents wonderfully ramshackle thatched roof detail alongside inspired woodwork furniture, a cute well build, and enough minifigure landlords, swains and nice old ladies to shake a broom at – it’s just a shame that Snow White has to sleep outside in a tube.
21335 Motorized Lighthouse
The dream has arrived. LEGO Ideas 21335 Motorized Lighthouse, released in 2022, is the ultimate retirement getaway. Imagine taking up residence in this stout sentinel. The kids are grown and flown, the hair is salt and pepper, there’s nobody here but us seagulls. The cottage at the base has a visual tactility that makes up for the modest footprint and it could certainly be a standalone piece, transplanted to a hill or green and wooded space if the keeper gets sick of the cold sea air.
The tower itself has real presence to match the crag and sea spray base. The eponymous play feature, a light brick rotating behind a fresnel lens, bridges the gap between fan designer Sandro Quatrini’s original idea, that the set should be a sculpture, and the needs of the minifigure-scale building style. In that sense, as others, it succeeds admirably.