45 Gingerbread House Ideas for 2026, Sorted by How Hard They Actually Are

This is the Best Gingerbread Houses picture library: forty five real houses, each one tagged with how hard it is and how long it takes, so you can find the one that fits the afternoon you actually have.

Most galleries of gingerbread house ideas have the same problem. They are beautiful, they are endless, and by photo thirty you have no idea whether the one you like is a two hour job or a two day one. People arrive at pages like this already slightly intimidated, scroll past forty pictures of houses better than anything they have made, and close the tab. That is a sorting problem, not an inspiration problem.

So every idea below carries a difficulty and a time estimate, and there are five shortlists above the gallery that pull out the right handful for a given situation. When we say ideas we mean both the whole-house designs and the single details worth stealing from them, a roof pattern, a fence, a window treatment, so there is something here whether you are planning a build or rescuing one that is half done.

If this is your first gingerbread house, start with the easy shortlist and ignore the rest for now. If you are building with children, the age bands further down matter more than the pictures do. And if you are entering a contest, skip everything else and go to the judging criteria, because they are not what most people assume.

By the end you will have a shortlist of about six ideas rather than a vague sense that gingerbread houses are nice, a realistic estimate of what each one costs you in time, and a clear idea of which details are worth attempting at your current skill level.

It is grouped into five parts: how to narrow forty five down to a shortlist, the layout question that comes before any of them, the five curated shortlists themselves, the full gallery with every idea tagged, and what changes when there is a ribbon on the line. Start with the narrowing.

How to Pick an Idea You Will Actually Finish

Three questions get you from forty five ideas to about six: how much time you genuinely have, who is holding the piping bag, and whether the house needs to survive being looked at closely.

Time is the one people get wrong, because a gingerbread house is not one job. It is baking, cooling, assembly, setting, and only then decorating. The ideas below are tagged for the decorating alone, on the assumption the house is already standing. Add two to three hours in front of that if you are starting from dough, or fifteen minutes if you are opening a kit.

If you have under an hour, pick a mini or a single-detail build. Small surfaces are far more forgiving than large flat ones because there is nowhere for a wobbly line to run, and finishing something small beats abandoning something ambitious.

If you have an afternoon, you can do a full house with one strong idea in it: a candy roof, a color scheme, a fence and a path. One idea executed cleanly reads better than four ideas competing.

If you have a whole day or a weekend, that is when the structural ideas become possible: a second storey, a porch, piped lacework, a village. These are the only ones worth attempting if precision matters to you, because they all need setting time between stages.

Say you fall for idea 18, the professionally piped one, on a Saturday morning with people coming at six. It is genuinely achievable, but not in that window, and not while also baking the panels. The version of that Saturday that works is a kit house with idea 22’s Hershey Kiss roof and a fence from idea 41, finished and photographed by four. The version that does not work is half a lattice and a lot of scraped-off icing.

Two more things worth settling before you pick. Whether you are baking from scratch or opening a kit changes what is realistic, and it also changes the cost, which we went through in whether building from scratch actually costs less. And if you are starting from dough rather than a box, the shape of the house is decided before any of these ideas apply, so read how to make a gingerbread house from scratch first.

The finder below does the narrowing for you.

Gingerbread House Layouts, and Why They Come First

Every idea below is a decoration applied to a shape. The shape is a separate decision and it is the one almost nobody makes deliberately, because the default is so obvious that it does not feel like a choice: two side walls, two gable ends, two roof panels, the house on the front of the box.

It is worth making deliberately, because layout decides how much work the icing has to do. A gingerbread house does not usually fail because someone picked the wrong candy. It fails at a joint, and which joints exist at all is a layout question that was settled before anyone opened a bag of sweets.

The clearest example is the two storey house, which is the layout people most often attempt second and the one that fails most. Doubling the height of a wall does not give you any more joint at the bottom of it. The same seam now carries a taller, heavier wall with far more leverage working against it, and it will lean overnight even though nothing about the icing changed. That is a layout failure wearing an icing failure's clothes.

Six layouts cover almost everything people actually build. Pick one before you shortlist a decoration, then use the gallery below to fill it in.

Two of these are worth calling out because they are badly under-used. The open back, a house with the rear wall simply left off and viewed from one side like a stage set, removes half the joints under load and lets you light the inside with a tealight. If a full build has collapsed on you before, it is the one to try next. The L shape reads as a far more ambitious build for the cost of one extra pair of walls, which makes it the best value change you can make to a standard template.

If you want to build a layout the box does not offer, our free printable gingerbread house templates include the classic footprint plus a barn, a train and a Victorian, all with a calibration bar so they print at a known size. For the multi house version, building a gingerbread village covers keeping separate houses looking like one town, and mini gingerbread houses is the small scale route. Whichever shape you pick, the joints are only as good as what is holding them, which is covered in royal icing that holds a wall up.

Easy Gingerbread House Ideas for a First Try

An easy gingerbread house idea is one with a small number of decisions in it, not one with a small number of decorations. Three things make a build easy: a limited palette so you are not choosing colors as you go, decorations large enough to place with fingers rather than tweezers, and no element that has to be structurally sound.

That last one is the trap. A porch, a second storey, a chimney with any height to it and a free-standing tree all need setting time and a steady hand. A roof covered edge to edge in one candy needs neither, and from six feet away it looks more finished than the porch does.

These twelve are the ones to start with: 4, 14, 20, 21, 22, 24, 26, 27, 28, 34, 35 and 39. Every one is a single clear idea, none needs anything to stand up on its own, and most are done inside an afternoon. If you want a shape to start from rather than a kit, our free gingerbread house templates give you panels you can cut before any of this begins.

The Best Ideas to Build with Children

The right idea for building with children depends far more on their age than on the design, and the useful split is roughly the same one used for any kitchen task.

The University of Illinois Extension's guidance on what children can do in the kitchen by age maps onto gingerbread almost exactly. Two to four year olds can "spread butter or icing" and "roll, shape, and cut dough". Five to seven year olds can measure, mash and "cut using a small knife". Eight to eleven year olds can "read recipe directions and complete the steps". Their own caveat is the important part: assign tasks by developmental level, because each child is different and may not fit the suggested ranges.

If your children are two to four, the job is spreading and pressing, so pick an idea whose whole surface is one repeated candy. Ideas 3, 12, 31 and 40 are all "cover this in that", which is exactly the task a three year old can do well and enjoy. Do not expect a house. Expect a well-covered slab, and let that be the win.

If they are five to nine, they can place accurately but will run out of patience before the house is finished. Give them the roof, which is the biggest visible result for the least precision, and keep the window frames for yourself. Ideas 4, 20, 22, 27, 35 and 39 all work here.

If they are ten or older, hand over the whole build and a piping bag. This is the age where the fiddly ideas stop being frustrating and start being satisfying, so 13, 25, 29, 30 and 36 are all fair game.

Picture a table with a seven year old and a three year old at it. The seven year old gets a kit house and idea 22, a roof of Hershey Kisses, which is about eighty individual placements and will hold their attention for most of it. The three year old gets their own flat roof panel and a bowl of gumdrops and is told to cover it. Both are doing a real job, neither is waiting for a turn, and only one of those two panels ever needs to end up on a house.

A few more things worth knowing before the tray comes out are in our gingerbread house tips.

Themed Gingerbread House Ideas

A theme is a rule about what you are not going to use. That is the whole technique. The houses below that read as themed are not the ones with the most going on, they are the ones where something obvious was left out.

The most-attempted theme of all is not on this list because it needs its own page: Harry Potter gingerbread houses covers the three realistic routes to a Hogwarts, from the licensed castle kit to simply putting a scarf and a lightning bolt on a plain house.

Pick the theme before you shop, then let it veto things at the counter. A log cabin means browns and neutrals, so the neon gummies do not go in the basket however good they look on their own. A Grinch house is the purest version of this, because it is one green and one red and nothing else. A snowy theme means whites and pale blues, which rules out about two thirds of the seasonal aisle and makes every remaining decision faster.

Nine of the ideas below carry a theme cleanly enough to copy: 2, 7, 10, 13, 17, 25, 29, 30 and 38. Two of them are worth singling out. Idea 10 turns pretzel sticks into a log cabin, which is the most convincing material substitution on the page. Idea 25 turns the house into a shop rather than a home, and switching the building type is the single easiest way to make a gingerbread house look like nobody else's.

Say you commit to a woodland cabin. Pretzels for the walls, chocolate rocks for the chimney, shredded coconut dyed green for moss, rosemary sprigs as conifers. Then someone hands you a bag of rainbow Nerds. Under a theme, that is an easy no, and the house is better for it. Without a theme, the Nerds go on, and the cabin becomes a house with some pretzels and some Nerds. Deciding what a theme excludes is doing most of the work.

Once the theme is set, which candy goes where is the next decision, and it is easier than it looks once the palette is already narrowed.

Gingerbread House Ideas That Win Contests

Contest entries are judged on things that have very little to do with how pretty the house is, and most first-time entrants lose points before a judge has formed an opinion.

Start with the gate, because it is where entries get disqualified rather than marked down. Most serious competitions require the entry to be entirely edible, including the base, and set a minimum proportion that must be gingerbread. Cardboard supports, wire armatures, a polystyrene core and a plywood board are all common and all fatal. Check your specific contest's rules before you design anything, because this constraint shapes the build from the first panel.

Then the scoring. The National Gingerbread House Competition's official rules, the largest contest of its kind in the United States, publish five criteria: overall appearance, originality and creativity, difficulty, precision, and consistency of theme. Local contests borrow this framework almost universally, so it is a reasonable model even when your rules sheet is one paragraph long.

Read that list again and notice what is not on it: size. Big does not score. Precision and difficulty do, and both are easier to achieve at small scale, which is why a row of three immaculate small houses routinely beats one large house with wobbly seams. Entering a set rather than a single build is the most underused strategy in amateur contests.

If you are entering a local or workplace contest, originality carries the most weight, because the field is small and everything else is roughly level. Build something that is not a house. A chapel, a shop, a bus, a lighthouse, a room with one wall removed. Same skills, completely different shelf.

If you are entering a juried competition, precision is where the field separates, because everybody there has already had the good idea. Cut against a template, decorate the panels flat before assembly, and pipe a bead down every seam. That means getting royal icing at the right consistency, which is the single skill underneath all of it.

Picture someone who has never entered anything, seeing a notice for a contest at their local library. Rather than attempting one showpiece, they build a set of tiny houses, each simple, each finished properly, and enter them as a group. It wins. That happens because five small clean builds demonstrate consistency and precision five times over, where one ambitious build demonstrates them once and shows every flaw at full size.

Of the ideas below, six are worth studying if you are entering something: 5, 11, 18, 19, 42 and 44. Note that 42, the free-standing gingerbread tree, is the least difficult of the six and arguably the highest scoring per hour, because it reads as structural ambition and takes an afternoon rather than a weekend.

One practical thing nobody mentions: entries are usually built days before judging, so how long a finished house holds up matters as much as how it looks on the day you finish it. Anything that absorbs moisture will have moved by the time a judge sees it.

Score your plan before you bake anything.

All 45 Gingerbread House Ideas

Every idea below is tagged with how hard it is and roughly how long the decorating takes, assuming the house is already built and set. Difficulty is our editorial judgment of each build, not a measured figure.

1. Gingerbread House with Traditional Decorations Ideas

This traditional style gingerbread house is what anyone would envision when thinking about decorating a gingerbread house during the holidays. The whimsical colors of the gumdrops and hard candies are eye-catching and fun. The perfectly squishy looking trees and wreath above the door bring out the holiday-feel and also looks delicious! Our favorite is the use of the white frosting for the beautifully sheeted snow on top of the house.

Difficulty: Easy · An afternoon · Good with kids

2. Modern Gingerbread House with Chocolate Decorations Ideas

This modern chocolate gingerbread house looks too delicious not to eat! The use of the milk chocolate and white chocolate Kit Kat bars creating a checkered foundation for the walls makes for a unique gingerbread house look. The chocolate creates a look of a roof that is lightly dusted in the snow is smart as you won’t need to use too much frosting for this one. The red and green from the wreath adds a beautiful pop of color and hints at which season this is for.

Difficulty: Some practice helps · An afternoon

3. Candy Roof Gingerbread House Ideas

This roof design is easier since it contains four gingerbread pieces compared to the six pieces that would be used for a traditional gingerbread house. The giant, colorful sweet tarts used for the roofing is the focal point of this gingerbread house. The intricate white frosting designs on the front of the house adds a feminine touch, while the greenery used around the house ties everything together.

Difficulty: Easy · An afternoon · Good with kids

4. Small Gingerbread House with Green Decorations

This small and green gingerbread house design has charming details. The house has red and green candies used as Christmas lights on the roof and a short chimney. The use of accessories like the snowman with the green hat, the candy canes and peppermint candies at the doorway, and use of gummies throughout really create a cute Christmas time feeling.

Difficulty: Easy · Under an hour · Mini · Good with kids

5. A Large Gingerbread House with Stylish Frosting Ideas

If you have a gingerbread house mold that is quite large, this large gingerbread house with stylish frosting patterns and templates can be a sweet inspiration for you. Framing the first floor of the house with large trees and adding a colorful bunch of candies surrounding the house is a nice touch. The fluffy white frosting on the roof with confetti sprinkles creates a playful touch to the elegant frosting designs on the front of the house.

Difficulty: Advanced · A full day or weekend · Contest ready

6. Classic Gingerbread House Decorations Ideas

The classic gingerbread house-made small and compact and an excellent testament of what you can accomplish with just two simple ingredients. Although there are quite a few decorative flourishes, such as the hard candy and gumdrop window accents, most of the house is constructed from just clever use of frosting. With just a few pattern changes, you can create a diverse pattern that mirrors tiles if you only have gingerbread and icing available. Multi-colored candies like Sixlets make for a subtle but beautiful shingle effect that is both visually arresting and tasty as well.

Difficulty: Easy · An afternoon · Good with kids

7. Cute Pink Gingerbread House Ideas

A fun take on the traditional gingerbread house with more emphasis placed on the front of the house. Multi-colored gumdrops form a narrow little path out of the snow, bringing more focus on the frosting and candied details of the front door. From frosting mistletoe, peppermint centerpieces and Mike&Ike window frames; the bright pink aesthetic provides a vibrant and cheery feel that your typical gingerbread colors don’t provide.

Difficulty: Easy · An afternoon · Good with kids

8. Gingerbread House with Frosting Icicles and Powdered Sugar Snow

The frosting icicles with powdered sugar snow gingerbread house paints the picture that Santa Clause and Mrs. Clause are inside next to a fire looking at the ‘naughty and nice’ list. The use of the gingerbread cookies and powdered sugar snow around the gingerbread house helps to create an inviting and winter feeling. The perfectly symmetric details from the frosting windows to the peppermint on the roof, are cozy and cute.

Difficulty: Some practice helps · An afternoon

9. Traditional Gingerbread House With Gumdrop Roof

Any kid’s dream as they think of gingerbread houses and with so much variety of tasty candies to eat and best of all, just about anyone can make this house. Gumdrops, hard candies and Sixlets dot the roof, offering you more color than just your typical gingerbread and frosting. The same candy combination also provides more color to your lawn and window accents. Symmetry is always lovely, but for a traditional house like this, imperfection offers more of a classic gingerbread charm.

Difficulty: Easy · An afternoon · Good with kids

10. Log Cabin Decor Using Pretzel Sticks

The modern log cabin design using pretzel sticks is an excellent inspiration for those who love the outdoors and a more rustic look. You can tell with the icicles along the roof, and white frosting touches within the cookie tree that it is winter time and cold. The login cabin style can be simple look without the use of bright colors and having its focal point being the pretzel sticks for the log cabin walls.

Difficulty: Some practice helps · An afternoon

11. Sugar Encrusted Gingerbread House with Frosting Decoration

The sugar encrusted gingerbread house with frosting design has an almost artificial look to it as it has meticulous and hardened frosting and candy details. The sugar adds a hint of glimmer and fun to this unique gingerbread house. This particular gingerbread house would look great as a piece to be shown off, not eaten, within a ceramic Christmas Village collection.

Difficulty: Advanced · A full day or weekend · Contest ready

12. Classic Gumdrop Gingerbread House with Cotton Ball Smoke

This wonderfully whimsical classic gumdrop gingerbread house with cotton ball smoke coming from the chimney is quite intricate with its use of awnings and colorful details. The gumdrop details for the roofing is the focal point with its vibrant colors. The purpose of the red gummies for shutters and candy cane sticks for pillars, to the green frosting trees and rock candy and gummies surrounding the house paints the picture of the house being located in a forest.

Difficulty: Easy · An afternoon · Good with kids

13. Modern Pecan Gingerbread House with Rosemary Tree Wreath Decoration

It’s great to mix up the traditional decorations if you have an individual who doesn’t particularly like candy or too many sweets. This modern pecan gingerbread house is the perfect inspiration for that individual, and the rosemary wreath adds a nice touch as it would also smell amazing once finished. The popcorn is used as fluffy snow, the pecans as windows, the sesame seeds and dried cranberries used to outline the house, and banana chips to create the dimensions of the roofing.

Difficulty: Some practice helps · An afternoon

14. Mini Gingerbread House with Peppermint Accent Windows

This gingerbread house is smaller than the average gingerbread kit. Clever use of green frosting, paired with white frosting form the base of the roof pattern. The green icing also serves as the door frame as well as the window trimming, giving the house beautiful holiday greenery. Peppermint candies add more color to the front of the house, with the windows made entirely of purple and pink lollipops. This house makes an excellent addition to your living room, allowing people to appreciate the detailed craftsmanship that went into it.

Difficulty: Easy · Under an hour · Mini · Good with kids

15. Gold and Foil Hershey Kiss Gingerbread House Decor

The foil from the Hershey Kisses brings out the gold and silver charm of a gingerbread house like this. For those with a limited amount of candy on hand, this gingerbread house shows you that you can build. A wonderfully detailed and unique looking gingerbread house with just clever uses of one candy and some frosting. The kisses provide the window accents, the shingles and the lawn decorations, all without a last-minute trip to the store. Plus, this house is lovely for all those that like a little touch of gold as well.

Difficulty: Some practice helps · An afternoon

16. Smarties Candy Roof with Green Frosting Wreath

A house that breathes winter with its fun use of layering smarties to form a brilliantly multi-colored roof. An inspired use of frosting creates some very wintery icicles along with a beautiful decorative wreath. To round things out are some tasty looking gummy bushes along with lovely use of candied hearts to show the love and care to create this gingerbread house.

Difficulty: Easy · An afternoon · Good with kids

17. Blue Frosting Floral Themes Gingerbread House

A fantastic and whimsical design that shows off your artistic talents. A beautiful floral design is weaved throughout this house, ending with an even larger design and showing everyone what you really can accomplish with some just some inspiration and frosting. Blue frosting forms a lovely trim that provides just the right amount of contrast to showcase the floral pattern. From the small detail on the window frames, to the entire garden of blue and white flowers, you can quickly tell the amount of detail and care that was paid to this house.

Difficulty: Some practice helps · An afternoon

18. Professionally Designed Gingerbread House With Detailed Frosting Decor

From candy cane pillars to pretzel railings, chocolate nonpareils shingles, you can easily see the planned construction of this gingerbread house, and it’s inspired design. With perfectly symmetrical frosting gilding on the front and windows to the frosting on the chimney, you can easily see the simulation of melted snow. With the amount of intricate detail paid to every inch of this house, all the candies blend seamlessly to help form the look of an ordinary house and one that would be a shame to be eaten.

Difficulty: Advanced · A full day or weekend · Contest ready

19. Two Story Large Gingerbread House with Porch

A house that perfectly emulates a New England home in winter. This large mold uses chocolate bars to form the shingles of the roof with blue frosting emulating that shiny ‘blue paint’ finish. The wrinkles and air also help to reinforce this look, giving it the look of freshly painted wood. The porch is also a nice feature, made with chocolate bars as the walkways with candy cane supporting beams; it adds more the winter feel that much more.

Difficulty: Advanced · A full day or weekend · Contest ready

20. Classic Gingerbread House with Snowman Decor

Another classic gingerbread design, but this time, complete with smiling snowman and a gingerbread Santa Clause to go with it! We see the regular gumdrop shingles with small Sixlet accents that bring out the color that the plain frosting and gingerbread lack. The windows and doors are constructed from peppermint candies and gumdrops and just a touch of frosting, really giving it a rustic feel.

Difficulty: Easy · An afternoon · Good with kids

21. Holiday Joy Gingerbread House

The pink Mike & Ikes give this house a Candyland feel with its vibrant colors and clever uses of red Sixlets for the juniper berries. Although it is subtle, the pink in this house stands out when contrasted to the rest of the house. With the frosting mistletoes, peppermint, and gummy trees, you can feel the joy radiating from this house.

Difficulty: Easy · An afternoon · Good with kids

22. Hershey Kiss Roof Decorations

For the chocolate lover in all of us, this house delivers. But ignoring the Hershey kisses and bars that form the roof for just a moment, we have a nice rainbow of jawbreakers that form a beautiful lawn pattern in combination with some candied hearts and some wonderfully patterned snowflakes. Mixed in with traditional designs like gumdrops and frosting trees, there is also beautifully symmetrical gilding of an almost professional caliber, which bathes the house with a lovely floral pattern reminiscent of Santa’s own home.

Difficulty: Easy · Under an hour · Good with kids

23. Festive Light Green Gingerbread House

For those that like the color green, this house provides you some wonderful choices, from your traditional peppermints to your less common Sixlets. On the roof we have jawbreakers that form the top, then your standard gummies and even some sour belts to create a more cohesive tile effect. The frosting and the belts help to simulate a subtle ‘house lights’ effect that one might see on Christmas night.

Difficulty: Some practice helps · An afternoon

24. Traditional Gingerbread House With Simple Decor

Another traditional gingerbread house with some simplistic gilding designs. With more simplistic frosting designs and a broad array of candy, this house is every kid’s dream to eat. The roof is made with a combination of gummies and harder candies, with the roof being mostly made from frosting with some candies thrown into the mix. More gummies provide a colorful walkway with a decorative wreath of more floral candies. A simple house for those without a decent amount of frosting on hand that kids will still love.

Difficulty: Easy · Under an hour · Good with kids

25. Gingerbread Store with Candy Tape Roof and Lights

A store where you might even run into Santa himself. The roof is made from sour red belts, which give a beautiful look of red shingles, with a line of sixlets giving a playful vibe of powered Christmas lights. The spider is optional. Pirouette wafers provide the supporting beams while the door is made from butter cookies. The gummy snake, however, is not optional.

Difficulty: Some practice helps · An afternoon

26. Classic Gingerbread Design with Frosting and Gingerbread Man

The classic gingerbread house complete with your very own gingerbread man. The M&M’s provide a chocolaty and very vibrant roof design, while the rest of the house has your more traditional trimmings. We have a wonderfully decorative frosting trim that looks precisely like melting snow, with multi-colored hard candies providing a rainbow look to your lawn and roof decorations. We even have more M&M’s as the wreath, making this house simple yet very delicious. No wonder the gingerbread man is so happy.

Difficulty: Easy · An afternoon · Good with kids

27. Mini Graham Cracker House Design with Green and Red Candy

Sometimes you don’t even have gingerbread on hand, or perhaps someone is allergic. No to worry, as this house shows you that a little ingenuity can make even a simple house look great. First, we have a candy cane archway to serve as the door, with red peppermints, green Resess, and Hershey kisses to form a cute little tree. We have graham crackers and a little bit of frosting to keep it all together and to finish it off, decorate it with smatterings of red and green candy.

Difficulty: Easy · Under an hour · Mini · Good with kids

28. Simple and Elegant Gingerbread House Design with M&Ms

This elegant gingerbread house brings a sense of warmth with its candy cane heart designs. With candy cane frames and peppermint decorations, the Christmas feel is very apparent. The plethora of M&M colors serves as a beautiful roof design with its multi-tiered look, supporting the candy cane roof. With a door made of chocolate, this house makes for one tasty treat.

Difficulty: Easy · An afternoon · Good with kids

29. Gingerbread Cottage with Wheat Cereal Roof and Pretzel Antlers

A picturesque image of a forest cottage and excellent use of extra cereal you have lying around. Chex makes up much of the roof with little sugar crystals thrown in for more of a snow effect, though any square-shaped cereal will work just as well. The pretzel antlers give this house a hunter’s lodge vibe with many of the logs constructed from cinnamon sticks, which provide an aroma that is very Christmas-like. Again, frosting is used to emulate the look of melted snow with gingerbread making up the smoky chimney.

Difficulty: Some practice helps · An afternoon

30. Pretzel Cottage with Snow Frosting and Candy Lights

When you have an abundance of pretzels lying around, or you want to create a house with a more rustic feel, there is the log cabin. The design is quite similar to the regular gingerbread, except instead of gingerbread, you will be using pretzel sticks to emulate the logs. The sprinkles add a nice dash of color along with simulating the glow of Christmas lights where the frosting is spread very subtly around the sides and front of the house for snow. Finish off with a few decorative flourishes like the wreath and a few gumdrops on the roof.

Difficulty: Some practice helps · An afternoon

31. Gummy Wreath With Multiple Color Candy Roof

For fans of hard candies, this house has it all-jawbreakers, peppermints, sour suckers, and skittles. Following a strict color scheme of only green and red, this house blends the more traditional design and simply builds on it, adding more layers of candy between each layer of frosting, giving it a very symmetrical look that is both Christmas like and delicious as well. The centerpiece of this house is the gummy wreath, that matches very well with the rest of the green and red color scheme. And if this house isn’t proving enough, the smiling Santa in the doorway seems to like it.

Difficulty: Easy · An afternoon · Good with kids

32. Simple Pink and Clean Frosting Pattern Design

Not everything needs eight different kinds of candy, three colors of frosting and chocolate bars-sometimes just the simplest things are the best. This is a more traditional gingerbread house with frosting trim all around, a candy cane heart at its center and candy cane ledges. The roof and accents are frostings, painted with little hearts to show someone your love and care, which for any gingerbread house, be they eight ingredients or three ingredients, is an essential ingredient of all.

Difficulty: Easy · An afternoon

33. Peppermint Roof and Caramel Chimney with White Frosting Smoke

A little gingerbread house is allowing you to escape into the joys of Christmas time. Full of individual charm, the caramels provide a nice chimney stack, full of frosting smoke. The peppermint roof allows you to show off your Christmas spirit, with its brilliant greens and reds, contrasting well with your frosting wreath and trees. The multi-colored walkway enables you to show off your tootsie roll log pile and adorable little tootsie roll mailbox.

Difficulty: Some practice helps · An afternoon

34. Gingerbread House with Very Little Frosting Design

The frosting is great, but sometimes it can be much, both for taste and health reasons. This house trims down on its frosting use, using it very sparingly for some light accents along the front of the house and the shingles for the roof. The rest of the house is adorned with a tasty variety of candies, from the apple ring as the wreath, candy cane arches, to blue lollipops with smaller candies to form a makeshift flower. Then we have green jelly beans, arranged playfully for the roof, shadowing some peppermint shingles before we arrive at the broken kit-kits for some innovative windows.

Difficulty: Easy · Under an hour · Good with kids

35. Gingerbread House with Red Candy Accents

This gingerbread design is probably the more traditional-being just gingerbread and red-colored candies. With minimal use of frosting, more emphasis is placed on the sweets providing more of visual flair to the rest of the house. The sour tape is arranged creatively to form the bushes, with a good smattering of red Sixlets providing a brighter roof design. Candy canes form the framing with larger ones acting as door arches. The entire house is finished with a peppermint wreath and gumdrops.

Difficulty: Easy · Under an hour · Good with kids

36. Classic House with Great Window Decor

Another traditional gingerbread style, with a wide, vibrant array of gumdrops, gummies, and Sixlets filling every color of the rainbow. The windows of this house is a bit more intricate than the others, with more layering and details implemented so you can see the colors behind it-a mixture of red, yellow, orange and green. With such detail paid to the windows, it almost feels like a real home. We see the same generous smattering of frosting to form the roof with large gumdrops as shingles.

Difficulty: Some practice helps · An afternoon

37. Light and Dark Gingerbread Accents with Wheat Roof

A larger design, and for those that prefer chocolate candies over the more fruity gummies. Different round chocolate candies, like milk duds and Whoppers, form the lawn and walkway decorations, while the majority of the house is made of gingerbread with a generous smattering of frosting. With wheat shortbread cookies creating the intricate straw-like roof, to the chocolate wreath and shingles, it’s easy to see why the gingerbread snowman is so happy.

Difficulty: Some practice helps · An afternoon

38. Bright Blue Gingerbread House Decorations

A color explosion was showing that a traditional gingerbread house doesn’t have to be, well, classic. From the numerous blue decorations ranging from fish, flowers, small coins and even to rainbow-colored lollipops, it’s important to remember that a gingerbread house is what you want it to look like. This house uses plenty of unconventional designs like orange fishes on the door along with purple and pink roses for the roof design, but it’s still bright and colorful nonetheless.

Difficulty: Some practice helps · An afternoon

39. The Small Multi Color Gingerbread House

This small, gingerbread house that has quite a lot of character. Clever use of the gummies for the door walkway as well as arches above the door. The windows are gummies as well with frosting trim. Multi-colored candies line the roof, creating a rainbow pattern that is visually very pretty, pairing well with the icing layer of ‘fake’ snow that the frosting creates. More gummies adorn the roof, creating the shingles with giant gummies adding more focus on the diamond-shaped centerpiece of the house, making this one both aesthetically symmetrical and tasty as well.

Difficulty: Easy · Under an hour · Mini · Good with kids

40. Gingerbread House with Fake Snow

Fake snow is the fastest way to make a plain house look finished, and it hides a multitude of sins. Sifted icing sugar over a lightly iced roof reads as fresh powder. Shredded coconut reads as deeper drifts and holds its shape on a flat base. The trick is restraint at the roofline: leave the edge of the roof clear so the shape of the house still reads, then pile the snow in the yard where nobody has to see a straight line.

Difficulty: Easy · An afternoon · Good with kids

41. Gingerbread House with Fence and Lights

A fence changes the scale of everything. Set a low fence of pretzel sticks or mini candy canes a couple of inches out from the walls and the house suddenly reads as a house on a plot rather than a biscuit on a board. Run a line of small candies along the roofline and the path as lights, spaced evenly, and keep them to two colors. This is the design that most reliably takes a kit house from finished to considered.

Difficulty: Some practice helps · An afternoon

42. Handmade Gingerbread House with Gingerbread Tree

The gingerbread tree is worth the extra hour. Cut four identical tree shapes from the same dough, slot two pairs together at right angles with a slit down the middle of each, and you get a free-standing tree with real depth rather than a flat cut-out leaning on the wall. Two of them either side of the door frame the house properly. Because they are the same dough as the walls, they read as part of the build rather than as decoration added to it.

Difficulty: Some practice helps · A full day or weekend · Contest ready

43. Gingerbread House with Chocolate and Frosting

Chocolate and frosting is the simplest color scheme there is, and it is the one that photographs best. Dark chocolate against white royal icing gives you contrast without asking you to make any color decisions at all. Use chocolate for the mass, meaning the roof, the path and the chimney, and icing for the line work, meaning the trim, the window frames and the snow. Two materials, one clear division of labor, and it is very hard to make it look messy.

Difficulty: Easy · An afternoon · Good with kids

44. Gingerbread House with Advanced Frosting Design

This is the ceiling of what is possible with a piping bag, and it is a genuine skill build rather than a decorating job. Fine lattice, scalloped eaves, brickwork piped line by line and lettering that stays level all rely on one thing: royal icing at the right consistency, piped with a small round tip and a steady hand. Practice the repeating motif on baking paper first, ten or fifteen times, before it goes anywhere near the house. Nobody gets this right straight onto the gingerbread.

Difficulty: Advanced · A full day or weekend · Contest ready

45. Mini Gingerbread House Design

A mini house is the best first project and the best last-minute one. It uses a quarter of the dough, sets in a fraction of the time, and small surfaces are far more forgiving than large flat ones because there is nowhere for a wobbly line to run. Minis are also the answer when several people want to decorate at once: one each beats six people reaching across a single roof. Build a row of three and you have a village on the mantelpiece.

Difficulty: Easy · Under an hour · Mini · Good with kids

Bring Your Gingerbread House Idea to Life

An idea is only as good as the house you put it on. A kit with thin walls and a shallow roof pitch will fight almost everything on this page, and a good base house makes an average idea look considered. We keep a running guide to every kit worth buying, from small ones that suit a first attempt with young children through to the big scratch-style kits with enough roof for a full candy pattern. Start with the gingerbread house kits we recommend, pick your shortlist from the finder above, and give yourself the afternoon the tag says it needs. That combination is how a house from this page ends up on your table rather than in a photo you saved.