How to Make a Home Alone Gingerbread House: The McCallister House

A Home Alone gingerbread house lives or dies on one thing: symmetry. The McCallister house reads from across the room as red brick, crisp white trim and a centered front door with matching windows on both sides, so this build gets those three right and keeps everything else simple.

Disney+ and Hulu built a record-setting gingerbread McCallister house in Los Angeles in December 2025. Ours stands about 7 1/2 inches tall on a 12 by 9 inch board, with a free template checked so every window lines up and every wall closes square. Every brick, shutter and window frame goes on while the walls still lie flat, so nothing is piped on a standing wall.

Start with the template, then the shopping list, the day-by-day plan and 16 photographed steps.

Free Printable Home Alone Gingerbread House Template

The template is three US Letter pages with 17 pieces, drawn at true size. Download the PDF, print it at Actual Size or 100 percent, and put a ruler on the red 1 inch bar before you cut anything. If the bar measures an inch, every piece is right.

Piece	Cut	Size	What it does
Front wall	1	8 x 5 in	Cut out 9 windows: 4 on the ground floor and 5 upstairs. The door is piped on, not cut.
Back wall	1	8 x 5 in	Solid except a 2 inch doorway at the bottom, where the lights go in.
Side wall	2	4 in wide, 7 1/4 in to the peak	Tucks between the front and back, with two windows on each floor and a pointed gable for the roof.
Roof panel	2	8 1/2 x 3.7 in	Two plain rectangles that meet at the ridge.
Dormer front	2	1.2 in wide, 1.4 in tall	A tiny gabled wall with a window, standing upright on the roof.
Dormer cheek	4	0.9 in right triangle	One behind each side of a dormer front, its long edge on the roof.
Dormer roof	4	1.95 in long, 0.8 in deep	Two small panels over each dormer, longer at the ridge than at the eave.
Pediment	1	1.7 in base, 0.55 in tall triangle	The white peak over the front door.

The sizes are worked out so the build goes together without trimming. Each side wall is 4 inches wide, 1/2 inch narrower than the 4 1/2 inch depth, because it sits between two walls of 1/4 inch dough. Its edges stand 1/4 inch taller than the front wall, so the roof clears the outer corner of the brick, and its peak rises at the same 45 degrees as the roof. The windows sit in five bays mirrored around the door, with room for a shutter on both sides of each one. On a 45 degree roof, a dormer’s cheek is exactly as deep as it is tall, so the four cheeks are simple right triangles, and the dormer roof panels run 1/2 inch further back at the ridge, where the higher ridge meets the slope.

Solid black lines are cuts, red dashes are openings you cut out, and gray dots are guides you never cut. The long walls are drawn on their sides so an 8 inch wall fits the page, with the bottom edge marked. If you want a different house next time, our other house templates printed at true scale work the same way.

What You Need for the McCallister House

You need one batch of dough, two batches of royal icing, a bag of hard candy, some licorice and four gel colors. Everything else is kitchen gear you probably own.

For baking

• 1 batch of a dough that bakes flat enough for long walls. The 17 pieces come to about 190 square inches of dough, close to a whole batch, so reroll the scraps once and cut carefully. If your dough runs short, make a batch and a half.
• About 24 yellow or orange hard candies, unwrapped and crushed in a zip bag, for the 19 windows, including the two in the dormers.

For the icing

• 2 batches of royal icing strong enough for a two-story wall, made one at a time. The first is for gluing and piping, kept stiff. The second is for flooding: thin it with a teaspoon of water at a time until a ribbon of it sinks back into the bowl in about 10 to 15 seconds.
• Gel coloring: red with a drop of brown for the brick, a drop of black for the gray roof, and green for the wreaths.

For the finish

• 5 or 6 black licorice twists for the 34 shutters. Thin strips of dark fondant work too.
• Red sprinkles or small red candies for the wreath bows.
• A few rosemary sprigs for trees, 2 graham cracker sheets for the front walk, and powdered sugar for snow.

Tools

• Rolling pin with 1/4 inch guide strips, parchment and 3 half sheet pans
• Paring knife, butter knife, scissors, a ruler and a toothpick
• 3 piping bags with two small round tips, such as a number 2 and a number 3, and an offset spatula
• 4 cans for propping walls
• A 12 by 9 inch cake board, or a cutting board covered in foil
• 2 battery LED tea lights, 1.5 inches across, warm white if you can find them

How Long It Takes, Day by Day

Plan on short sessions over two days, plus a morning to finish, for about 6 hours of hands-on work. The rest is waiting, because royal icing needs time to harden before it can carry weight, and the roof and dormers both sit on fresh joints.

When	What you do	Hands-on	Then wait
Day 1, afternoon	Print, make and chill the dough, cut, bake and trim, and melt the candy windows.	About 2 hours, inside 4 hours with chilling and baking	Until cool
Day 1, evening	Flood the walls brick red and press in the brick lines, frost and shingle the roof panels, frost the dormer fronts.	1 hour	Overnight, pieces flat
Day 2, morning	Pipe the window frames, press on the shutters, pipe the door and glue on the pediment, all with the walls flat.	45 minutes	2 hours
Day 2, late morning	Stand the four walls.	20 minutes	2 hours
Day 2, early afternoon	Set the roof.	20 minutes	2 hours
Day 2, afternoon	Build the two dormers on the roof.	30 minutes	4 hours
Day 2, evening	Pipe the ridge and roof edges, then the wreaths.	40 minutes	Overnight
Day 3, morning	Build the yard and the snow, and light the windows.	40 minutes	A few hours before you move it

The waits are the ones our icing guide gives for any house: 2 hours before anything sits on or leans against new walls, 4 hours before decoration, and overnight, 8 to 12 hours, for a full cure. In a damp kitchen, add time. In a dry one with the heat on, it goes a little faster.

Say you want the house on the table for a movie night at 6 PM on Saturday. Bake on Thursday afternoon and flood the bricks after dinner. On Friday you pipe the trim at 8, stand the walls at 10:30, set the roof at 12:30 and build the dormers at 2:30, then pipe the ridge and wreaths after dinner. Saturday morning is only the yard, the snow and the lights. The planner below does that arithmetic for any date you choose.

How to Make a Home Alone Gingerbread House Step by Step

Each step does one job and has one photo, and the “why this matters” lines explain the reasoning behind the steps that keep a two-story house square and standing.

1. Print the template and measure the test bar

Print all three pages at Actual Size or 100 percent, never Fit to Page, and put a ruler on the red bar, which should read exactly 1 inch. Then cut out the paper pieces and cut the window holes out of the paper too, so you can trace them onto the dough.

Why this matters: 17 windows have to line up in rows, and a page printed at 97 percent shifts every one of them. The bar tells you before you spend an afternoon on dough.

2. Make the dough and chill it

Make one batch of the house dough, split it in two, and flatten each half into a disc about an inch thick, then wrap the discs and chill them for at least an hour. It is ready when a poked disc dents and stays dented.

Why this matters: cold dough cuts clean window corners and spreads less in the oven, so the windows stay the size of the template.

3. Roll the dough and cut the front and back walls

Roll a third of the dough at a time on parchment, to an even 1/4 inch between guide strips. Lay the front wall template on it and cut around it with a sharp knife, then cut out the 9 window squares, pushing the knife straight down at each corner instead of dragging it. Cut the back wall the same way with only its doorway. Pull away the scraps and slide the parchment straight onto a pan.

Why this matters: an 8 inch wall with 9 holes in it is floppy while raw. Cut on the parchment, it never has to be lifted, so the window rows stay straight.

4. Cut the side walls, roof panels and dormer pieces

Roll the rest of the dough and cut the two side walls with their windows, the two roof panels, the two dormer fronts, the four cheeks, the four dormer roofs and the pediment. Keep all the small dormer pieces and the pediment on a pan of their own.

Why this matters: the dormer pieces are tiny and bake far faster than a wall, so on a shared pan they burn before the walls are done.

5. Bake the pieces, then melt candy into the windows

Check as you go: every oven runs a little hot or cool, so use these times as a guide, not a timer. Look through the oven door often, and trust the matte surface and firm edge over the clock.

Bake at 300 degrees F. The big walls and roof panels take 22 to 30 minutes, until the surface looks matte and the edge feels firm under a fingertip. The small pan of dormer pieces and the pediment can be done much sooner, so start checking it at about 10 minutes. Pull the wall pans about 5 minutes early, fill every window two candies deep with the crushed yellow candy, and bake again until it has melted flat and glassy, checking after 5 minutes. Do the same with the two dormer windows.

This is the standard method for candy windows that glow from inside: the candy flows once it reaches the hard crack stage, which Colorado State University Extension puts at 300 to 308 degrees F at sea level. That is right at this oven’s temperature, so it melts slowly. If the candy is still lumpy after about 10 minutes, raise the oven to 325 degrees F and watch it closely. At high altitude, the target drops about 2 degrees for every 1,000 feet, so check sooner, because candy that melts early can brown.

Why this matters: melted candy is far hotter than the cookie around it, and it burns fast once it pools.

6. Trim every piece while it is warm

Within two minutes of each pan coming out, lay the paper piece back on top and trim any edge that spread past it. Then leave everything on the pan until it is completely cool and flat. Do not lift a wall until the candy has hardened. When a cooled scrap bends a little and then snaps cleanly, the pieces are ready.

Why this matters: warm gingerbread trims cleanly with a knife, while cooled gingerbread tends to snap exactly where you did not want it to, and a wall full of windows has plenty of weak spots.

7. Flood the walls brick red and press in the brick lines

Tint about two thirds of the thinned icing brick red: red gel with a small drop of brown. Lay the four walls flat, outside up, and spread the red over each one with an offset spatula, stopping 1/4 inch short of every edge and going right up to the windows. Wait until the surface has crusted but is still soft underneath, usually 15 to 30 minutes depending on the room. Then press the edge of a ruler gently across the wall every 1/4 inch for the rows of brick, and nick the short joints in between with the tip of a butter knife, staggered from one row to the next.

Why this matters: the bare 1/4 inch border is where the glue goes, and icing on a joint stops two walls from meeting. A ruler pressed into a flat wall makes rows as straight as real brickwork. The same lines piped on a standing wall wander and drip.

8. Pipe the window frames and press on the shutters

The next morning, with the walls still flat, pipe a white frame around every window with the number 2 tip, then a cross through the middle for the panes, a thicker line under each window for the sill, and a short line over it for the lintel. Cut the licorice into 34 pieces the height of a window and press one into a dot of icing on each side of every wall window: 9 on the front and 4 on each side wall.

Why this matters: white trim is what turns a red box into a Georgian house, and piped flat it comes out as crisp as a ruled line. The template leaves room for a shutter on both sides of every window, so none of them crowd each other.

9. Pipe the front door and glue on the pediment

Pipe the outline of the door in the middle of the ground floor, on the gray guide from the template, and fill it in with dark brown icing. Pipe a white frame around it and two thin white columns, one on each side. Spread icing on the back of the pediment and press it on just above the door, then pipe a white half circle between the door and the pediment for the fanlight.

Why this matters: the door is the center line of the whole house, and every window is measured from it. It is piped rather than cut because a hole at the bottom of the front wall would leave a weak strip under the heaviest part of the roof, and no one looks through a gingerbread front door.

10. Shingle the roof and frost the dormers

Tint a cup of the thinned icing gray with a drop of black and spread it over both roof panels, leaving the long ridge edge bare. Pipe rows of small gray scallops across each panel from the eave up, each row overlapping the one below. Frost the dormer fronts white, keeping clear of their windows. Let everything dry flat.

Why this matters: once the roof is up, its panels lean at 45 degrees, and shingles piped on a slope slide. On a flat panel they stay exactly where you put them.

11. Stand the four walls on the board

Pipe a thick line of stiff white icing along the bottom edge and both short edges of the front wall, and stand it on the board a few inches from the front edge, leaving room for the yard. Set the two side walls behind its ends so they tuck in between, then add the back wall. Prop each wall with a can and leave it for 2 hours.

Why this matters: the front and back run the full 8 inches and the sides sit inside them, which makes a true rectangle. Two hours is how long new walls need before a roof can lean on them.

12. Set the roof

Pipe a thick line along the sloped tops of both side walls and the top edges of the front and back. Lay one roof panel on, eave edge down, with the dotted rest line from the template on the wall top and 1/4 inch hanging past each gable. Hold it for a minute, then set the second panel so the two meet at the ridge. Prop the eaves with cans if they slide and leave the roof for 2 hours.

Why this matters: the side walls carry the roof, and their peaks are cut at the same 45 degrees as the panels, so the roof sits flat on them instead of rocking.

13. Build the dormers on the roof

Each dormer sits above the second and fourth upstairs windows, about 1 inch up the roof from its bottom edge. Pipe a line along the bottom edge of a dormer front and stand it upright on the roof. Glue a cheek behind each side of it, long edge on the roof and short upright edge against the back of the front. Pipe along the top edges of the cheeks and the front, then lay the two small dormer roof panels on, square ends at the front and the long edge meeting along the dormer’s ridge. Build the second dormer the same way, then leave both for 4 hours.

Why this matters: the cheeks are right triangles because the roof is exactly 45 degrees, so their long edge lies flat on the slope and holds the little front upright. The two dormers are what make the house read as the McCallister house and not just any brick box.

14. Pipe the ridge and the roof edges

With stiff white icing and the number 3 tip, pipe a line of small dots along the ridge to hide the joint, then along both eaves and up the sloped edges of each gable.

Why this matters: the ridge and the roof edges are where the joints show, and a row of white dots covers them while matching the trim around every window.

15. Pipe the wreaths

Tint a few spoonfuls of stiff icing green. Pipe a small ring of green on the front door and under four of the five upstairs front windows, leaving the middle one bare, then press a red sprinkle on each for the bow.

Why this matters: a few wreaths are what make the brick house a Christmas house, and small rings piped on a standing wall stay put because they weigh almost nothing.

16. Build the snowy yard and light the windows

Spread a thin layer of white icing over the board and lay graham cracker squares from the door to the front edge for the walk. Stand rosemary sprigs in blobs of icing as trees and dust everything, roof included, with powdered sugar through a fine sieve. Switch on the two LED tea lights and slide them in through the doorway in the back wall, one to each side, and every window glows. Use only battery lights. A real candle inside a closed box of sugar and butter can scorch the walls or catch, which is why our guide to battery lights that make every window glow sticks to LEDs.

Why this matters: two lights spread the glow across both floors. One light in the middle leaves the end windows dark, and a house famous for its rows of lit windows needs all of them lit.

Keep track as you go with the checklist below, which remembers your ticks on this device and tells you exactly when each wait is over.

Why the Windows Are the Whole Design

The McCallister house is a red brick Georgian, a style built on symmetry: a door in the middle and the windows mirrored on either side of it. That is why this template starts from five evenly spaced bays and measures everything from the center line. Move one window a quarter inch and the eye catches it from across the room, because the whole front is a pattern.

Seventeen window holes is a lot to cut in four walls, and every hole takes strength out of the dough around it. The template keeps at least 1/2 inch of wall between neighboring windows and 1 1/4 inches between the two floors, so every window has a solid frame of cookie around it. The side walls take two windows on each floor, mirrored around their center line the same way. It also leaves the door uncut, which keeps a full strip of wall along the bottom of the front, right under the roof’s weight.

The decorating order is the other half of the design. Picture a family that builds the bare box on Friday and plans to decorate on Saturday. By the time anyone is pressing brick lines into a standing wall, the icing has sagged, the shutters keep sliding off, and the white frames come out wobbly at the top of the second floor. Decorated flat, the brick, the trim, the shutters, the door and the pediment are all dry before the first wall stands, and Saturday is only the roof trim, the wreaths and the snow.

Troubleshooting

If it goes wrong, most problems come from loading icing before it has set, from icing on a joint, or from heat and humidity, so here is what to look for and what to do about it.

What you see	Why it happens	What to do
A wall cracks between two windows	It was lifted before it cooled, or the dough was rolled thin there	Glue the crack from behind with stiff icing and lay the wall flat overnight. The brick flood hides the line.
The windows are not in straight rows	The page printed at the wrong scale, or the raw wall stretched when lifted	Check the test bar, and cut walls on the parchment so they never have to be lifted raw.
The brick lines look smeared	The ruler went in before the flood crusted	Smooth that wall with a damp spatula, wait for the crust and press again.
A wall leans or slides while setting	The icing was too soft, or the cans came off early	Push it back, prop it again, and wait the full 2 hours. Stiffer icing holds its peak when you pull a spoon out.
Two walls will not meet at a corner	Red flood ran onto the edge, or a piece spread in the oven and was not trimmed	Scrape the edge bare with a knife and glue again. Next time, stop the flood 1/4 inch short and trim within two minutes of baking.
A roof panel slides down	The walls had not set, or the icing on the gables was wet	Lift it off, wait out the 2 hours, and set it again with a can propped under the eave for an hour.
A gap shows along the ridge	The panels met at slightly different heights	Fill the gap with stiff white icing. The piped ridge covers the rest.
A dormer tips forward	The roof had not set, or a cheek is missing	Lift it off, scrape, and rebuild it with both cheeks once the roof has had its 2 hours.
A window candy browned or bubbled	It stayed in too long, or you are at high altitude	Check from 5 minutes. A browned window still glows, just a deeper amber.
The end windows stay dark	Only one light inside, or both lights sit in the middle	Use two tea lights and slide one toward each end of the house.

Easier Versions: No-Bake, Kit and One-Wall Shortcuts

If baking from scratch is too much this year, the McCallister house works three simpler ways.

A No-Bake Graham Cracker House for Small Kids

Graham crackers make a smaller brick house with no oven at all. Glue two full sheets edge to edge for the front and two for the back, flat on the counter, and let them set. Then stand them with one full sheet at each end, glued with royal icing into a box, and lean two more pairs of full sheets together for the roof. Like all graham cracker houses with no oven, it lives or dies on the glue, so use royal icing, not tub frosting, for the walls.

Picture a six year old who has just watched the movie and wants to build the house tonight. Glue the graham box together while they get into pajamas, then let them pipe the red brick, square candies for windows and licorice shutters while it sets. The gingerbread version can be the grown-up project for the weekend.

The Kit Shortcut

A tall plain kit makes a quick McCallister house. Build the walls flat-decorated as in steps 7 to 9, with brick-red flood, white window frames and licorice shutters, even if the kit’s windows are only piped. Add the pediment over the door from a scrap of kit gingerbread cut into a triangle.

The One-Wall Front

For a table centerpiece with half the work, bake only the front wall and lean it against a box covered in foil, or glue a triangle of gingerbread behind it as a stand. Decorate it exactly as in steps 7 to 9 and set it in a snowy yard. From the front, it reads as the whole house.

Storage Instructions

Humidity is what softens gingerbread and makes candy sticky, so keep the house in a cool, dry room, away from the stove, the dishwasher and sunny windows. Cover it loosely with a clean cloth if dust is a worry. Switch the tea lights off when no one is looking, and take them out before you put the house away.

Treat it as a decoration once it has stood out for a few days. Royal icing made with raw egg whites is not cooked at any stage. If you plan to eat some, make the icing with meringue powder instead.

FAQ

Is this an official Home Alone design?

No. It is our own house, inspired by the McCallister house in the film, and it uses no characters, logos or film artwork. The red brick, the white trim, the centered door and the mirrored windows are what tell the story.

Is the real Home Alone house brick?

Yes. The house used for the McCallister home is a red brick Georgian in Winnetka, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, built around 1920. It is a private home, so if you go to see it, look from the street.

How big is the finished house?

The walls are 8 inches wide, 4 1/2 inches deep and 5 inches tall, and the roof brings it to about 7 1/2 inches at the ridge. It stands on a 12 by 9 inch board, which leaves room in front for the yard and the walk.

How big was the record gingerbread McCallister house?

Disney+ said its version, built for the film’s 35th anniversary, would stand 58 feet long, 42 feet wide and 25.6 feet tall, made from 5,700 pounds of flour and 4,400 gingerbread brick tiles. Guinness World Records confirmed it as the largest gingerbread house on December 18, 2025, with an internal volume of 44,838 cubic feet.

Can I add Christmas lights to the outside?

Yes, with a battery fairy light string. Run it along the eaves after the roof trim has set overnight and hold it with small dots of icing, then tuck the battery box behind the house. Never use plug-in lights that get warm against the icing.

Can I make it bigger?

Yes. Print at 125 percent for a house about 10 inches wide and 9 1/2 inches tall, but cut each side wall 5 1/8 inches wide instead of the printed 5 inches, because the dough is still 1/4 inch thick at any size and the sides must stay 1/2 inch narrower than the house is deep. Plan on a second batch of dough and a bigger board.

More Gingerbread House Builds and Recipes

If this one made you want another famous house, our nine famous movie houses to build include short versions of the Up house and the Griswold house, and the Byers house from Stranger Things is another family home with a story. For a whole snowy block, start a snowy street of gingerbread houses. And when a wall or roof gives you trouble, our fixes for walls that will not stay square work on every build.

Build Your Next House With Best Gingerbread Houses

The McCallister house proves the point we come back to on every build: a few strong details tell the whole story. Here it is the brick, the white trim and seventeen glowing windows in perfect rows. When you want a head start next time, our guide to the kits whose walls arrive straight and flat sorts the boxes with long, even walls from the ones that do not, so you can spend your time on the brick and the trim.