Learn how to make a cardboard or paper dollhouse with this free printable dollhouse template!

We all know that cardboard boxes rank high in the realm of toy potential. They can be turned into cars, boats, airplanes, robot helmets, or dollhouses – more or less anything.

Dollhouses are my favourites. Several times, when a suitable cardboard box has come into my care, I have simply tipped it on its side and drawn – windows, doors, and picture frames. My children see me at it and join in, making their drawings and building furniture from wooden blocks.

You can do that too, and this is the easiest way – use the free printable dollhouse templates from this pack as a prompt for turning any old cardboard box into a dollhouse!

Are you feeling particularly crafty? You can go beyond decorating a cardboard box and use the included plan for building a dollhouse from cardboard or foam board. The included dollhouse plan is scaled for playing with Calico Critters or similarly-sized dolls, and all the printable dollhouse windows, doors, and other accessories are suitably scaled.

But if you have a bigger box and bigger dolls, there is also an archive of all the designs in PNG, so you can scale them to the size you want. And if you happen to have a Cricut or a Silhouette machine, you can upload them into your program and have the machine cut all the designs for you!

The best part is, as long as you have cardboard, you can make a whole town of houses. Children can decorate them precisely as they want. Yet, once the children are done playing with them, you can easily recycle them. Win-win!

Included in the Free Printable Dollhouse Template

The templates include:

• four kinds of printable dollhouse windows
• two kinds of printable dollhouse doors
• roof shingles pattern
• printable outdoor house décor (four flower pots, a ladder, a post box, a lantern, and a clothesline with clothes)

All the dollhouse paper templates are available in a full-colour version, as well as a colour-your-own version.

How to Build a Cardboard Dollhouse

You will need cardboard or foam board, a craft knife, a hot glue gun, and a glue stick. Following the house plan included in the pack, draw the parts out on cardboard. Cut them out with a craft knife, then hot glue all the pieces together.

Using a glue stick, glue on the windows, doors, and roof shingles.

Decide where to put the additional accessories, and feel free to draw in more details!

Other Ideas for a Printable Dollhouse

You don’t have to build a cardboard house, though. Any old cardboard box will do! Or you can take a piece of poster board and roll it into a tube, assemble the roof, and turn it into a house.

Below, you can see the beginning of one such house, based on our beloved series of the books about Moomins.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, I sincerely recommend Finn Family Moomintroll. If you like the quirky characters and the adventurous world of Moominvalley, there is a series of eight books to follow.

This is our Moominhouse, made with the printable pack, with the Moomin and his friends standing proudly in front! “Peehoo!”

Get the Free Printable Dollhouse Templates!

Other Papercrafts

Use the printable templates and make these cute unicorn paper dolls.

Build a working windmill and hold an engineering study with children!

Paper dolls lend themselves to a variety of themes, and we have over 100 printable paper doll templates for different occasions. 

Thank you for reading! If you make the dollhouse using our templates, share your creations with us by tagging @adventureinabox on Instagram or Facebook.