Dolls' House & Miniatures
A dolls' house is mostly architecture in miniature, and the fittings that finish it — a fire surround, a newel post, a run of cornice, a chimney pot — were tooled by firms that folded a long time ago. At 1:12 those print well. Below 1:12, be careful what you ask for.
Serving South & West Yorkshire and nearby, and posting parts across the UK · Guide prices in seconds · No account needed
Get a dolls' house & miniatures estimate
Upload your file or describe the part. We review printability before confirming anything.
Common uses
- 1:12 fire surrounds, door cases, pediments and corbels
- Skirting, dado rail and cornice runs in matching lengths
- Staircase parts: treads, risers, newel posts, balusters and handrail fittings
- Furniture carcasses and frames — dressers, kitchen ranges, hall stands, bed ends
- Discontinued fittings for older kit houses and room boxes
- Exterior detail: chimney pots, finials, gutters, downpipes and porch parts
What 1:12 gives you, and where 1:24 stops
The nozzle sets the floor. We print through a 0.4mm nozzle, which lays a line roughly 0.4mm wide, and no feature narrower than that line can exist. At 1:12 an inch of the real house becomes just over 2mm, so a skirting profile, a baluster, a fire surround, a panelled door all have enough material to survive being printed and handled. At 1:24 — half scale — every one of those features halves, and at 1:48 it halves again. Glazing bars are where people find this out: a sash window at 1:12 has bars that are borderline but printable, and at 1:24 the same bars are thinner than the line the printer can draw, so they either merge into a solid pane or come out as a thread that snaps off with the supports. We will happily print 1:24 where the part is chunky — a wardrobe carcass, a table, a plain door — and we will tell you plainly which mouldings will not resolve rather than let you find out when the parcel opens. The other honest line: this is not a resin substitute. Teacups, plates, food, dolls, hands, faces, lace, anything with fine organic detail at 1:12 — that is resin work, and we are FDM only. We would rather point you at a resin service than sell you a blurry teapot.
Copying a fitting nobody makes any more
Most of this work starts with a kit house whose maker is long gone and a window that cracked. Send the surviving one from the other side of the house — or the broken pieces, or measurements and photos with a rule in shot. The measurements that decide whether a copy works are the ones people skip: the wall thickness the part sits against, the rebate a window or door drops into, the aperture already cut in the shell, and the handedness. We model it, share the file so you can check it against the opening, and print once you are happy. Once the file exists the second window is cheap, which matters, because a house with one replacement window usually turns into a house with six.
Materials, finish and paint
This is one of the few jobs where PLA is the right answer rather than the lazy one. It prints fine detail more crisply than the tougher filaments, it is rigid, it does not creep on a shelf, and a dolls' house lives indoors — no sun, no heat, no weather. Keep the house off a sunny windowsill and PLA will outlast you. Layer lines do show, and on miniature architecture they mostly read as nothing once the piece is primed, filled and painted — which it was always going to be. We orient parts so the lines fall where they matter least, and for a surface that has to be genuinely smooth, filler primer and a few minutes with fine paper does the rest. Prints take cyanoacrylate and PVA, and take acrylic or emulsion happily over a primer coat. We supply unpainted; the painting is the part you actually wanted to do.
How it works
Send your file or describe the part
Upload an STL, OBJ, 3MF or STEP file, or tell us what you need with photos and a few measurements.
Get a guide price
When we can read the geometry we estimate from it straight away — material, print time, supports and quantity all priced openly.
We check printability, then confirm
A person reviews orientation, wall thickness and supports, flags anything that will not print well, and confirms your final quote before any work starts.
Dolls' House & Miniatures — example prices
Worked examples on real models from our print library, priced by the same calculator that estimates your own part. Sizes span small to large so you can see how cost moves with the part.
| Example part | Size | PLA | PETG | ABS / ASA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Furniture Foot (small) | 20 × 20 × 8 mm | £0.75 – £0.96 | £0.79 – £1.02 | £0.88 – £1.13 |
| Furniture Foot (medium) | 25 × 25 × 10 mm | £1.39 – £1.78 | £1.46 – £1.87 | £1.62 – £2.07 |
| Desk Pen Pot | 70 × 70 × 90 mm | £28.88 – £36.90 | £30.65 – £39.17 | £34.73 – £44.38 |
| Utensil Holder | 80 × 80 × 110 mm | £39.87 – £50.94 | £42.31 – £54.07 | £47.93 – £61.24 |
Guide prices for a single unit, calculated from the measured geometry of each example model — not fixed quotes. Small parts land at or near the £0 minimum order, and per-unit prices fall with quantity. Your price depends on your own part, its material and its printability. How pricing works.
Example models for dolls' house & miniatures
Open-source designs from our print library that show the kind of part this service suits. View any of them for a full material and quantity price breakdown.
Standoff M4x25
10mm Calibration Cube
Coaster (large)
Wing Nut M6
These are open-source example designs (CC0) we publish to show what the process suits and what it costs — not a record of past jobs. Prices shown are examples in PLA.
Dolls' House & Miniatures — FAQ
Can you print 1:12 food, teacups, dolls or figures?+
No — not well, so no. Fine organic detail at that size is a resin job and we are FDM only. Ask us for the fire surround, the staircase and the dresser, and use a resin service for the tea set. That combination is what actually gets you a good room.
Does 1:24 work at all?+
Partly, and it depends entirely on the part. Carcass furniture, plain doors, boxy structures — fine. Fine mouldings, glazing bars, turned detail and anything delicate stop resolving at half scale and below, because the features get thinner than the line the nozzle can draw. Tell us the scale and the part and we will say which side of the line it falls on.
My kit house is out of production and I need one window. Can you copy it?+
That is exactly the case for this. Send the broken one, or the one from the other side of the house, plus the aperture size in the shell. We share the file before printing so you can check it against the opening, and a spare set costs very little once the model exists.
Will layer lines show on a painted fireplace?+
Less than you expect. We orient the print to hide them on visible faces, and filler primer plus fine paper removes what is left. On sculpted or textured surfaces they disappear under paint entirely; on a large flat gloss surface you will need to do a little filling. We will tell you which one you are dealing with before we print.
How much does dolls' house & miniatures cost?+
There is no fixed per-item rate — price comes from how much plastic the part uses, how long it takes to print, how much support and finishing it needs, and how many you want. The example table above shows what real parts of this kind work out at. Upload your file for a guide price on your own part.
How long does it take?+
It depends on the size of the part, the queue and the material. Tell us your deadline when you enquire and we will tell you honestly whether it is achievable before you commit.
Can I order one of the models from your library?+
Yes. Every model in our print library is a design you can have printed — pick one, choose a material and quantity, and the example price on its page is your starting point. You can also download the file and take it elsewhere; they are all CC0.
Are my files kept private?+
Yes. Uploaded files go to private storage, are never made public, and are only used to quote and produce your job.
Worth reading first
Practical guides that help you get a better part and a more accurate quote.
What Is TPU (Flexible Filament)?
TPU is printable rubber. It bends, grips, seals and absorbs shock — and it behaves nothing like PLA, which is the whole point and the whole difficulty.
Nylon and Carbon Fibre Parts
The engineering end of FDM. Nylon is tough and wear-resistant; carbon fibre makes it stiff and stable. Both are harder work — here is when that pays off.
How to Copy a Part Without CAD
No file, no drawing, just a broken part and a pair of calipers. That is a perfectly normal starting point — here is how the process actually works.
Other services
Get a 3D print estimate
Upload your file or describe the part. We review printability before confirming anything.