LEGO Ideas and CUUSOO

Motorized Lighthouse

A working brick lighthouse that actually spins its light and glows inside.

Set 21335 · 2022

Pieces2,065

Minifigs2

Year2022

Set number21335

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The verdict

If the idea of a real, motorized lighthouse sitting on your shelf makes you grin, this LEGO® set delivers exactly that and then some.

It's clever, it's gorgeous, and the spinning Fresnel lens is genuinely lovely to watch at night. The catch is the price, so it's more of a considered display purchase than an impulse grab, but almost nobody regrets building it.

Best for: Adult builders who love a display piece that actually does something

The full review

What it is

Let me tell you about one of the most charming things LEGO Ideas has ever put out. The Motorized Lighthouse is a 2,065 piece set that builds a proper tower standing tall on a rocky outcrop, with a keeper's cottage tucked at its base and a little pier running down to the water. What makes it special is that it genuinely works. Flip the hidden switch and a motor spins the light up top while an LED glows inside the lens, and the cottage fireplace lights up too. It's the kind of set that stops people mid conversation when they notice the beam turning. This started life as a fan submission from Sandro Quattrini on the LEGO Ideas platform, and the finished thing keeps all the heart of that original idea.

The catch

Now for the honest part, because a good mate tells you the downsides too. The big one is price. At $299.99 (and more in some regions) this sits firmly in the premium bracket, and a chunk of that cost is the Powered Up gear inside, the battery box, medium motor and LED light set. Those parts are what make the magic happen, but they also push the price up in a way that stings if you were hoping for a bargain. The light itself is the other common gripe. It works, but it's softer than a lot of people expect, so it really wants a dim room to shine rather than a bright living room. And the motorized action, once you've admired it, is just a steady rotation on a loop. Lovely, but not complicated.

Who it's for

So who should grab this one? If you love display models that do more than just sit there, and you have the shelf space for something with real height, this is an easy recommend. It's a fantastic evening build for an adult fan, full of clever engineering and little story details like the treasure cave and the bat hiding inside the rock. If you're purely chasing piece count value or you want a bright night light, you might feel the price pinch and come away a touch underwhelmed. But for the right person, this is one of those sets that becomes a favorite the moment the light starts turning. It has since retired, so if it's calling your name, don't wait too long.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

The build breaks into satisfying chunks. You start low with the dark blue baseplate and the rocky outcrop, laying in the hidden cave and its treasure before the tower even begins. Then comes the keeper's cottage, which is a proper little house with a detailed interior and a fireplace wired for light. The real fun is the tower itself, where you build the mechanism that carries the motor's spin all the way up to the lamp room. It's a clever bit of engineering, routing power and rotation up through a tall structure, and slotting the lens on top is a real payoff moment. The Technic switch to turn it all on is tucked at the back like an Easter egg, which is a nice touch.

The headline piece is a brand new element made just for this set, the working Fresnel lens that sits over the LED and scatters the light as it turns. LEGO fans will also clock the Powered Up hardware bundled in, the 88015 battery box, the 88005 light set with two LEDs, and the 45303 WeDo 2.0 medium motor, which would run you around $60 bought separately. The dark blue baseplate and the pile of masonry bricks, tan gold bars and sand tiles that give the cottage its brick built texture are genuinely useful in bulk. It's not a set overflowing with rare recolors, but the lens alone makes it a talking point, and the electronic parts give the box a value story beyond the raw piece count.

Fun facts

01Fan designer Sandro Quattrini dreamed it up after family trips around Quebec's Gaspe Peninsula, where his lighthouse loving mother had been nudging him to build one for years.
02The revolving lens at the top is a completely new element created specifically for this set, its only genuinely new mold.
03Hidden inside the rocky base is a secret cave stashed with pirate treasure and a bat, and the motor's on switch is disguised as a Technic lever at the back.
04The whole thing runs on Powered Up gear, a battery box, a WeDo 2.0 medium motor and an LED light set, the same bricks LEGO uses in its education kits.