LEGO Ideas and CUUSOO

Tree House

A 3,036-piece backyard classic with swappable summer and autumn leaves.

4.5/5

Set 21318 · 2019

Pieces3,037

Minifigs4

Year2019

Set number21318

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The verdict

If your mate loves nature builds and wants one big centrepiece that changes with the seasons, this one is a genuinely lovely pick.

The interchangeable green and autumn leaves are the party trick, and the three little cabins are packed with clever detail. Just warn them the minifig count is thin for the money and the leaf-swapping gets old fast, so it's really for the display crowd, not the army builders.

Best for: nature-loving builders who want a seasonal display centrepiece

The full review

Right, let me tell you about the Tree House, because it's one of those LEGO® sets that just makes people smile the second they spot it on a shelf. It started life as a fan project by Kevin Feeser, a hairdresser from Nancy in France, who uploaded it to LEGO Ideas back in 2017 and racked up the 10,000 supporter votes. LEGO designer Cesar Soares then reworked it into the 3,036-piece beast you can buy, and at launch it was the biggest LEGO Ideas set ever made. The whole thing is built around one lovely brick-built tree with a chunky textured trunk, and perched up in the branches you get three separate cabins: a main bedroom, a bathroom, and a kids' room, all linked by little ladders and a rope bridge.

Here's the genuinely cool bit. The tree comes with two complete sets of leaves, bright green for summer and yellow-orange for autumn, so you can reskin the entire canopy to match the season. Even better, those leaf elements and the plants on the base are made from plant-based polyethylene sourced from sugarcane, and this was actually the first LEGO set to show off that sustainable material in a big way. It's a lovely idea in theory. In practice, though, swapping every leaf over one clip at a time is properly tedious, and most builders do it once, admire it, then leave it on whichever season they prefer. Fair warning to your mate there.

Now the honest caveats. For a set this size and price (it launched around 200 US dollars and later crept up to 250), you only get four minifigures: a mum, dad, son and daughter, plus a little bird. That works out to a brick-to-fig ratio of around 759 to 1, which reviewers have called just about the worst ever. If your mate is buying for the figures, this isn't their set. The build itself is a joy for the most part, but there's a stretch of repetitive branch-and-leaf work in the middle that can feel like a slog, and the cabins are a little cramped for actual play once they're up in the tree.

So who should grab it? Anyone who loves nature-themed builds and wants one striking centrepiece for a shelf, especially folks who'll enjoy switching it to autumn every October. It photographs beautifully and it's a calming, satisfying build overall. Who should skip it? Minifig collectors, and anyone after fast-paced play features. It retired in late 2024, so prices are climbing on the aftermarket now. If your mate has wanted this one for a while, tell them not to wait around too long.

The parts story

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

The build breaks down into three clear stages and it's nicely paced for the most part. You start with a landscape base that hides a few Easter eggs (there's a buried gem and a treasure map for a little treasure-hunt game), then you move up into the trunk, which uses a satisfying stacked-and-textured technique to get that gnarled bark look. After that you build the three cabins one at a time, each with its own furniture and gadgets, including a working wind-up crane on the bedroom balcony. The only real drag is the canopy: assembling all the branches and clipping on well over 180 leaf elements is where the repetition sets in, so put a podcast on for that part.

On the parts front, this set is a bit of a goldmine for the reddish-brown and green sorting trays. You get a huge haul of brown bricks, plates and the leaf and plant elements, which are the star pieces here, and they're the sustainable sugarcane-based polyethylene parts, so they feel slightly different in the hand. At 3,036 pieces for its launch price, the value works out to roughly 6-8 cents per part, well under LEGO's usual 10 cents average, so even setting the model aside the brick value is strong. The four minifig torsos and outdoorsy prints are pulled from earlier City People Packs, so nothing rare there, but the sheer volume of useful natural-coloured elements makes this a favourite for MOC builders raiding it for parts.

Fun facts

01It was designed by Kevin Feeser, a hairdresser from Nancy in France, and at launch it was the largest LEGO Ideas set ever released.
02The Tree House was the first LEGO set to prominently feature plant-based sustainable elements, with the leaves and plants made from polyethylene sourced from sugarcane.
03Feeser's original submission used only green leaves; LEGO added an entire second set of autumn-coloured leaves so you can switch the tree between summer and fall.
04It carries a brick-to-minifigure ratio of about 759 to 1, one of the highest LEGO has ever shipped in a set of this scale.