Player Housing finally hit World of Warcraft in Patch 11.2.7, and it's brought a whole new way for crafters to make gold. If you've been looking for fresh opportunities with your professions, the Decor item market might be exactly what you need. This guide covers everything about using professions to craft housing items, from learning recipes to gathering the new Lumber material.
How Professions Fit Into Player Housing
The housing system lets you buy a home, fill it with decorative items, and show off your style to other players. You can get Decor items through various methods in the game, but crafting is one of the most accessible and potentially profitable routes.
Crafted Decor items have one important trait that makes them valuable: they only become soulbound when you actually place them in a home. Until then, they're fully tradeable. This means crafters can sell them on the Auction House or fill Crafting Orders for other players. For anyone trying to expand their gold-making operations, this new market is worth exploring.
If you just want to decorate your own place without worrying about profit, understanding the crafting system still helps. You'll have a better sense of when to make items yourself versus buying them from other players or commissioning through Crafting Orders.
Learning Decor Recipes
Getting Recipes from Profession Trainers
Blizzard kept recipe acquisition simple for most Decor items. Almost all of them can be learned directly from your Profession Trainer for each expansion era.
The catch is that collecting every Decor recipe for your profession means leveling your skill through all expansion tiers. Each era's trainer teaches recipes that match that content's aesthetic and materials. A Blacksmith who wants both Classic-era furniture and modern Khaz Algar designs needs sufficient skill in both brackets to learn the relevant patterns from each trainer.
Warlords of Draenor Works Differently
Draenor recipes don't come from trainers. Instead, you have to buy them from specialized recipe vendors.
Each Draenor Decor recipe costs one Secret of Draenor Book for your profession. Tailors who want the Karabor Bed pattern, for example, need to first craft a Secret of Draenor Tailoring. Then they visit a vendor like Petir Starocean in Warspear (for Horde) or the Alliance equivalent to exchange it for the recipe.
Other Vendor Recipes and Midnight Content
A handful of other non-current recipes also come from vendors rather than trainers. These are scattered throughout older content as special cases.
The upcoming Midnight expansion will bring more variety to recipe acquisition. Many new Decor patterns will come from quests, world drops, and non-trainer vendors, so expect the system to become more varied over time.
Understanding Lumber
What Makes Lumber Different
Patch 11.2.7 introduced Lumber as a new material required for all Decor item crafts. Every housing item needs it, regardless of which profession creates it.
Lumber is Warbound, which has big implications for how you can use it. Warbound items transfer freely between your own characters through the Warband bank, but they can't be sold on the Auction House or traded to other players. Every crafter has to gather their own supply.
How to Unlock Lumber Gathering
Any character can collect Lumber once they've done the prerequisite quest. It's not tied to any profession.
To unlock gathering, you need to progress through the Introduction to Player Housing campaign. During this questline, you'll get a quest called "Lumber For You" that teaches your character to see and interact with Lumber Nodes throughout the world.
Finding and Collecting Lumber Nodes
Once you've finished the unlock quest, Lumber Nodes start appearing throughout the game. They show up on your minimap with a distinct icon and appear in the world as axes wedged into tree trunks.
These marked trees are easy to spot once you know the visual. The minimap tracking helps you locate them while traveling through zones, making collection fairly efficient during normal gameplay.
All Twelve Lumber Types and Locations
The game has twelve Lumber types, each tied to specific expansion zones. You'll need to gather in the right regions to get the materials your recipes require.
| Lumber Type | Source Zones | Expansion |
|---|---|---|
| Dornic Fir Lumber | Khaz Algar and K'aresh | The War Within |
| Fel-Touched Lumber | Broken Isles and Argus | Legion |
| Ironwood Lumber | Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms | Classic |
| Dragonpine Lumber | Dragon Isles | Dragonflight |
| Bamboo Lumber | Pandaria zones | Mists of Pandaria |
| Olemba Lumber | Outland zones | Burning Crusade |
| Shadowmoon Lumber | Draenor zones | Warlords of Draenor |
| Arden Lumber | Shadowlands zones | Shadowlands |
| Ashwood Lumber | Cataclysm-era zones | Cataclysm |
| Darkpine Lumber | Zandalar and Kul Tiras | Battle for Azeroth |
| Coldwind Lumber | Northrend zones | Wrath of the Lich King |
| Thalassian Lumber | Quel'thalas and Harandar | Midnight (upcoming) |
Selling Your Crafted Decor
Auction House Sales
Selling Decor through the Auction House works like any other tradeable item. Craft it, list it, wait for buyers.
One major consideration stands out here: you have to supply all the Lumber yourself. Since it's Warbound and can't be traded, you can't just buy this material from other players. Every item you list requires Lumber you've personally gathered.
Factor this time investment into your pricing. The hours spent collecting Lumber are a real cost that should affect how you value your crafts.
Using the Crafting Order System
Crafted Decor items work with all types of Crafting Orders, giving buyers and sellers more flexibility.
Personal and Guild Orders let the buyer choose whether to supply the Lumber themselves or rely on your stockpile. If you're accepting these orders, be ready to potentially provide Lumber from your own reserves depending on how the buyer sets things up.
Public Orders work differently. When someone posts a Public Order for a Decor item, they're required to supply the Lumber. You won't have to invest your own Warbound materials into orders from anonymous buyers.
Don't Forget the Other Materials
Beyond Lumber, each recipe needs expansion-specific reagents. A Northrend item requires Northrend crafting materials alongside Coldwind Lumber. A Dragonflight design needs Dragon Isles resources plus Dragonpine Lumber.
This creates renewed demand for older crafting materials across all expansions. If you've got stockpiles of legacy reagents sitting around, they might actually be worth something again.
Tips for Maximizing Decor Crafting
Building Your Recipe Collection
Getting the most out of Decor crafting means investing across multiple expansion skill brackets. Think about which aesthetics are likely to sell best when deciding which recipes to prioritize.
For Draenor recipes specifically, plan ahead by crafting your profession's Secret of Draenor items before you need them. Having these ready means you can grab new patterns immediately without delays.
Keeping Your Lumber Stocked
Since you can't buy Lumber, you need a sustainable gathering routine. Try working it into your normal gameplay. When you're doing world quests, running old raids for transmog, or leveling alts through older content, watch for nodes along your path.
Reading the Market
As a new system, Decor item prices will likely swing around until supply and demand settle. Crafters who've stocked up on Lumber and leveled their skills might find good opportunities early, though prices will probably stabilize as more competition enters.
Always consider your material costs when setting prices. Both gathering time and traditional reagents factor into your real expenses, and the untradeable nature of Lumber makes your time investment a genuine cost.
Wrapping Up
Player Housing crafting opens new gold-making possibilities for prepared crafters. The recipe system is straightforward thanks to Profession Trainers (with that Draenor exception), but you'll need to invest time in Lumber gathering since this material can't be traded.
Both the Auction House and Crafting Orders work with Decor items, though the Lumber supply requirements differ between them. With demand spreading across expansion-specific materials alongside the new Lumber types, crafters should think about their supply chains across all eras of content.
For players who just want to decorate their homes, knowing this system helps you decide whether crafting items yourself or buying from others fits your playstyle better.