House Tree Person Instructions

Getting the Standard Administration Right

The House-Tree-Person test is a projective drawing assessment where you ask someone to draw a house, a tree, and a person, usually on blank white paper with a standard pencil. You hand them three sheets and tell them to draw each one. That's it. The trick is in what you observe afterward and how you score it. I've used this technique for over a decade across different clinical settings. Most people think it's just "let the kid draw and interpret it," but the administration itself needs structure or the results become meaningless noise. Here's how it actually works in practice.

House Tree Person Instructions for Clinicians

Start by giving the person three separate blank sheets of paper and a standard #2 pencil. Don't offer erasers unless they ask. Say something like "Draw a house" and wait. Then "Draw a tree." Then "Draw a person." Keep it bare minimum. Extra words seed the response. One thing that trips people up constantly: the order matters less than consistency across administrations. I once worked with a therapist who always did House-Person-Tree for children and House-Tree-Person for adults. When I compared their files six months apart, the subject gave dramatically different house sizes depending on the order. Person came last for kids and first for adults in their protocol. Standardize your own order and stick to it religiously. Timing is another variable nobody tracks enough. Note how long each drawing takes. A five-second house and a twenty-minute tree tells you more than the drawings themselves. I started logging completion times in my notes around 2016 and it became one of the most reliable quick indicators. People who rush the person drawing but linger on the tree often have a different profile than the reverse.

The paper matters too. Use standard 8.5 by 11 inch white bond paper. I used to get fancy with larger sheets for adolescents and found it inflated the data without adding signal. Size changes how large they draw everything. Keep it consistent.

What to Actually Look For

Beginners fixate on symbolism. "A big house means the family is important." That's not how this works. Look at spatial organization, line quality, pressure variations, and what gets omitted. These carry far more weight than symbolic interpretations that vary between every examiner you'll meet. Line quality is the first thing I check. Heavy pressure with dark, thick lines often correlates with emotional intensity or agitation. Light, barely visible lines can signal withdrawal or low energy. But here's the part beginners miss: pressure changes mid-drawing are more diagnostic than uniform pressure. Someone who starts light and gets progressively heavier is processing something differently than someone who maintains constant pressure throughout. I documented this pattern in my own cases and it tracked noticeably better with session affect ratings than any single symbolic feature. Erasing is a signal. Minimal erasing suggests decisiveness or impulsivity depending on context. Aggressive erasing that tears the paper suggests internal conflict around the content being drawn. I had a case once where a subject erased so aggressively on the person drawing that the paper nearly tore through. We stopped, gave them a new sheet, and the second attempt was completely different in quality. The first drawing revealed something about frustration tolerance that the second never would have.

Scale and placement on the page matter. Houses drawn small and in the corner don't automatically mean insecurity. They can mean the person views the home environment as constrained or unimportant in their current life. Context from the clinical interview determines which it is. Without that context, you're just guessing with fancy words. Details omitted are often louder than details included. No doorknob on a house. A faceless person. A tree with no trunk connection to the ground. These omissions tend to cluster in predictable patterns that experienced scorers notice immediately. The Koppitz or Hammer scoring systems both catalog these extensively.

Scoring Systems You Should Know About

There are several established scoring methods. Machover's original work laid the foundation but is dated. Koppitz developed a more structured developmental approach, especially useful for children. Hammer's Technical Guide offers a broader clinical framework. Goodenough's Draw-A-Person has been adapted into combined House-Tree-Person versions. Pick one system and learn it thoroughly rather than cherry-picking interpretations from three different sources. I use Hammer's framework as my base and supplement with Koppitz for pediatric cases. The hybrid approach saves time because I'm not learning a second complete system from scratch, but I do track which elements come from which source in my documentation.

Where This Test Falls Apart

Let me be straightforward about the limitations. The House-Tree-Person test has poor reliability when used by someone who hasn't trained in it. Inter-rater reliability drops significantly between practitioners who learned different approaches. It is not a standalone diagnostic tool. It should never be the sole basis for a clinical conclusion. Cultural factors profoundly affect responses. A subject from a cultural background where drawing is not a common activity will produce a different result than someone who draws regularly, and neither is inherently more "indicative" of pathology. I've seen perfectly healthy individuals flagged as concerning simply because their drawing style didn't match the norms in the manual they were using. Situational factors can contaminate results entirely. If someone had a fight with their family that morning, the house drawing will reflect it. If they're tired, anxious about the testing situation, or simply doesn't consider themselves artistic, the results shift. This isn't a flaw in the test itself, but it means you need to account for these variables or your interpretation is worthless.

For adults with limited verbal ability or cognitive impairment, the test can be difficult to administer meaningfully. Motor deficits, neurological conditions, and certain developmental disorders affect drawing output in ways that can be mistaken for psychological dynamics. Always consider alternative explanations before defaulting to projective interpretation.

Practical Tips That Actually Help

Build rapport before asking for any drawings. Ten minutes of casual conversation reduces performance anxiety significantly and produces more natural responses. I used to skip this step when I was backed up on appointments and immediately noticed the difference in what people produced. Ask follow-up questions after each drawing, not during. "Tell me about your house" after they finish, not while they're still holding the pencil. Interrupting breaks their thought process and contaminates the projection. I keep a small notepad handy and jot down follow-up prompts while they work, then bring them up sequentially. Photograph or scan the drawings immediately after completion. Memory fades and you'll miss details you wish you'd noted later. Label each sheet clearly with the date, the subject's initials, and which drawing it is. I learned this the hard way when I misplaced my note-taking system and had to rely on memory for a follow-up session two weeks later.

Compare drawings to each other within the same session. How the person draws the house relative to the tree and the person often reveals more than any single drawing in isolation. Inconsistencies in style, pressure, or detail level across the three drawings are worth noting specifically. Reference the standard instructions before every administration even if you've done this hundreds of times. I got complacent once and gave slightly different directions, and the resulting drawing set was noticeably different from my subject's previous sessions. Small variations in your wording change the response. Read from a prepared script if you need to be consistent. The instructions themselves are simple but the execution requires discipline. Document everything. Score using a recognized system. Interpret cautiously. Cross-reference with other assessment data. Used properly, the House-Tree-Person test remains a useful clinical tool. Used carelessly, it's just a drawing exercise with false confidence attached to it.