In Minecraft, players can alter the world around them in any way they wish. This now includes building a peaceful garden in Minecraft Bloom and using flowers and other ingredients to make dyes and change the color of the materials in the world.
Updated by Jake Fillery on August 11, 2023: There are many accessible personal touches that players can put into their Minecraft worlds and characters. From an interesting house to an assortment of the best Minecraft skins. However, what players might not have known about, is the fact that they can actually dye armor, and run around in a more stylized set of armor that will have them more fashionable than other players, especially those pesky creepers. For the players asking how to dye armor in Minecraft, this will be a useful one. Considering armor dye has been around for quite some time, it’s as good a chance as any to discuss all dyes in Minecraft, and all items that can be dyed in Minecraft so players have a greater joy in their use of dye materials.
All Minecraft Dyes
There are sixteen different colors of dyes in Minecraft that players can use to change the color of their armor. These colors can be created with a Crafting Table by using rocks, vegetables, flowers, and other flora. These colors are:
- Red - beetroot (found in village farms), roses, poppies, red tulips
- Green - cactus (found in desert biomes)
- Light grey - azure bluet, white tulips, oxeye daisies
- Pink - pink tulips, peonies
- Lime green - sea pickles, which can be farmed underwater in warm ocean biomes with a Minecraft Potion of Water Breathing
- Yellow - dandelions, sunflowers
- Light blue - blue orchids
- Magenta - alliums, lilacs
- Orange - orange tulips
- Blue - lapis lazuli (found in caves as a blue ore), cornflowers
- Brown - cocoa beans (found exclusively in jungle biomes)
- Black - ink sacs (looted from squids), wither roses (dropped by the Wither)
- White - bone meal (looted from skeletons and various dungeons), lily of the valley
The majority of these dyes can be found in the form of flowers. Flower forest biomes are the best location to find the biggest variety of colorful flowers.
Dyes can also be made by combining other colors of dyes to create a new color. This can be done also at one of Minecraft's crafting tables.
- Purple - combining one red dye and one blue dye
- Cyan - combining one green dye and one blue dye
- Light grey - combining one black dye and two white dyes, or combining one grey dye with one white dye
- Grey - combining one white dye and one black dye
- Pink - combining one red dye and one white dye
- Lime green - combining one green dye and one white dye
- Light blue - combining one blue dye and one white dye
- Magenta - combining one pink dye and one purple dye, combining one blue dye and one white dye and one red dye, combining one blue dye and two red dye and one white dye
- Orange - combining one red dye and one yellow dye
Bedrock Edition Only: Making A Cauldron And A Bucket
Because of Bedrock Edition's differences from Java, players will need to craft a bucket and a cauldron before they dye any of their armor. To dye armor, players will need the armor they wish to dye as well as the dye color of their choice. But they will also need an iron bucket full of water and a cauldron. In order to make these two things, players will need a lot of iron ingots.
Raw iron can be found underground and in caves, and then smelted into ingots with a furnace. Here are the diagrams for making the two iron tools that players will need to dye their armor.
Dyeing Armor
Since leather armor is the only armor that can be dyed, players will first have to get some leather. Leather is dropped by cows, which players can tame in Minecraft and farm for plenty of leather. After that, they can make the leather armor at a crafting table. Leather armor can also be retrieved off of from some of Minecraft's zombie villagers.
It's also a common loot in the various dungeon and shipwreck chests, so players won't have a difficult time finding any. In a worst-case scenario, the leatherworker villager will trade a few pieces of leather armor for some emeralds, though this isn't a good trade to make due to how rare emeralds are.
For Java Edition, once players have some extra leather armor to dye, the process is pretty simple. They just need to place the leather armor into a crafting grid, along with their dye of choice. The output will be dyed leather armor.
In Bedrock Edition, players have to do things in a more complicated fashion to dye their leather armor:
- Place the Cauldron
- Using the bucket, grab some water and fill the cauldron
- Add the selected color of dye to the cauldron
- Select the item that is to be dyed and add it to the cauldron
After that, the player's leather armor should be a different color, giving them a fashionable new look.
What else can be dyed?
Dyes in Minecraft have a multitude of uses outside of just armor. When players create or find any of the sixteen dyes, they can use them for all manners of craftables. Here’s a list of blocks that can be dyed, and their crafting recipe to further maximize the addition of color that can be added to every player’s Minecraft world:
- Banners (Dyes can be used to create new banner colors)
- Beds (any Bed with any Dye will create new bed colors)
- Concrete Powder (combine 4 Sand on the top and bottom left and right of the crafting table, with 4 Gravel in between them, with any Dye in the center of the crafting table)
- Candle (A candle and a Dye can be used to change the Candle color)
- Cauldron Water (The water inside a Cauldron can be altered to any color, but this is for Bedrock Edition only)
- Firework Star (Gunpowder and any Dye can create a Firework Star, and combining a Firework Star with another Dye will create a unique fade-to-color effect)
- Shulker Boxes (add a Shulker Box and any Dye together)
- Signs (Dye can be used on signs and hanging signs to change the text color on a sign.
- Stained Glass & Stained Glass Pane (place any Dye in the middle of the crafting table, and add either 8 Glass Pane or 8 Glass to the outside)
- Terracotta (place any Dye in the center of a crafting table, with 8 Terracotta around it)
- Wool (place any Wool and any Dye next to each other)
Source: DigMinecraft, MinecraftGamepedia
Minecraft is available now on Mobile, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.