Minecraft Banner: Creation, Dyeing and Usage

In Minecraft, you can bring your own fantasies to life and create a world that’s uniquely yours. This includes banners, which may seem unremarkable at first glance, but should be present in virtually every world. Banners are an extremely complex item, perhaps even the item with the most possibilities in Minecraft! Many players don’t delve into their endless combinations, so today we’ll provide you with the essential information you need to use banners yourself.

Finding and Crafting Banners in Minecraft

You can obtain banners in three different ways. Perhaps you’ve already found some in your world and stored them in a chest, only to forget about them. It’s worth retrieving and using them for your constructions.

In the world, there are various places where you can find banners:

• At the entrance of an End city

• In a woodland mansion

• In villages

• From Illagers

• At outposts

Of course, you can also craft banners yourself. You’ll need six wool of one colour and a stick. This allows you to obtain one of 16 different base banners and build your future patterns on it. It’s worth having a wool farm if you want many banners in different colours (Minecraft Wool Farm Guide: How to Easily Automate Wool Farming in All Colours) .

Finally, you can also trade banners with villagers. A cartographer or a shepherd at expert level will trade you a banner of any colour for three emeralds. This can also be a good way to obtain many banners of a specific type.

Dyeing Banners with the Loom

Now that you’ve created one of the 16 coloured banners, what’s next? You now have endless possibilities to design the banner according to your preferences! First, you should make a loom from two wooden planks and two strings to unlock all the options. In the past, you had to craft the patterns at the crafting table, but thanks to the loom, this is now a thing of the past!

The loom offers you a wide range of patterns that you can transfer to your banner upon first use. You can apply up to six patterns to a banner to create something. There are geometric shapes and other patterns to choose from. Place your banner in the appropriate field, add a dye, and choose a pattern. It will then be transferred, and you can proceed.

Discovering Rare Banner Patterns

However, there are also ten additional patterns that are not directly available in the loom and that you must craft or find. These templates represent various symbols or patterns and give you even more options to make your banners unique.

The six craftable banner templates are:

• Flower: Oxeye Daisy and paper

• Creeper: Creeper head and paper

• Skull: Wither skeleton skull and paper

• Mojang: Enchanted golden apple and paper

• Field Mason: Vine and paper

• Bordure Indented: Brick and paper

The four findable banner templates are:

• Globe: Trade with a master cartographer for 8 emeralds

• Thing: Reward in a sinister vault in a trial chamber

• Snout: Reward in a standard vault in a trial chamber or as loot in a chest (Minecraft Trial Chambers: How to Find & Master Them!)

• Snout: Loot from a chest in a bastion remnant (The Ultimate Guide to Minecraft Bastion Remnants in the Nether)

Once you’ve crafted or found one of the patterns, you can use it repeatedly. This is especially practical for hard-to-find items like the enchanted golden apple! They are automatically stored in the corresponding loom and can be used for all patterns.

Creative Pattern Combinations in Minecraft

With all the patterns available, you have countless possibilities to create banners in Minecraft. Remember that you can always combine the base colour plus six additional patterns. You should also have enough dye on hand, and we’ve already created a separate guide for this (Minecraft: Complete Guide to Dyes and Automatic Farms) .

You should experiment and try to create your own patterns. Think of the banner as a kind of canvas. Start with the pattern and colour that should be in the background and then work your way forward. Each pattern is added as another layer. You can also delete layers by clicking on a cauldron with water with the banner. If you like a pattern, you can duplicate it with a blank banner of the same base colour at the crafting table without using additional dyes.

Of course, you’ll find many more patterns online that you can create. We recommend the website Minecraft Tools, where each step is recorded. But you’ll also find plenty of great templates on Reddit, YouTube, or other forums that you can replicate.

Using Banners for Maps and Shields

There are two other cool uses for banners that you should know about. First, you can combine a finished banner with a shield to replace the wooden pattern with the banner. This is especially useful if you want a custom shield or belong to a specific faction. Note that the pattern will be slightly reduced and won’t look exactly the same as on the original banner. Still cool though!

Secondly, you can use banners as markers for maps, which is super handy! We’ve already made a complete post about cartography if you want to learn more (Effective Navigation in Minecraft: Using Compass and Map) . To keep track, you should rename the corresponding banners in an anvil beforehand. Place it at the desired location and right-click on it with the map. The banner will appear with its base colour and name on the map. You can remove it again by clicking on it once more.

Conclusion

Banners are incredibly versatile, offering millions of combinations of colours and patterns. Plus, it’s fun to hunt down all ten rare patterns and integrate them into your loom. Rent one of our Minecraft servers and explore the colourful world of banners with your friends. You can even create a unique flag for your server!