Despite its many limitations, Minecraft offers some exciting customisation options for your blocks and projects. Dyes are extremely important as they allow you to colour some cool items and add even more variety to your world. Dyes have been included since the earliest versions, but for a long time, they were only useful for wool. Nowadays, you can recolour many more items and customise them to your liking! Today, we’ll show you how to obtain all dyes, where to use them, and which automatic farms you can utilise to make the process easier.
Crafting and Using All 16 Dyes
In Minecraft, you can craft sixteen different colours. While some require only a single item, others need to be combined. If you paid attention in art class, this might sound familiar. Flowers and other items can be converted in the crafting menu, while some blocks need to be smelted to obtain the dye. Additionally, with a bit of luck, you can obtain all dyes from the wandering trader. You can trade one emerald for three dyes.
We’ve summarised all the possibilities for you in this table!
| Colour | Crafting | Locations | Combination |
|---|---|---|---|
| White | Bone Meal | Lily of the Valley, Trail Ruins (Suspicious Gravel) | - |
| Light Grey | Oxeye Daisy, Azure Bluet, White Tulip | - | Black + 2x White / Grey + White |
| Grey | Wither Rose | - | Black + White |
| Black | Ink Sac, Wither Rose | - | - |
| Brown | Cocoa Beans | - | - |
| Red | Poppy, Rose Bush, Beetroot, Red Tulip | - | - |
| Orange | Orange Tulip, Torchflower, Flame Lily | Trail Ruins (Suspicious Gravel) | Yellow + Red |
| Yellow | Sunflower, Dandelion, Wildflowers | Village (Mason’s House), Trail Ruins | - |
| Lime | Sea Pickle (smelt) | - | Green + White |
| Green | Cactus (smelt) | Desert Villages | - |
| Cyan | Pitcher Plant | - | Blue + Green |
| Light Blue | Blue Orchid | Trail Ruins (Suspicious Gravel) | Blue + White |
| Blue | Lapis Lazuli, Cornflower | Trail Ruins (Suspicious Gravel) | - |
| Purple | - | - | Red + Blue |
| Magenta | Lilac, Allium | - | Pink + Purple / Red + Blue + Pink / 2x Red + Blue + White |
| Pink | Peony, Pink Tulip, Pink Petals, Cactus Flower | - | Red + White |
Applications for Dyes in Minecraft
Dyes are now used to colour a wide variety of blocks. They also help differentiate items so you don’t lose track of them. All these items can be dyed in the 16 different colours, but there’s one exception where you can create over 5 million colour combinations!
Wool: Coloured wool is probably familiar to every player, especially since sheep can spawn in different colours. You can dye wool with a right-click.
Carpets: You can craft carpets from coloured wool, or you can dye already crafted carpets.
Glass: Transparent glass can be tinted with dyes to create really cool effects! You can also make stained glass panes in all 16 colours from stained glass. A fun trick is to place stained glass panes on a beacon (Building a Minecraft Beacon: All Effects & Materials Explained!) to change the colour of the light beam. More than 16 colours are possible here.
Concrete Powder: You can craft concrete powder from a dye, four sand, and gravel. When the block comes into contact with water, it turns into concrete. Concrete has very vibrant colours, making it perfect for colourful buildings and constructions!
Terracotta: Terracotta can be found in Mesa biomes or by smelting clay blocks. With eight terracotta blocks and a dye, you can create coloured terracotta. Unlike concrete, coloured terracotta blocks are darker and less saturated. Coloured terracotta blocks can also be smelted into glazed terracotta with fancy patterns.
Banners: Dyes are extremely versatile when combined with banners! You can create simple single-colour banners or combine unlimited patterns and colours. Banners can mark waypoints on a map or be placed on your shield.
Shulker Boxes: To better organise your inventory, you should definitely dye your Shulker Boxes in different colours. We’ve discussed this further in a separate article (Efficient Inventory Management in Minecraft: Tips and Strategies) .
Beds: While beds used to only have a red cover, you can now choose various colours. Villages also feature pre-dyed beds.
Candles: Candles are crafted from honeycombs and string, and you can dye them into any of the 16 colours.
Bundles: For better inventory management, dyeing bundles can help distinguish them. You can change their colour at any time if you change your mind.
Firework Star: Most players use fireworks for their Elytra, but by adding a coloured firework star to the crafting recipe of paper and gunpowder, you can create beautiful fireworks. Each star allows for eight colours, and you can create transitions with additional colours. We think this is a much underused feature in Minecraft!
Signs (Text): You can adjust the text colour on a sign with a right-click, making the text easier to read. You can also outline it with a glow ink sac.
Collars (Wolf and Cat): You can dye the collars of tamed cats and wolves to personalise them further!
Villagers (Shepherd): You can trade most dyes for a stack of 12 for an emerald. With emeralds, you can obtain various dyed materials, including wool, carpets, banners, or beds.
Special Cases: Leather Armour and Horse Armour
Leather armour, horse armour, and wolf armour can also be dyed, with significantly more colours available – over five million, to be precise! In Java, you simply combine any colours in the crafting menu. It’s best to use an online guide to achieve your desired shade accurately. The feature to colour water in a cauldron to dye leather armour is only available for Bedrock players.
Automation: Efficient Dye Production
All methods to obtain dyes are renewable. You don’t have to worry about running out of options. Since most dyes are derived from flowers, a flower farm is your starting point. Various other automated processes are at your disposal.
For all farms we’ve discussed in other articles, we’ll include a link:
- Flower Farm (Minecraft Flower Farm Guide: How to Build an Automatic Flower Farm for Dyes and Bees)
- Sniffer Farm (Minecraft Sniffer Farm: Automated Methods for Rare Crops)
- Bone Meal Farm (Build a Minecraft Monster Trap: Automatically Gain Endless Resources)
- Wither Rose Farm (Defeating the Minecraft Wither – How to Conquer the Toughest Boss!)
- Torchflower (Minecraft Pale Garden & Creak – New Biome & Dangerous Mob in Update 1.21)
- Cactus Farm (Building a Minecraft Cactus Farm: Ultimate Guide for an Automatic Cactus Farm)
- Ink Sac Farm
- Cocoa Beans Farm
- Sea Pickle Farm
- Wool Farm (Minecraft Wool Farm Guide: How to Easily Automate Wool Farming in All Colours)
Conclusion
Dyes allow you to colour many Minecraft blocks and give your world a vibrant makeover. Their application now extends beyond wool, with blocks like concrete and terracotta being ideal for various construction projects. Rent your own Minecraft server with us and utilise some of the automatic farms to always have enough dyes available. You should definitely try some of the examples, such as firework stars or dyeing signs for your world.
