Not all items in Minecraft have a plethora of uses, but they’re essential to customizing your experience. Dyes are only a part of a few concrete crafting recipes, but those recipes allow you to add flair to your armor, base elements, and other items, such as banners and terracotta. While the idea of dying an item in Minecraft seems simple enough, you first have to figure out what dye you want to use. Then, you need to learn the crafting recipe for that specific dye.
To see the crafting recipes for some of the most popular dyes in Minecraft and how to dye your armor, keep reading the guide below.
How to dye armor in Minecraft
We’ll get the process of dying your armor out of the way first so you can hit the ground running when you learn the crafting recipe of whatever dye you want to use.
Dying armor is extremely simple, but you’re only allowed to dye leather armor pieces in Minecraft. Other armor, such as iron, gold, diamond, et al, can’t be dyed. When you have some leather armor you wish to dye, follow the crafting recipe below to change its color:
- At a crafting table, place a single leather armor piece in the center of the table.
- Then, place a single colored dye right below the armor. The leather armor will show you its changed color in the preview window so you can see the final product.
- You can also place more than one dye on the crafting table to combine two colors on your armor. For example, placing a yellow and blue dye with leather armor turns it a washed-out green color.
Regardless of what color you decide to go with, you now have the recipe to change the color of any leather armor piece in Minecraft. With that in mind, let’s go over how to craft the various dyes you can use to change your armor’s color.
How to make Black Dye in Minecraft
First, we have black dye, which requires a single item to obtain. You can see the crafting recipe for it below:
- Place one Ink Sac in the center of a crafting table to produce one black dye
- Alternatively, place one Wither Rose in the center of a crafting table to make black dye
Black dye mainly requires Ink Sacs, which are most commonly found by killing Squids underwater. You can find Squids all over the map in Minecraft, as they’re not restricted to a specific biome. Simply swim underwater, look for a Squid, kill it, and then pick up the Ink Sac it drops. Squids are guaranteed to drop at least one Ink Sac upon death. Ink Sacs can also be obtained as a junk item through fishing and trading with certain villagers.
How to make White Dye in Minecraft
Next, we have white dye, which has a slightly longer crafting process than black dye. You can see the crafting recipe for it below:
- Place one Bone Meal in the center of a crafting table to produce one white dye
- Alternatively, place one Lily of the Valley on a crafting table to make white dye
Bone Meal isn’t too easily accessible by itself, but luckily, you can make it by simply finding a Bone. By placing a bone on a crafting table, you can produce Bone Meal for yourself. Bones are most commonly dropped from killing types of skeletons but the item can also be obtained from chests and by killing certain kinds of fish (25% chance).
How to make Blue, Green, and Cyan Dyes in Minecraft
Cyan dye is one of the only dyes that doesn’t require a regular item to craft. Instead, you need to use two existing dyes to make it. The full crafting recipe is as follows:
- At a crafting table, place green dye and blue dye next to each other in a row. This produces one cyan dye.
We have previously covered how to make green dye in Minecraft, so check out that guide for more details on making it. As for blue dye, this is created through the following crafting recipe:
- Place a single lapis lazuli on a crafting table, and it produces one blue dye
Lapis Lazuli is a mineral that’s commonly found underground in Minecraft. You need to use a stone pickaxe or better to mine it. It has a distinct blue color that makes it easy to see from far away, even in dark locations underground. Once you have your blue and green dye, combine them together to make cyan dye, which looks especially nice on armor.
How to make Brown Dye in Minecraft
Brown dye is up next, and it has one of the more difficult crafting recipes. You can see what it is below:
- Place a single Cocoa Bean on a crafting table to produce one brown dye
Cocoa Beans aren’t a common item that you’ll have a ton of in your inventory or at your base in Minecraft. However, this doesn’t mean they’re too difficult to obtain. All you need to do to get Cocoa Beans is go to a jungle biome and look at the trunks of regular-sized jungle trees. Some trees will have cocoa pods on their trunks, which can be mined with an axe and used to extract Cocoa Beans. Cocoa Beans are used in brown dye but in the making of cookies as well.
And that does it for our dye-making guide in Minecraft. We’ll continue to add the recipes for more dyes in the future.