How to use this dye chart
Each row is one dye: how to get it, its own color value and the average color of the blocks it makes. Use Show colors for to narrow the chart to one block type, for example only concrete, which is handy when you are planning a build with a fixed palette. Click any swatch to copy its hex code into a design tool or our pixel art generator. The finder below the chart matches any color to the nearest dye or block, and the mixing helper shows what you can craft when you only have a few base dyes.
How to get every dye
Every dye can be crafted from something you can farm, so all 16 colors are renewable. Wandering traders also sell dyes, 3 for 1 emerald. The sources fall into three groups.
Flowers and plants
Put a flower in the crafting grid to get its dye. Small flowers give 1 dye and the tall ones (rose bush, sunflower, lilac, peony and pitcher plant) give 2, so tall flowers are the better farm. A few newer plants are worth knowing: torchflowers (orange) and pitcher plants (cyan) grow from seeds that sniffers dig up, eyeblossoms from the pale garden give orange dye when open and gray dye when closed, pink petals and cactus flowers both give pink, and wildflowers give yellow. The wither rose (black) drops when the Wither boss kills a mob.
Other items
- White: bone meal, from skeleton bones or a composter.
- Black: ink sacs dropped by squid.
- Brown: cocoa beans from cocoa pods on jungle trees.
- Blue: lapis lazuli.
- Red: beetroot as well as red flowers.
- Green: smelt a cactus in a furnace. No flower gives green.
- Lime: smelt a sea pickle, or mix green and white.
Mixing dyes
Dyes can be crafted together into new colors. Purple can only be made this way (blue + red), and magenta has the most recipes. The best-value magenta recipe is blue + 2 red + white, which gives 4 dyes. White is the most useful mixing dye: with it you can turn red into pink, blue into light blue, green into lime and black into gray or light gray.
Minecraft wool colors
Four string in a 2×2 grid make one white wool, and any wool can be crafted with a dye to change it to that color. Wool can be re-dyed as often as you like. Crafting wool one block at a time is slow, though. A dye used on a sheep colors its fleece, and each shear gives 1–3 wool of that color, again every time the wool grows back. One dye gives you an endless supply, so a few dyed sheep in a pen are the standard way to collect colored wool. A sheared sheep cannot be dyed until it has eaten grass and regrown its wool.
Natural sheep colors depend on the biome. In temperate biomes such as plains most sheep are white, in cold biomes such as taiga most are black, and in warm biomes such as savanna and desert most are brown. Every biome also has smaller chances of light gray, gray and the other natural colors, and pink sheep are very rare (about 0.16%).
When you breed two sheep whose dyes can be crafted together, the lamb gets the mixed color: blue and white make light blue, red and yellow make orange, red and white make pink. If the two colors have no mixing recipe, the lamb copies one parent at random.
Java Edition 26.3 added wool stairs and slabs in all 16 colors, plus cushions you can sit on, crafted from wool slabs.
Minecraft concrete colors
Concrete has the flattest, most saturated colors in the game, which makes it the favorite block for pixel art and modern builds. Craft 4 sand, 4 gravel and 1 dye into 8 concrete powder. Red sand does not work. Concrete powder falls like sand, and it hardens into concrete when it touches water, either a source block or flowing water. Rain and splash water bottles do not harden it. A quick method is to place the powder in front of a flowing water stream and mine each block as it turns into concrete.
The chart shows that concrete powder is lighter and slightly grainier than the finished concrete, so use the right column when matching colors. Java Edition 26.3 also added concrete stairs and slabs, crafted from concrete or cut in a stonecutter.
Terracotta and glazed terracotta
Smelt a clay block to get terracotta, or mine it in badlands biomes. Surround one dye with 8 terracotta to get 8 stained terracotta. Terracotta colors are muted and earthy, which suits natural builds where concrete looks too bright. Smelting stained terracotta gives glazed terracotta, a patterned block that rotates with the direction you face when you place it, so four blocks can form a larger pattern. Plain terracotta cannot be smelted into glazed terracotta. Glazed terracotta can be pushed by pistons but not pulled by sticky pistons, and it does not stick to slime or honey blocks.
Dyeing leather armor
In Java Edition, craft a leather armor piece with 1 to 8 dyes. With one dye, the armor takes that dye's color value from the table. With several, the game averages the red, green and blue values of all the dyes, then scales the result so its strongest channel equals the average of each dye's strongest channel. This keeps mixes from looking dull. An already dyed piece counts its current color as one more input, which lets you build up a huge range of shades over several crafts. Undyed leather is #A06540. Use a water-filled cauldron to wash the color off. Wolf armor is dyed the same way in Java.
Beds, candles, shulker boxes, banners and glass
- Beds: craft with 3 wool of the same color and 3 planks of any type. A bed of any color can be re-dyed with a dye.
- Candles: craft a candle with a dye. A dyed candle cannot be changed to another color.
- Shulker boxes: craft a shulker box with a dye. It keeps its contents. Use it on a water cauldron to remove the color.
- Banners: the base color comes from the 6 wool you craft it with. Dyes add patterns on a loom; try the banner maker.
- Stained glass: surround one dye with 8 glass to get 8 stained glass. You need Silk Touch to pick it up again. Stacking stained glass on a beacon tints the beam, with each block blending its color into the beam.
- Carpets: craft from wool of the matching color, or re-dye any carpet with a dye.
Bedrock Edition differences
- Bone meal, ink sacs, lapis lazuli and cocoa beans can be used directly in place of white, black, blue and brown dye in dye recipes, but not mixed with the real dye in the same recipe.
- Leather armor is dyed in a cauldron, not the crafting grid: use dyes on a water cauldron to color the water, then use the armor on it.
- Shulker mobs can be dyed by using a dye on them.
- Some block IDs use the old name “silver” for light gray, for example
silver_glazed_terracotta.
About the color values
The three dye values come from the game's data and are the exact numbers Minecraft uses. Block colors are different: they are the average of every pixel in the block's Java Edition texture, so a patterned block like glazed terracotta shows its overall tone, not one flat color. Use the dye color for leather armor and banners, and the block columns when you need blocks that look alike. For smooth color fades between blocks, try the block gradient generator.