Dyeing

Dyes

Type	Items
Durability	N/A
Renewable	Rose Red: Yes Dandelion Yellow: Yes Lapis Lazuli: No Cactus Green: Yes Ink Sac: Yes Bone Meal: Yes Cocoa Beans: Yes Orange Dye: Yes Cyan Dye: No Purple Dye: No Gray Dye: Yes Light Blue Dye: No Pink Dye: Yes Lime Dye: Yes Magenta Dye: No Light Gray Dye: Yes
Stackable	Yes (64)
First appearance	Beta 1.2
Data value	dec: 351 hex: 15F

Dyes are items used to change the color of wool, leather armor, hardened clay, and mobs. There are 16 dyes, which includes Bone Meal, Light Gray Dye, Gray Dye, Ink Sac, Rose Red, Orange Dye, Dandelion Yellow, Lime Dye, Cactus Green, Light Blue Dye, Cyan Dye, Lapis Lazuli, Purple Dye, Magenta Dye, Pink Dye, and Cocoa Beans. The majority of the dyes are renewable resources.

Most dyes are obtained by blocks and items that spawn in the world and then be extracted in various ways, such as crafting, smelting or mining. Some dyes can only be obtained through combinations of specific dyes.

[edit] Uses

[edit] Dyeing wool and mobs

The dye crafting production chain.

Players can dye wool by placing a white wool and a dye on a crafting table.

Name	Ingredients	Input » Output
Light Gray Wool	Wool + Light Gray Dye
Gray Wool	Wool + Gray Dye
Black Wool	Wool + Ink Sac
Red Wool	Wool + Rose Red
Orange Wool	Wool + Orange Dye
Yellow Wool	Wool + Dandelion Yellow
Lime Wool	Wool + Lime Dye
Green Wool	Wool + Cactus Green
Cyan Wool	Wool + Cyan Dye
Light Blue Wool	Wool + Light Blue Dye
Blue Wool	Wool + Lapis Lazuli Dye
Purple Wool	Wool + Purple Dye
Magenta Wool	Wool + Magenta Dye
Pink Wool	Wool + Pink Dye
Brown Wool	Wool + Cocoa Beans

Dyes can be used on sheep by right-clicking sheep with a dye. After shearing a colored sheep, they will drop the corresponding color of the wool, as well keep the color of their wool when it regenerates. Additionally, there are naturally occurring gray, light gray, black, brown and pink sheep that drop corresponding color wool. Breeding colored sheep will result the baby sheep's color to be one of the parental sheep's color, or a resulting color of the combination of both parental sheep's color. The unlimited reproduction of colored sheep make dyeing and shearing sheep a far more efficient method to obtain dyed wool than just dyeing a wool directly.

Dye can also be used on tamed wolves, except on the Xbox 360 Edition. Right-clicking a tamed wolf with a dye will change the wolf's collar (red by default) to the color of the dye. This can be helpful when players are organizing multiple tamed wolves.

[edit] Staining hardened clay

Hardened clay can be stained by placing 8 blocks of hardened clay around a dye on a crafting table.

Ingredients	Input » Output
Hardened Clay + Dye	8

[edit] Armor dyeing

A graph showing all combinations of two dyes on a chestplate.

Leather armor can be dyed by crafting dyes in with a piece of leather armor. There are a possible combination of 12,326,391 colors, as it is possible to put more than one dye on the crafting bench alongside the leather armor. Armor can be dyed multiple times with previous colors affecting the final outcome. Colored armor can be reverted to their original color using a cauldron.

The game has a specific formula for calculating the color of dyed armor: each color, in the RGB color model, has a red value, green value, and blue value. For each dye in the crafting grid, and the armor itself (if it is already dyed), the red, green, and blue values are added to running totals. In addition, a running total of the highest value (be it red, green, or blue) is also kept. After this, each total is divided by the number of colors tested. This effectively produces the average red, green, blue, and maximum values. The maximum value of the average RGB values is also calculated. Finally, each average RGB value is multiplied by the average maximum value, and divided by the maximum of the average RGB values. The modified average RGB values are then used as the final color. This procedure can be summed up with the following equations:

for each color (all "total" variables start at 0 before counting):
 totalRed = totalRed + redValue
 totalGreen = totalGreen + greenValue
 totalBlue = totalBlue + blueValue
 totalMaximum = totalMaximum + max(red, green, blue)
 numberOfColors = numberOfColors + 1

averageRed = totalRed / numberOfColors
averageGreen = totalGreen / numberOfColors
averageBlue = totalBlue / numberOfColors
averageMaximum = totalMaximum / numberOfColors

maximumOfAverage = max(averageRed, averageGreen, averageBlue)
gainFactor = averageMaximum / maximumOfAverage

resultRed = averageRed * gainFactor
resultGreen = averageGreen * gainFactor
resultBlue = averageBlue * gainFactor

Due to the way this formula works, the resulting color will never be darker than the average of the input colors, and will often be lighter and more saturated. Of course, the resulting color will never be lighter or more saturated than the lightest or most saturated input color. In addition, this formula will never create an RGB value higher than 255 (which is invalid in the 8 bit RGB color model).

[edit] Primary colors

These primary dyes are created from a single ingredient spawned naturally in a world.

Name	Source	Color	Notes
Rose Red	Rose	Red	Made by placing a rose on a crafting grid. In Pocket Edition 0.4.0 it is made by cooking a Red Mushroom in a Furnace.
Dandelion Yellow	Dandelion	Yellow	Made by placing a dandelion on a crafting grid.
Lapis Lazuli	Lapis Lazuli Ore	Blue	Mined (one ore yields 4-8 dye). (One block of blue wool resides in Desert Temples.)
Cactus Green	Cactus	Green	Made by cooking cactus in a furnace.
Ink Sac	Squid	Black	Each squid drops 0-3 ink sacs when it is killed. (Black wool can also be obtained from black sheep, or from naturally occuring lamp posts in NPC Villages.)
Bone Meal	Bone	White	Made by placing a bone on a crafting grid. (White wool can also be obtained from white sheep.)
Cocoa Beans	Cocoa plants, Dungeons.	Brown	Found in dungeons, or growing on jungle trees. (Brown wool can also be obtained from brown sheep.)

[edit] Secondary colors

Secondary dyes are created by combining primary dyes together.

Name	Source	Color	Notes
Orange Dye	Rose Red + Dandelion Yellow	Orange	(Orange wool can also be obtained from Desert Temple.)
Cyan Dye	Cactus Green + Lapis Lazuli	Cyan
Purple Dye	Rose Red + Lapis Lazuli	Purple
Gray Dye	Ink Sac + Bone Meal	Gray	(Gray wool can also be obtained from gray sheep.)
Light Blue Dye	Lapis Lazuli + Bone Meal	Light Blue
Pink Dye	Rose Red + Bone Meal	Pink	(Pink wool can also be obtained from rare pink sheep.)
Lime Dye	Cactus Green + Bone Meal	Lime Green

[edit] Tertiary colors

Tertiary dyes are created by combining at least one secondary dye.

Name	Source	Color	Notes
Magenta Dye	Purple Dye + Pink Dye	Magenta	See Magenta Dye page for alternate recipes and comparison of recipes' efficiency.
Light Gray Dye	Gray Dye + Bone Meal	Light Gray	See Light Gray Dye page for alternate recipe and comparison of recipes' efficiency. (Light gray wool can also be obtained from light gray sheep.)

[edit] Video

[edit] Notes

If you are looking to make Wool dyed a certain color, it is better to dye a sheep the desired color and shear the sheep. This method gives you a permanent supply of that wool color (1-3 blocks per shearing), for a single piece of dye, where crafting gives you only one dyed block per dye unit. Note that you can also bleach and re-dye non-white sheep. Sheep can also be bred, and the lambs inherit the color of one of their parents.

These colors of wool naturally occur on sheep; all others must be created by using dye on a sheep (right-click):

1. White sheep (the most common)
2. Light gray sheep
3. Dark gray sheep
4. Black sheep
5. Brown sheep
6. Pink sheep (rarest)

[edit] Data values

The color of a dye item depends on a secondary data field (beyond the item ID of 351), which is also used to store the damage for tools and so is commonly referred to as a “damage value”. The "color codes" are used to determine the color imparted on sheep, wolf collars, and leather armor.

Icon	Dec	Hex	Description	Color Code	Sample
	0	0x0	Ink Sac	#191919
	1	0x1	Rose Red	#CC4C4C
	2	0x2	Cactus Green	#667F33
	3	0x3	Cocoa Beans	#7F664C
	4	0x4	Lapis Lazuli	#3366CC
	5	0x5	Purple Dye	#B266E5
	6	0x6	Cyan Dye	#4C99B2
	7	0x7	Light Gray Dye	#999999
	8	0x8	Gray Dye	#4C4C4C
	9	0x9	Pink Dye	#F2B2CC
	10	0xA	Lime Dye	#7FCC19
	11	0xB	Dandelion Yellow	#E5E533
	12	0xC	Light Blue Dye	#99B2F2
	13	0xD	Magenta Dye	#E57FD8
	14	0xE	Orange Dye	#F2B233
	15	0xF	Bone Meal	#FFFFFF

[edit] History

[edit] Trivia

• The reversed color values closely resemble an ANSI or VGA palette with the biggest outlier being orange.
• The metadata values for wool and wool dyes are the inverse of one another, with white wool having a metadata value of 0, bone meal 15; orange wool having a value of 1, orange dye 14 and so on.
• Players can obtain each one of every color with 1 cocoa bean, 2 yellow dye, 3 green dye and ink sacs, 4 lapis lazuli, 5 red, and 8 bone meal (3 bones).
• Giving yourself a dye with a damage value greater than 15 will result in an object which resembles some other in-game item, such as a wooden tool, and moving the mouse over the item to view its tool-tip text will crash the game.
• The dyed sheep breeding behavior mirrors Lamarck´s theory, in which the organisms evolve inheriting the external changes and adaptations of the previous generation, transmitting them to their offspring.
• When coding recipes including items with metadata, such as dyes, rather than just making an item, you must create a stack of one item that includes the metadata.