Want to leave your mark in Minecraft? Maybe make a little sign that shows where your territory begins to strike fear into the hearts of unwary travelers?
Maybe it’s something a little less dramatic than that, and you’re just looking to add cosmetics to the bland old survival base.
Well, you can do all that and much more with Banners!
What Are Banners?
Banners are cosmetic items in Minecraft that allow you to make highly customized posters using a mix of patterns and different dyes.
Banners are tall in size and come in 16 different color variations depending upon the Wool color used to craft them.
You can make Banners through the Crafting Table as well as the Loom.
Some Banners can be found naturally generated throughout the survival world at specific points such as outside the End City or Woodland Mansions.
Although you can obtain them from here, these are exceptionally rare cases and not effective if you want an arsenal of Banners on your side!
The best method of getting your hands on those sweet Banners is to craft them yourself using a Loom or a Crafting Table.
We recommend using a Loom over the Crafting Table since the Loom is made explicitly for crafting and customizing Banners.
Its interface is much easier to understand and, unlike the Crafting Table – does not require you to memorize a bunch of different recipes every time you want to edit your Banners.
Additionally, making the same Banner using a Loom requires fewer resources such as Dyes as compared to creating one with the Crafting Table.
Now that you have a good understanding of how they work let’s jump into the methods of crafting your very own Banner!
How to Use Banner Patterns in Minecraft
You can customize a Banner by using Patterns with the help of Dyes and a Crafting Table or Loom.
Placing the Banner in any free slot and Dyes in appropriate positions on the crafting grid will produce a Banner with the required pattern embedded into it.
You can add up to 6 layers of patterns to a single Banner.
As explained, there are a total of 16 different color variations with which you can craft a standard Banner.
Additionally, there are a ton of different patterns you can opt for while making your Banner, with 6 optimal ones already provided by the game.
When making the pattern, you’ll have to add Dyes in specific positions of the crafting grid to create the pattern you want.
The pattern you end up making depends upon the positioning of the Dyes used in the crafting grid.
Since you can add up to 6 layers of patterns on each Banner, you can technically create as many unique Banner styles as you want!
After you’ve finalized the type of Banner you’d like to make, you can move on to creating and customizing the Banner itself.
Creating Custom Banners in Minecraft 1.19 Step-by-Step
Step 1: Obtaining the Materials
You can’t customize a Banner if you don’t have one in the first place!
To craft a Banner, you’ll need to get your hands on a couple of blocks of Wool and a stick.
To be more precise, each Banner you craft requires you to input 6 blocks of Wool and one stick into the crafting grid.
The color of the Banner you end up with depends upon the color of Wool you use in its crafting.
For example, using 6 pieces of Purple Wool and one Stick will result in a Purple Banner.
Since there are 16 Wool colors in the game – you can potentially end up with 16 different Banners according to your liking.
Sticks can easily be obtained by using Logs. A single tree’s worth of Wood will be more than enough to cover all your Stick needs for crafting multiple Banners.
Wool, on the other hand, can be harder to come across. Your best chance of obtaining Wool in the early game is to either craft it using Strings or kill Sheep.
In the late game, however, you can quickly obtain a ton of Wool either through farming (Sheep), trading with Villagers, and of course, crafting.
Step 2: Crafting the Banner
Once you’ve obtained all the necessary ingredients, open up a crafting table and put these in with the correct placement to craft a Banner successfully.
You can refer to the picture above for the placement you’ll need to craft one!
Note that you should make the Banner with the type of color variation you want since changing this after you’ve put in your custom patterns can be a chore.
(You can also use a Dye on the regular Banner to change its color according to your liking)
Step 3: Customizing the Banner
Once you’ve got a normal Banner to work with, you can start the customization process.
To do this, open up a Crafting Table or Loom. We’ll explain both the methods here, but it’s generally much more convenient to use a Loom for this.
It takes up fewer resources for the same output as the Crafting Table and already provides the recipes for each pattern – eliminating the need to memorize the placement of Dyes.
Crafting Table
To make customizations to your Banner using a Crafting Table, you’ll first have to place the un-altered Banner in any of the free slots in the crafting grid.
Once done, position the Dyes on the crafting grid according to the style you want to embed into this Banner.
You can also add in one of the 6 optimal Banner Patterns already available in the game if you’d like to utilize these while making the customizations.
Loom
Using a Loom is relatively straightforward. Once you interact with the block, it will have three different slots. There’s one each for adding the Banner, Dyes, and optimal Banner Patterns.
Now, simply place all three items into their respective slots. You have the option of not using the optimal Banner Patterns if you desire.
Once you place in the Dye, the Loom will pop up a section showing every available pattern that you can make.
You can simply select one of these without having to input the recipe as you do with the Crafting Table. Voilà, you now have your very own customized Banner!
For reference, here’s a table containing all 6 of the pre-made optimal Banner Patterns in the game:
| Pattern | Crafting Ingredients | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Thing Banner | Enchanted Golden Apple + Paper | Mojang’s Old Logo |
| Skull Charge Banner | Wither Skeleton Skull + Paper | Crossbones & A Skeleton Skull |
| Creeper Charge Banner | Creeper Head + Paper | A Creeper’s Face |
| Flower Charge Banner | Oxeye Daisy + Paper | A Daisy Flower |
| Field Masoned Banner | Bricks + Paper | A Brick Wall Pattern (Bedrock Only) |
| Bordure Indented Banner | Vines + Paper | A Vines Pattern (Bedrock Only) |
These can be used for customization indefinitely once you’ve obtained them.
Additionally, you can repeat this customization process up to 6 times to make the perfect Banner for yourself.
If you don’t like the pattern you ended up with and want to revert it, you can always use a Cauldron filled with water to remove the top-most layer of your Banner.
Now get on out there and make your mark on the Minecraft world!