How To Dye Leather Armor in Minecraft

The game of Minecraft is primarily a game of survival, struggling against the “elements,” in the form of hostile monsters to gather the basic necessities and eventually tame at least a portion of the world to call home. This main component of the game usually has the player in drab-colored armor, iron-gray or leather brown, but it doesn’t have to be this way. You can actually dye your leather armor! 

Why Dye? 

There are those out there wondering, “What exactly is the point of dying your armor?” Primarily it’s an aesthetic option for you the player to add a little color to your wardrobe and ultimately your world, however, the mechanic isn’t purely aesthetic in nature. The ability to dye your leather armor gives you an amazing opportunity to organize. Enchantments are frequently mutually exclusive, and not every enchantment is for every situation. For example, a helmet with the Aqua Affinity enchantment and boots with the Depth Strider enchantment are fairly useless in the Nether but are invaluable in an Ocean Monument. Rather than have these armors sitting in a chest with other specialized leather armor and hovering over each piece to find the ones with the enchantments you need, you could dye the whole set the same color (blue for the above examples perhaps) to help you easily find it when you need it. Furthermore, those dyed sets of armor will look pretty snazzy on an armor stand or on your avatar. 

What You Need 

Obviously dying leather armor involves two components, leather armor and your chosen colors of dye. You’ll also need access to a crafting grid (In Java Edition), or a cauldron (In Bedrock Edition). You can use a crafting table for this or you can just use the crafting grid built into your inventory. 

Sourcing Leather Armor 

Leather armor can be found in a number of places in your Minecraft world. Nearly all chests in generated structures (Desert Temples, Jungle Temples, Abandoned Mineshafts, etc.) have a chance to generate with leather armor inside. However, it’s far more likely that you’ll get leather armor by crafting it with leather you get from cows, llamas, horses, or by crafting together rabbit pelts. 

Sourcing Dye 

The best sources for dye will depend upon the color you’re wanting. There are 16 different colors most of which you can get from the various flowers and other plants you find in Minecraft. Red, yellow, orange, light gray, pink, light blue, blue, and magenta can all be obtained from easily acquired flowers. White can be obtained from bonemeal, brown from cocoa beans, black from ink sacs (or wither roses if somehow you have an overabundance of those), green from smelting cactus, and lime green from smelting sea pickles. Several of these colors and the rest of the 16 colors can be obtained by crafting the above colors together with logical combinations (blue and green make teal, red and blue make purple, etc.). 

How to Dye Leather Armor

At last, you have your armor and you have your dye. The process for applying the dye to your leather armor is quite simple (at least for Java Edition). Place the leather armor you’d like to dye in your crafting grid and then place the dye color you wish to use in the crafting grid as well. Bingo! You have yourself some dyed leather armor! 

If you’re playing in a Bedrock world, you’ve probably noticed by now that this method didn’t work. That’s because the method for dying armor in Bedrock is a little different. You’ll actually need a cauldron full of water. Hold your chosen dye color in your hand and right-click on the cauldron to apply that color to the water in the cauldron. Now hold the armor you want to dye in your hand and right-click on the cauldron you added the dye to. Now the armor has the dye color applied to it. 

As it turns out though, there’s more to the dye system in Minecraft than simply applying one of the 16 colors to your armor. As organizing your enchanted armor is one of the best uses for this mechanic, it only makes sense that you would be able to dye your leather armor even after it has been enchanted. 

If for some reason you hate the color once it’s been applied you can actually remove the dye by holding the dyed armor in your hand and right-clicking on a cauldron filled with water (for bedrock it’s important that the water be fresh, undyed water in order to remove the dye from the armor). This will lower the water level in the cauldron by 1 level and will remove all the dye from the armor you’re holding restoring the original color. 

Leather horse armor is not excluded from the dye system and can be dyed as well allowing you to ride in style! 

Finally, you’re not limited to just the standard 16 dye colors. You can mix the dyes to make unique colors for your armor. To add additional colors, place your already dyed leather armor in a crafting grid and add the color of dye you’d like to mix in and it will blend the already applied color and the new color! You can even do this multiple times to make truly unique colors for all your armor! 

Again, the process for this is a little different for Bedrock Edition. Take all the dyes you want to apply to the armor and add them all to the water in the cauldron to create your color mix then holding your leather armor right-click on the cauldron to apply all the dye colors to the armor at once! 

Now that you know how to add some color to your leather armor, I’m sure you’re dying to try it out … Ok, that joke was bad, but the leather dying system is awesome and you should definitely give it a dye!