Minecraft banners: every pattern, the loom, shields and copying designs

A banner is a flag you design yourself: a base colour plus up to six pattern layers, each in any of sixteen dye colours. Most designs only need a loom and dye. A few special shapes need a banner pattern item, and four of those can only be found, not crafted.

Quick answers

• Make a banner: six wool of one colour and a stick.
• Add patterns: use a loom (two string over two planks): banner + dye, then pick a pattern.
• Layers: up to six in survival.
• Special patterns: need a banner pattern item in the loom. It is not used up.
• Copy a banner: craft the design with a blank banner of the same base colour.
• Banner shield: craft a shield with the banner.

Image: SyntaxMine, made from Minecraft's own textures.

The loom

The loom has three slots: banner, dye, and an optional banner pattern. Put in the banner and a dye and you get a scrollable list of every basic pattern: stripes, crosses, borders, gradients, halves, triangles, circles, bricks... Pick one and take the result. Each layer costs one dye.

Order matters. Patterns stack in the order you add them, so big shapes go first and details last. Plan the design from the back to the front.

All ten banner pattern items

Pattern	How to get it
Flower Charge	Craft: paper + oxeye daisy
Creeper Charge	Craft: paper + creeper head
Skull Charge	Craft: paper + wither skeleton skull
Thing (the Mojang logo)	Craft: paper + enchanted golden apple
Field Masoned (bricks)	Craft: paper + bricks
Bordure Indented	Craft: paper + vines
Globe	Buy from a master cartographer for 8 emeralds
Snout	Bastion remnant chests
Flow	Trial chambers, ominous vaults
Guster	Trial chambers, vaults and reward chests

The two charge patterns need mob heads, which only drop from charged creeper kills or wither skeletons; our mob heads guide covers both. Thing needs an enchanted golden apple, which cannot be crafted, so save one from a chest if you want the logo. Flow and Guster come from the trial chambers, the same runs that give you breeze rods and the mace.

Pattern items stay in the loom slot after use, so one item lets you make as many banners as you want.

Copying a banner

Put the finished banner and a blank banner of the same base colour in a crafting grid. You get the copy, and the original comes back. This is the only way to duplicate a design without redoing every layer.

Banners on shields

Craft a shield together with a banner and the design is painted onto the shield. A shield can only take one banner, and you cannot put a new banner on a shield that already has one, so be sure of the design first.

Banners on maps

Hold a map of the area and use it on a placed banner: the banner appears as a coloured marker on that map, with its name if you renamed it in an anvil first. It is a neat way to label bases, villages and portals on a map wall.

Fixing a mistake

Used the wrong pattern on the top layer? Use the banner on a cauldron with water in it. Each use washes off the last layer added and uses up some of the water. Repeat to peel back more layers.

The ominous banner

The banner carried by raid and patrol captains is the ominous banner. You cannot make it in a loom; it drops when you kill a captain. Placed over a door it is a classic trophy. Captains also drop an ominous bottle since 1.21; drinking it gives Bad Omen, which turns into a raid when you enter a village, so only drink it when you want one. More about the illagers behind it in illagers explained.

Design tips

• Start with the base colour as your background, then add the largest shape.
• Use borders last: a thin border in a dark colour makes any design look finished.
• Gradients in a dark colour over a light base give depth.
• Mirror symmetry reads best from a distance, which is how banners are usually seen.