How to Make White Dye in Minecraft From Bone Meal
One bone meal or 1 lily of the valley makes 1 white dye. How to make white dye in Minecraft, why bones are the better source, and how to farm them.
Put 1 bone meal in any crafting grid and you get 1 white dye. A lily of the valley does the same: 1 flower, 1 dye. Both recipes work in the 2x2 inventory grid.
Bone meal is the better source for almost everyone, because it scales. A single bone becomes 3 bone meal, which becomes 3 white dye.
Bones are the easy route
Skeletons drop 0 to 2 bones each. Fight a few on your first nights and you’ll have more white dye than you need for a while. Other sources:
- Skeleton spawners in dungeons. Build a simple skeleton farm around one and you get bones, arrows and XP all at once.
- Composters. Any plant waste you drop in eventually gives 1 bone meal.
- Bone blocks from fossils deep underground. Each bone block crafts into 9 bone meal.
- Fishing sometimes pulls up a bone.
The only downside: bone meal is also your crop fertilizer, so don’t turn all of it into dye if you’re growing a farm.
Lily of the valley
A small white flower with bell-shaped heads. It grows in forests and flower forests and can be spread with bone meal on grass in those biomes. One flower gives one dye. It’s a fine source if you live near a flower forest, but for big builds bones are faster. Keep in mind lily of the valley is poisonous in suspicious stew, which won’t matter for dye but is worth knowing if you cook.
Bedrock shortcut
In Bedrock, bone meal can replace white dye in some mixing recipes, such as light blue and light gray. In Java you always need the actual white dye item. It’s one extra click, so it rarely matters.
What needs white dye
White is the base for most of the pale colors:
- Light blue: blue + white
- Lime: green + white
- Pink: red + white
- Gray: black + white
- Light gray: gray + white, or black + 2 white
It also colors things on its own: white beds, banners, candles, glass, terracotta and leather armor. One dye in a batch of concrete powder makes 8 white concrete, the most-used concrete color in modern builds.
More dye recipes and crafting guides are on the guides hub.
Common questions
Is bone meal the same as white dye?
Not since 1.14. They are separate items, and one bone meal crafts into one white dye. Bedrock still lets bone meal stand in for white dye in a few mixing recipes.
How much white dye does one bone make?
Three. A bone crafts into 3 bone meal, and each bone meal crafts into 1 white dye.
Can you turn colored wool white again?
Yes. In Java 1.20 and later, craft any colored wool with white dye to make it white.
Sources & verification
Facts on this page are checked against these references and in-game behavior for the stated edition(s). how we verify.
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