Minecraft Banner Pattern Designer
Editions: Java + Bedrock (6 layers both) · Verified: Java 26.3 / Bedrock 26.50 · 2026-09-16 · Updated 2026-09-16
A banner is a base color plus up to six loom layers, each one dye and one pattern, later layers drawn over earlier ones. Stack layers here and watch the order matter — every shape below is drawn from scratch, no game art.
The worked example
Order is the whole craft. A white banner with a red fess (the middle band) and then a black bordure keeps a clean red band framed in black, because the border draws last and clips over the band's ends. Reverse the two layers and the band draws over the border instead, cutting it in half. Six layers deep, that ordering discipline is the difference between the flag you planned and mud — and each layer still costs exactly one dye at the loom.
What needs an item, what needs only dye
| Pattern | Needs |
|---|---|
| Field masoned | Pattern item — paper + bricks |
| Bordure indented | Pattern item — paper + vines |
| Flower charge | Pattern item — paper + oxeye daisy |
| Creeper charge | Pattern item — paper + creeper head |
| Skull charge | Pattern item — paper + wither skeleton skull |
| Thing | Pattern item — paper + enchanted golden apple |
| Globe | Pattern item — cartographer trade |
| Snout | Pattern item — bastion chest loot |
| Flow / Guster | Pattern items — Trial Chambers vault loot |
| All other loom patterns | One dye, nothing else |
This designer renders 26 of the 32 dye-only loom patterns. Four of the six it skips are inverted variants of the halves and diagonals — per pale inverted, per fess inverted, per bend inverted, per bend sinister inverted — which you can reproduce by swapping the base and layer colors. The other two are the sawtooth pair, base indented and chief indented, which have no color-swap equivalent and are simply not drawn here. Sources in the banner guide.
Questions builders actually ask
How many layers can a Minecraft banner have?
Six pattern layers in survival, in both Java and Bedrock, applied one at a time at a loom on top of the base color. Commands can push a Java banner past six, but a loom cannot.
Which banner patterns need a pattern item?
Ten patterns need a banner pattern item in the loom: six craftable ones (field masoned, bordure indented, and the flower, creeper, and skull charges, plus the thing) and four from loot or trade (globe, snout, flow, guster). The item is not consumed. Every other loom pattern needs only a dye.
Does the loom consume the dye and the pattern item?
Each layer consumes exactly one dye. A banner pattern item is required for its pattern but returned untouched, so one creeper charge pattern serves every banner you ever make.
Are these preview colors the exact game colors?
No — the sixteen swatches here are our own approximations for previewing, and the pattern shapes are drawn from scratch rather than taken from the game. Layer order and stacking behavior match the loom; the exact pixels on your banner will differ slightly.