If you want to know how to get Black Dye you are in the right place. Today we are seeing all the ways to obtain it, with some focus on what’s the best way to gather it in large quantities. We are also going to quickly see all the Black Dye’s uses in Minecraft. Let’s start.

How to craft it
To craft Black Dye you will need either an Ink Sac or a Wither Rose.
To get a Wither Rose you need to kill a Wither (related: Everything about Potion of Decay).

Considering that Withers are one of the thoughest mobs in Minecraft, if you just want to get Black Dye you should just look for Ink Sacs.
You can get Ink Sacs as loot when you kill Squids. Squids spawn in the water in River and Ocean biomes, they are pretty easy to find.

Crafting Black Dye is extremely basic. It’s not even a proper crafting recipe, you just need to put a Wither Rose or an Ink Sac in a Crafting Table or in the crafting panel in your inventory.


How to get it – trading
You can get Black Dye by trading with Villagers for Emeralds. To trade specifically Black Dye you need to find Librarian Villagers. If you can’t find a Librarian, you can “create one”. It is explained how to do it in How to get Silk Touch in Minecraft.
How to get it – commands
To get Black Dye with commands, you will need to type the following line in the commands:
/give @p black_dye 1
Then a Black Dye will appear in your inventory. If you want more than 1 Black Dye, you just need to change the ‘1’ in the commands line with the amount that you would like to obtain.
How to get it in large quantities
If you happen to need a big amount of Black Dye, there are two ways to accomplish it. You can:
- use a Loot enchanted Sword
- use a Lure enchanted Fishing Rod
The Loot enchantment will increase the items dropped as loot when you kill a mob. So you can kill Squids with the enchanted Sword and you will gather much more Ink Sacs.
The Lure enchantment increases the rate of fish biting your hook and Ink Sacs are one if the items that you can get by fishing. Keep in mind that Ink Sacs are considered junk loot, so you don’t want to enchant your Fishing Rod with Luck of the Sea. This enchantment decreases the chances of fishing Ink Sacs and other junk loot.
To craft a Fishing Rod you will need 3 Sticks and 2 Strings. You can get Strings as loot by killing Spiders (related topic: Do Spiders take fall damage in Minecraft?). When you have all the ingredients, put them together in a Crafting Table:

You will need enchantments in one way or the other, so if you want to know how to get any enchantment you may want, you can check the article How to get Silk Touch in Minecraft. The methods explained in that article will work for Lure and Loot as well.
Uses
You can use Black Dye to color in black many blocks:
- Bed
- Glass
- Leather armor
- Shulker Box
- Wool
To do so, you just need to put them together in a Crafting Table or in the crafting panel in your inventory.

Other than changing the color of some blocks, Black Dye has the following uses:
- use it on Sheeps (right-click on them while holding Black Dye in your hand) to turn black their wool
- use it on tamed Wolves and Cats to turn black their collar
- paint black patterns on Banners (you can see how to do it in How to get and craft Ominous/Illager Banners)
- you can use it to craft Black Concrete Powder and Black Terracotta (you can see how to do it in All the white blocks in Minecraft, just change the color of the dye)
- Combine it with Gunpowder to make a Firework Star. If you combine a Firework Star with Black Dye again, you can give the Firework Star a fade-to-color effect
You can do the same with all the other colors of dye available in Minecraft.
Conclusions
So these are all the ways to get Black Dye. Killing Squids and turning their Ink Sac into Black Dye is the quickest way, if you need a big amount of Black Dye you’ll have to choose between using an enchanted Fishing Rod and an enchanted Sword, depending if you want to go hunting Squids or if you prefer to just sit and relax. Thank you very much for reading the article this far and I hope I’ll see you again around here. See you and take care!