Banner

Banners are tall decorative blocks, featuring a field that is highly customizable using dyes and banner patterns.

Breaking
Banners can be broken with or without a tool, but an axe is fastest.

A banner also breaks and drops itself as an item if the block the banner is attached to is moved, removed, or destroyed.

Crafting
Banners can be crafted from six wool and a stick in a pattern resembling a sign.

Trading
Expert-level cartographer villagers always offer to sell 1 or 2 blank banners of a random color for 3 emeralds. Expert-level shepherd villagers have a $$ chance of offering the same trade.

$$, expert-level cartographer and shepherd villagers both offer to sell one of 16 blank banners for 3 emeralds as part of their trades.

Mob loot
Illagers that spawn carrying an ominous banner / illager banner always drop it upon death.

Usage


There are 16 colored blank banners, and numerous patterns each available in each of the 16 colors. A banner can feature up to 6 different patterns. The top layer of a banner (or the last pattern added) can be washed off by it on a cauldron containing water.

Banners, much like signs, can be placed both on the ground facing in any direction, or on a wall. They gently sway as if affected by a breeze, regardless of dimension or location.

Banners have no collision mask as they are completely non-solid, so items and mobs can move through them.

Other blocks (including other banners) can be placed on any edge of a banner's hitbox, which is only one block high despite the banner appearing as two blocks tall. This makes it possible to overlap another solid block on the top half of a banner for floor banners, or the bottom half of wall banners.

When a banner is placed on the side of a block, its position is set by the top block, and it is possible to place it so it appears half buried.

Banners can also be placed in item frames, where they simply appear as their item model.

Water and lava flow around banners. $2/7$, banners can be waterlogged.

Lava can create fire in air blocks next to banners as if the banners were flammable, but the banners do not burn (and can't be burned by other methods, either). Banners also cannot be moved by pistons.

If a banner is renamed on an anvil, it retains its name when a pattern is added, but not when a pattern is removed.

Helmet
While a banner cannot be equipped in the head slot in Survival mode, equipping it using commands causes it to appear on top of the player. This is how pillager captains wear banners.

Crafting ingredient
Shields can have patterns applied to them using banners. The shield pattern has a smaller resolution than the banner pattern, causing them to look different or offset. Banners that have more than six patterns, such as Ominous Banners or banners obtained through inventory editors, will be reduced to six patterns on the shield.

Copying
Banners can be copied with a blank banner to make multiple identical banners. Banners with more than 6 patterns applied using commands cannot be copied in this manner.

Map marker


$$, on a banner with a map selected places a marker of the banner's position on the selected map, and  on the banner again removes the marker. The marker has the same color as the banner's base without decorations. The marker is removed if the banner is destroyed unless the map is locked using a cartography table. If the banner is renamed, the name appears below the marker.

Patterns


A banner may have up to six layers of patterns, which are overlaid with the last-crafted on top. A banner can have up to 16 layers of patterns with the use of commands. The total number of unique banners is approximately 2.3x10^16 (or 23 quadrillion).

Any color banner can be used; the pattern overlays the color. $$, a loom is used to make patterns. However, $$, the patterns can be made in a loom or a crafting table.

A banner can have more than six layers of patterns through the commands,   or. This only works in Java Edition, as Bedrock Edition doesn't have any NBT commands. Here is an example of a mining banner with seven different patterns.

Renaming
$$, a banner can be given a custom name that remains as the banner is placed and retrieved. The player can use an anvil to rename the banner item, or may change the  tag using the  command on the banner block.

Fuel
Banners can be used as a fuel in furnaces, smelting 1.5 items per banner.

Note Blocks
Banners can be placed under note blocks to produce "bass" sounds.

ID




Item
$$, banner items use the following data values:

Block data
A banner has a block entity associated with it that holds additional data about the block.


 * See Bedrock Edition level format/Block entity format.
 * See Bedrock Edition level format/Block entity format.



Item data


Banners, as items, use an NBT tag  to indicate the patterns and details when it is placed.


 * : The item
 * : Additional information about the item. This tag is optional for most items.
 * : The details of the shulker box.
 * All block data, except tags common to all block entities.


 * See Bedrock Edition level format/Item format.
 * See Bedrock Edition level format/Item format.

Trivia

 * With 16 blank banners, 38 patterns of 16 colors each (608 uniquely-colored patterns), and 0 to 6 patterns per banner, the number of uniquely crafted banners is 16 × (6080 + 6081 + 6082 + 6083 + 6084 + 6085 + 6086) ≈ 809 quadrillion (809,573,616,779,945,488). The number of visually distinct banners is smaller, because one or more patterns may completely cover other patterns, or the entire banner, or be duplicated due to the symmetric set of patterns (e.g. field or (yellow) + per pale azure (blue) = field azure + per pale or inverted).
 * If a banner has over 6 patterns, only the six bottom-most patterns are displayed when hovered over in the inventory.
 * The Mojang logo is called "Thing" in-game, which could be considered an alternate translation for mojäng. If Google Translate is used, it translates to "thingys" or "contraption".
 * In the Swedish translation of the game, this pattern is, in fact, called mojäng.
 * Banner textures are located in \assets\minecraft\textures\entity\banner.
 * There are 40 monochrome textures, each containing all 6 sides of the banner.
 * The texture of the back side is the mirrored texture of the front side.
 * Compared to the texture files, textures' colors are inverted in-game due to them acting as masks for the re-colored base texture, base.png. That means white is visible, while black is transparent.
 * Banners that have the purple NBT+ line in the bottom (obtained by holding Ctrl and middle-clicking the banner, which also copies the NBT tag of anything that the player points their crosshair to) actually have no difference with the base banner obtained by middle click.
 * The Illager Banner in Bedrock Edition is available as a separate item but is just a second variant of the white banner.
 * Standard variant of white banner is set to type 0.
 * Illager variant is set to type 1.