Wool is a block obtained from Sheep, which can be dyed 16 different colors. Wool blocks are weak, flammable, and do not offer much resistance against explosions.
Overview
White, light gray, gray, brown, pink, and black wool can be obtained naturally by shearing sheep of the same color, which Spawn naturally throughout the Overworld. Killing sheep will always yield 1 wool, while shearing will yield 1–3 wool and keep the creature alive for future shearing.The chances of a sheep spawning in a particular color is as follows:
- White (82.8%)
- Brown (3%)
- Black (5%)
- Light Gray (5%)
- Gray (5%)
- Pink (0.2%)
White wool can also be created by combining 4 pieces of string in a Crafting interface. The string-to-wool recipe involves arranging 4 string in a 2×2 square (shown in the table below).
Uses
- Wool can be used for aesthetic reasons, as a decorative, colorful surface anywhere that is not close to Lava or Fire.
- Wool can be combined with other ingredients in a Crafting Table to make a Bed, Carpet, Banner or Painting.
- Wool can be used as Fuel in a Furnace, but it is not very effective, as each piece will only smelt half an item.
Crafting
| Wool | ||
|---|---|---|
| String | String | None |
| String | String | None |
| None | None | None |
| Carpet | Bed (Wool colours must match as of 1.12) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wool | Wool | None | Wool | Wool | Wool | |
| None | None | None | Wood Planks | Wood Planks | Wood Planks | |
| None | None | None | None | None | None | |
| Banner | Painting | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wool | Wool | Wool | Stick | Stick | Stick | |
| Wool | Wool | Wool | Stick | Wool | Stick | |
| None | Stick | None | Stick | Stick | Stick | |
History
Wool was added for the creation of paintings, carpet, colorful structures, and in-game pixel art.
In Creative Classic mode, wool blocks were known as "cloth" blocks that came in a set of 16 colors, although the palette was slightly different from the one available in Beta. Three shades of gray were added in Classic 0.0.20a.
Except for white cloth, colored cloth blocks were unobtainable during Classic's Survival Test and Infdev, unless they were pre-placed into the map file. They were completely removed from the code in Infdev. Placing these blocks on the map would cause the game client to crash since the blocks no longer existed.
When colored wool was re-introduced in Beta 1.2, cloth blocks were renamed "wool" blocks.
In update 1.12, wool was updated to be more vibrant in color. It also required the wool for crafting beds to be of the same color.
As of 1.14, white wool generates as part of Pillager Outposts.
Colored Wool
There are 16 different colors of wool listed here, along with their IDs and values (for use in commands):
| Wool Color | Value | ID |
|---|---|---|
| White | 0 | white |
| Orange | 1 | orange |
| Magenta | 2 | magenta |
| Light Blue | 3 | light_blue |
| Dandelion Yellow | 4 | yellow |
| Lime | 5 | lime |
| Pink | 6 | pink |
| Gray | 7 | gray |
| Light Gray | 8 | silver |
| Cyan | 9 | cyan |
| Purple | 10 | purple |
| Lapis Lazuli | 11 | blue |
| Cocoa Brown | 12 | brown |
| Cactus Green | 13 | green |
| Rose Red | 14 | red |
| Ink Black | 15 | black |
Colored wool is made from dyes and any color wool. The position of the wool and dye in the crafting square doesn't matter.
Efficiency
The most efficient and sustainable way to gather colored wool is to first dye a sheep the desired color, and then repeatedly shear the sheep each time the colored wool grows back. A sheep can be dyed by right-clicking on it with dye in hand (in PC). The sheep will remain the dyed color until it is either killed or dyed a different color. When sheared, the sheep will drop 1-3 blocks of the colored wool.
Trivia
- Wool was used to create the Shield in Minecraft 1.9 snapshots.
- This was changed to require wooden planks and an iron ingot instead.
- Wool was going to be used to create Horse Armor, but its crafting recipe was removed.
- The crafting recipe for wool was changed in Beta 1.6. Every update before Minecraft Beta 1.6 required 9 pieces of string instead of 4.
- Wool was going to be used to craft Horse Saddles, but the item, along with the crafting recipe, was removed in the full release of 1.6.
- Naturally-occurring brown and pink sheep did not appear in Minecraft until update 1.4.
