How to Make Concrete in Minecraft for Beginners

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Learn where to source the materials & how to speed up your mining

Co-authored by Zac Churchill and Amy Bobinger, BA

Last Updated: October 29, 2025 Fact Checked

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Concrete Powder Recipe

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Making the Concrete

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Where to Find Ingredients

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How to Mine Faster

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Video

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Tips

Concrete is a versatile, durable material for building in Minecraft. Its vibrant colors and smooth texture are great for creative builds, plus it’s non-flammable and harder than stone. To create concrete blocks, you'll first need to craft concrete powder from sand, gravel, and dye, and then mix the powder with water. We'll show you the fastest way to make concrete powder and turn it into colorful concrete blocks in Minecraft, so keep scrolling!

How do you make concrete in Minecraft?

Gather 4 sand, 4 gravel, and 1 dye in any color.
Place the materials in any order in a crafting table to make concrete powder.
Place the concrete powder beside or onto a water block to make a concrete block.
Mine the concrete block with a pickaxe.

Section 1 of 4:

Making Concrete Powder

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You'll need a three-by-three crafting grid to create concrete powder, so open your crafting table by right-clicking, tapping, or pressing the L2 or LT button on your controller.^{[1]
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Place 4 sand, 4 gravel, and 1 dye into the crafting table. The recipe for concrete powder is shapeless, so you can arrange the recipe in any order on the crafting table. This creates 8 units of concrete powder, which is enough to produce 8 blocks of concrete.^{[2]
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- If you don't know where to get these materials, jump to our section on gathering the ingredients!

Section 2 of 4:

Turning Concrete Powder to Concrete

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Find a water block. Concrete powder requires water to morph into concrete. Most types of water blocks will work, including flowing water, water source blocks, or waterlogged blocks.^{[3]
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- You can’t use rain, cauldrons, or splash water bottles to turn concrete powder into concrete.
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Place the powder block onto or next to the body of water. Equip a concrete powder block and right-click (or press L2 or LT) to place it on or beside a water block. You'll hear the placement sound of concrete, and the powder will immediately transform into a solid concrete block.^{[4]
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- Concrete powder is a gravity block, so if you place it above water on a non-solid surface, it will fall down into the water.
- If you drop the concrete powder (Q on PC, Down on D-pad, or Press + Hold on mobile), it will go into the water as an item instead of a block, and it will not turn into concrete.
- You can also place the block of concrete powder down on a dry surface, grab a bucket of water, and pour the water over the concrete powder to form a concrete block immediately.
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Mine the concrete with a pickaxe. Now that you have created a concrete block, you can mine it with a pickaxe. You’ll get 1 concrete added to your inventory for every block that you mine. You can then place the concrete wherever you'd like it.^{[5]
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- You can create stacks of concrete up to 64 blocks high.
- Want to gather a lot of concrete quickly? Check out our section on mining concrete faster.

Section 3 of 4:

Where to Find Concrete Powder Ingredients

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Find sand in deserts and near beaches. Sand is a naturally generated substance, and you can find it in a lot of different biomes. Look near deserts, beaches, ponds, and rivers. It usually occurs in layers four blocks deep. It’s also found on the floor or lukewarm and warm oceans in a layer one block deep. Use your hand or a shovel to harvest the sand.^{[6]
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- You need 4 blocks of sand to make one batch (8 blocks) of concrete powder.
- You can not use red sand to make concrete.
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Find gravel in hills, underground, and underwater. Gravel is pretty abundant in Minecraft, and you can find it in a wide variety of biomes, including in the Nether and at the bottom of the ocean. For an easy way to find a massive amount of gravel, look for Extreme Hills M—huge gray mountains made almost entirely of gravel. Mine gravel with a shovel.^{[7]
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- You need 4 gravel blocks to make one batch (8 blocks) of concrete powder.
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Craft or smelt dye in the color you want. Adding dye to your concrete powder makes it possible to craft vibrantly colored concrete. You can get dye from a wandering trader or craft your own dye from flowers or plants. You can also sometimes combine different colors of dyes in a crafting table to make a new one. (Note that if you combine 2 dyes, you’ll get 2 units of the new color, or 3 units if you combine 3 dyes). There are 16 total colors of dye in Minecraft:^{[8]
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- White Dye: Place Bone Meal or Lily of the Valley into the crafting table.
- Light Gray Dye: Place Azure Bluet, Oxeye Daisy, or White Tulip into the crafting table or combine 1 Black Dye and 2 White Dye or 1 White Dye and 1 Gray Dye in the crafting table.
- Gray Dye: Place Closed Eyeblossom into the crafting table or combine one Black Dye and one White Dye.
- Black Dye: Place one Ink Sac or Wither Rose in the crafting table.
- Brown Dye: Place one unit of Cocoa Beans in the crafting table.
- Red Dye: Place one Poppy, Red Tulip, Rose Bush, or Beetroot in the crafting table.
- Orange Dye: Place Orange Tulip, Torchflower, or Open Eyeblossom in the crafting table or combine Red Dye and Yellow Dye.
- Yellow Dye: Place Dandelion, Sunflower, or Wildflowers in the crafting table.
- Lime Dye: Combine Green Dye and White Dye or smelt Sea Pickle plus any fuel.
- Green Dye: Smelt Cactus plus any fuel.
- Cyan Dye: Place one Pitcher Plant in the crafting table or combine Blue Dye and Green Dye.
- Light Blue Dye: Place one Blue Orchid in the crafting table or combine Blue Dye and White Dye.
- Blue Dye: Place Lapis Lazuli or Cornflower in the crafting table.
- Purple Dye: Combine Blue Dye and Red Dye.
- Magenta Dye: Place Allium or Lilac in the crafting table, or combine 1 Purple Dye and 1 Pink Dye, or combine 2 Red Dyes, 1 Blue Dye, and 1 White Dye, or combine 1 Pink Dye, 1 Red Dye, and 1 Blue Dye.
- Pink Dye: Place Pink Tulip, Peony, Pink Petals, or Cactus Flower in the crafting table or combine 1 Red Dye and 1 White Dye

Section 4 of 4:

How to Mine Concrete Quickly

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Place concrete blocks and mine them at the same time. The easiest way to mine concrete quickly is by using an existing water source block. Stand so you’re facing down into the water source, then equip a pickaxe in your main hand and a concrete powder block in the other. Press and hold the left and right mouse buttons (or LT and RT). This will continually drop concrete powder blocks and mine them at the same time.
- Some people build generators to automate this process, but doing it by hand is a lot simpler.
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Stack concrete powder for another easy option. Dig a hole two blocks wide and place a water source block on one side of the hole. On top of the other side, place a stack of concrete powder blocks. Then, go back to the bottom of the stack and use a pickaxe to mine the bottom concrete block.
- A new block will fall as you mine each one, until you reach the end of the stack.

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Tips

Placing a block of concrete powder beneath a note block will play a snare sound.^{[9]
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Building with concrete is great if you're not worried about your structure being blown up by other players. While concrete is fairly blast-resistant, there are more blast-resistant materials like obsidian.

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