In Minecraft multiplayer, the average player would definitely want to stand out and draw others' attention toward themselves. Customizing your own character with an unique appearance is probably the easiest way to accomplish that.

Here are the 5 best ways to customize your Minecraft characters in 1.20 update.

1. Adding Armor Trims

The customization process changes the armor's physical appearance, color, and design. However, it does not affect the armor's ability. There are 2 main methods of customizing armors in Minecraft 1.20:
  • Trimming: Using a Smithing table, players can add various patterns on top of their base armor. Unlike dying, the color of the entire armor is unchanged - trimming only adds an overlay design. Additionally, this feature can be applied to all types of armor.
  • Coloring: Players can dye their armor in one of the sixteen dye colors in Minecraft. This feature is exclusive to leather armor.
Each piece of armor can use a different trimming.

At the moment there are eleven unique armor trims in Minecraft. Each of them can be painted with 9 different colors, and since there are 5 armor materials in the game, players can create over 400k unique combinations.

All armor trims in Minecraft.

Firstly, you will need to collect armor trim smithing templates in the game. They spawn throughout the world of Minecraft inside the treasure chest of various in-game structures. While most of those structures are in the overworld, the Nether and the End also have some unique armor trimmings. To get these items, players should check out Gurugamer's dedicated guide for all armor trim locations in Minecraft.

2. Creating a custom shield

Players can fuse a shield with a patterned banner to apply its decorations to the surface of the shield. The shield pattern has a smaller resolution than the banner pattern, causing them to look different or offset.

A shield can be decorated with all kinds of symbols in different colors.

Players need to create a Loom block to craft banners. They can be found in village shepherd houses or crafted with 2 strings and 2 planks. Players can skip this step in Bedrock Edition as they can just use a crafting table instead.

Bedrock version of the Loom GUI.

When a banner and dye are put in, players can pick a number of pre-designed patterns on the GUI. The applied design will be shown at the bottom. There are also a number of special banner patterns as well.

3. Dyeing leather armor

Unlike other types of armor in Minecraft, leather armor can be dyed with any color. This gives players the ability to go around in colorful outfits instead of just the old boring diamond armor. Leather horse armor can also be dyed the same way.

Leather armor is not as strong as the higher-tier armor but they are more customizable.

The armor dyeing methods in Java and Bedrock are different:

  • Java Edition players can just put the item and the dye of the chosen color into the crafting grid.
  • Bedrock players need to fill a water cauldron with the dye color they want, then use the leather armor on the cauldron's water to dye it.

4. Wearing capes

Java Edition

The only capes that can be obtained on one's own, so far, in Java Edition are the migrator cape, which comes from migrating a Mojang account to a Microsoft account, and the vanilla cape, which comes from owning both Java Edition and Bedrock Edition in the same Microsoft account prior to June 6, 2022.

Capes are great cosmetic items in Minecraft.

Players can definitely mod custom capes in, but other players would not see the cape in multiplayer.

Bedrock Edition

Unlike in Java Edition, capes are much more common in Minecraft Bedrock. Players of Bedrock Edition can equip or unequip certain capes for their skin via the character creator. A lot of skin packs have capes integrated into them, and some capes can even be obtained from events.

How to get capes in Minecraft Bedrock.

5. Wearing rare armors and items

Chainmail armor

In terms of protection value, chainmail armor only offers medium protection. It's stronger than leather or gold armor but weaker than iron. Yet, it's rarer than diamond armor somehow, considering you can craft diamond armor.

It looks kind of cool, but that's about it.

By wearing this armor players can definitely draw some attention while in a multiplayer server.

Diamond horse armor

Unlike normal armors, players can only craft leather horse armor. Other horse armor types can only be looted from either chests or generated structures.

Diamond Horse Armor in Minecraft

Diamond horse armors spawn in chests in Dungeon, Desert Temple, End City, Jungle Temple, Nether Fortress, Stronghold and Village weaponsmith. Amongst these locations, the best place to find this item is the Nether Fortress, with a 11.8% chance to spawn.

Mob heads

In Java Edition, a charged creeper explosion that kills zombies, skeletons, wither skeletons, or other creepers causes one of those mobs to drop its corresponding mob head. Players can then wear these items on their character's head.

A character wearing dragon head.

Dragon heads are special items that can only be looted from the End ships. These heads are much larger than the usual mob heads in Minecraft and even have their own animations.

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