Minecraft Armor Trims Explained: Every Pattern, Material and Where to Find Smithing Templates

Minecraft's armor has always done one job: keep you alive. Since the 1.20 update, it can do a second job too — look good while it's at it. Armor trims let you stamp a colored pattern onto any piece of armor without touching its stats, turning a stack of identical diamond chestplates into something that actually looks like yours. Here's exactly how the system works, where every pattern comes from, and how to stop running out of the one ingredient you can never craft from scratch: the smithing template.

1. What Armor Trims Actually Do

An armor trim is a cosmetic overlay applied to a helmet, chestplate, leggings or boots. It changes nothing about armor points, toughness or durability — it is pure customization. Each trim is built from two separate choices: a pattern, which decides the shape stamped onto the armor, and a material, which decides the color of that pattern. Mix and match the two and you get a huge range of looks from a small set of pieces.

Mojang introduced the feature as part of the Trails & Tales update, describing it as a way to "personalize your armor, add flair, and show off your Overworld travels." That last part is deliberate: many patterns are tied to the specific structure where you find them, so your armor ends up telling the story of where you've actually explored.

2. How to Apply a Trim at the Smithing Table

Trimming armor uses the same smithing table you use to upgrade diamond gear to netherite, but with a different recipe. Place three things in the grid:

• A piece of armor (helmet, chestplate, leggings, or boots — leather, chainmail, iron, gold, diamond or netherite all work)
• A smithing template that shows the pattern you want
• A material item that decides the color

The smithing table instantly previews the result before you confirm it, so you can cycle through materials you're holding to compare colors before committing. Unlike the netherite upgrade, applying a trim doesn't consume the armor piece's enchantments or durability — it's purely additive.

3. Where to Find Smithing Templates

This is the part that turns armor trims into an actual exploration goal. A smithing template is a required ingredient you cannot craft; you have to find one in the world, and different patterns generate in different places. A few examples:

Overworld structures

• Pillager Outposts drop the Sentry pattern
• Woodland Mansions drop the Vex pattern
• Jungle Pyramids drop the Wild pattern
• Desert Pyramids drop the Dune pattern
• Shipwrecks drop the Coast pattern
• Ancient Cities hold the Ward and Silence patterns

Trail Ruins

Four patterns — Wayfinder, Raiser, Shaper and Host — don't come from chests at all. You have to brush suspicious gravel at a Trail Ruins site with a Brush to dig them out, the same archaeology tool used to uncover pottery sherds.

Nether and End

Bastion Remnants are where the official reveal's "piglin-inspired trim" comes from — that's the Snout pattern, styled after a piglin's face. Nether Fortresses hold the Rib pattern, Strongholds hold the Eye pattern, and End Cities hold the Spire pattern.

Mob drops and Trial Chambers

The Tide pattern doesn't generate in a structure at all; Elder Guardians have a chance to drop one when defeated. The newest additions, Flow and Bolt, come from the Trial Chambers added in the Tricky Trials update — Bolt turns up in the structure's regular vaults and reward chests, while Flow is reserved for ominous vaults, which need an Ominous Trial Key to open. If you've already cleared a chamber for its vaults, trial spawners and the mace, keep an eye out — you may have already walked past a Flow or Bolt template without realizing what it was.

4. The Trim Materials

Once you have a template, the color comes from whatever material you combine it with. The full set of usable materials covers the game's common ingots and gems: iron ingot, gold ingot, copper ingot, netherite ingot, diamond, emerald, lapis lazuli, nether quartz, amethyst shard, redstone dust, and resin brick. Each produces a distinct, consistent color across every pattern, which is what makes the system so flexible — the same Sentry pattern looks completely different stamped in copper versus stamped in diamond.

A practical tip: keep one of each material on hand in a shulker box or chest specifically for trimming. Since the smithing table lets you preview combinations instantly, having the full set within reach turns "what would this look like in emerald" into a five-second experiment instead of a mining trip.

5. Duplicating a Smithing Template

Templates themselves are not consumed when you use them to trim armor — only the material and the armor's durability-neutral trim slot are involved — but you'll still want more than one copy if you're trimming a full set for multiple players or outfits. Smithing templates can be duplicated at the smithing table by combining the template you already own with a diamond and the base building block tied to the structure it came from — cobblestone-family blocks for outpost and city patterns, sandstone for Dune, blackstone for the Nether patterns, prismarine for Tide, and so on. The duplication process doesn't use up your original template, so a single successful dungeon or ruin run is enough to keep that pattern in your crafting rotation permanently.

6. Building a Trim Collection: Tips for Survival Players

• Raid Trail Ruins early. Wayfinder, Raiser, Shaper and Host are easy to miss because they require a Brush rather than a normal chest search — pick up a feather, flint and copper ingot for the tool before you go exploring ruins.
• Loot bastions for Snout. Since Bastion Remnants are already on most players' netherite checklist for ingots and upgrade templates, grab the Snout pattern on the same trip instead of coming back later.
• Save Ominous Trial Keys for Flow. If you're farming Trial Chambers for loot, prioritize the ominous vaults over the regular ones once you've secured a Bolt copy — Flow is the harder of the two to come by.
• Pair trims with real upgrades, not just looks. A trimmed set still benefits from a proper enchanting setup — see our guide to enchanting and bookshelf placement if your gear is still untouched.
• Don't overlook copper as a material. It's one of the more distinctive trim colors and ties neatly into other copper-based additions to the game, like the Copper Golem and its item-sorting behavior, if you're already stockpiling copper ingots for other builds.

7. Quick Tips Recap

• Trims are purely cosmetic — they never change armor points, toughness or durability.
• Apply them at a smithing table: armor piece + smithing template + material.
• Templates are found, not crafted — chests, Trail Ruins brushing, an Elder Guardian drop, or Trial Chambers vaults, depending on the pattern.
• Materials are the game's standard ingots and gems: iron, gold, copper, netherite, diamond, emerald, lapis, quartz, amethyst, redstone and resin.
• Duplicate a template with a diamond and the right base block so you never have to re-farm a structure just to trim a second set of armor.

8. Official Resources

• Mojang's original armor trims announcement on Minecraft.net
• Download Minecraft from the official site
• Minecraft.net's Tricky Trials update coverage for details on Trial Chambers, where Flow and Bolt originate

For more on the game's current and past updates, browse the rest of our Minecraft and game walkthrough archive.