Texturing Custom Items in Blockbench

A great custom item is 20% model and 80% texture. Minecraft's look is defined by its pixels, so texturing is the highest-leverage skill a new creator can build. Blockbench has everything you need built in.

Keep the resolution honest Vanilla items are 16x16, and staying at 16x or 32x keeps your item consistent with the world. Higher resolutions look out of place next to vanilla blocks and cost more memory in the resource pack.

Shade with a tight palette Pick a handful of colours per material and shade in deliberate steps rather than soft gradients — crisp, limited shading reads as Minecraft, airbrushed gradients read as foreign. Test in the game's real lighting, not just the editor canvas: an item that looks perfect on grey can vanish in a torch-lit cave.

Study the textures of top products in the Models & Textures category to see these rules in action.