1 - Pick stained glass
Tap a color to add it on top of the stack. A beacon holds up to 6 glass blocks in its beam column.
2 - Your glass stack
Listed bottom to top, the same way the glass sits above the beacon. The bottom block sets the starting color; each block above averages into the beam.
Beam preview
2 glass blocks blend bottom to top into this color. Reorder them to change the mix.
How it mixes
The lowest glass block sets the starting beam color. Every block above it averages its color into the running beam, per red, green and blue channel: new beam = (current beam + glass) / 2. Because each step only halves the previous result, blocks near the bottom fade out and the top block has the most influence. Stained glass panes behave the same as full blocks. Tinted glass does not tint the beam, it blocks it.
A beacon beam is white by default. Putting stained glass or a stained glass pane anywhere in the beam's vertical column tints it. With one glass block the beam is that color. With several, the lowest block sets the starting color and every block above is averaged into the beam per channel, so the order of the glass changes the final color. Tinted glass is the one glass that does not work, it blocks the beam instead of coloring it.
The glass does not need to sit directly on top of the beacon. It just has to be somewhere in the column of beam blocks above it, so you can tint a beam many blocks up where it is easy to reach. Each glass block you add applies its own color to the beam using a simple running average: new beam = (current beam + glass color) / 2, calculated separately for the red, green and blue channels.
Because each new block only halves whatever color was there before, blocks near the bottom of the column fade out and the topmost block has the most influence on the final beam. That is why blue then white reads as a pale periwinkle while white then blue stays much closer to pure blue, even though the same two blocks are involved. Reorder the stack in the tool above to watch the beam shift.
With exactly one glass block in the column the beam takes that block's color outright, with no averaging. These are the sixteen single-glass beam colors, which double as the starting color when that glass sits at the bottom of a taller stack. Hex values match the Java Edition dye colors.
| Stained glass | Beam hex | RGB |
|---|---|---|
| White | #F9FFFE | 249, 255, 254 |
| Orange | #F9801D | 249, 128, 29 |
| Magenta | #C74EBD | 199, 78, 189 |
| Light Blue | #3AB3DA | 58, 179, 218 |
| Yellow | #FED83D | 254, 216, 61 |
| Lime | #80C71F | 128, 199, 31 |
| Pink | #F38BAA | 243, 139, 170 |
| Gray | #474F52 | 71, 79, 82 |
| Light Gray | #9D9D97 | 157, 157, 151 |
| Cyan | #169C9C | 22, 156, 156 |
| Purple | #8932B8 | 137, 50, 184 |
| Blue | #3C44AA | 60, 68, 170 |
| Brown | #835432 | 131, 84, 50 |
| Green | #5E7C16 | 94, 124, 22 |
| Red | #B02E26 | 176, 46, 38 |
| Black | #1D1D21 | 29, 29, 33 |
To reach a tone that is not in this list, stack two or more colors. For example, magenta over white softens to a pastel pink, and green over blue lands on a teal that no single glass produces. The mixer above shows the running beam color after each block so you can dial in the shade you want.
Place stained glass or a stained glass pane anywhere in the beam's vertical column above the beacon. A single glass block turns the whole beam that color. The glass does not have to sit directly on the beacon, it just has to be somewhere in the beam, so you can colour a beam many blocks up. Do not use tinted glass, it blocks the beam rather than coloring it.
No. The beam can only ever show one blended color at a time, computed from all the glass in the column. Stacking many different colors averages them into a single muddy tone rather than showing separate bands. To get distinct beams of different colors you need separate beacons, one per color.
Yes. The lowest glass block sets the starting color and each block above is averaged into the running beam, so blocks lower in the column fade out while the top block has the most influence. Blue then white gives a different beam than white then blue, which is why this calculator lets you reorder the stack.
White stained glass, or no glass at all. A beacon with an empty beam column is white by default, and a single white stained glass block keeps it white. Adding any colored glass above tints it away from white.
Every glass block in the beam column counts, with no hard limit, but the effect halves with each block from the top down, so blocks near the bottom contribute almost nothing. In practice two to six well chosen colors cover every useful tone, which is the range this calculator focuses on.
Yes. Stained glass panes tint the beam exactly like full stained glass blocks of the same color, and they mix using the same bottom-up averaging. Panes are handy when you want the beam colored without fully blocking the column visually. Tinted glass is the exception, it blocks the beam entirely instead of coloring it, so do not use it.
Planning the pyramid under that beam? Or browse more Minecraft tools:
