A redstone lamp is a light source block that works with the help of redstone.

It is commonly used as a component in redstone circuits and it is one of the strongest light sources in the game.

Before you can start making these lamps, you will have to explore the Nether first. You will need to get obsidian to make a Nether portal and get to the other side for the main ingredients.

In this article we will show you how to make a redstone lamp in Minecraft and use it.

Minecraft Redstone Lamp Recipe

  • 1 glowstone block
  • 4 redstone powder

Once you get to the Nether you will need to look for glowstone.

When breaking glowstone, you will only get glowstone powder. You will need 8 of these to make them back into a glowstone block.

Using the infinity enchantment can save you the trouble.

Once you have your ingredients, arrange them like you see in the image below.

Finding Redstone Lamps

Redstone lamps are extremely rare in the Minecraft overworld.

They can only be stumbled across in one of the rarest structures in the game, that being the Ancient City.

It is much easier to craft them.

How to Use Redstone Lamps

To use redstone lamps it’s good to have at least a very basic understanding of what redstone is and what it can do.

Like any redstone component, for the lamp to work you will need a redstone signal. Simply put, you need power to activate the lamp.

There are many blocks that give out redstone signals. Some of them give a short signal that fades after a bit, like a button. You can also have a constant signal by using a block like a lever and keeping it pulled.

Simply putting a lever on the redstone lamp or on a block beside it is the easiest way you can turn your lamp on. A redstone torch has the same constant effect if placed near the block.

When activated a redstone lamp glows at 15 light levels. This makes it one of the brightest light sources.

Using a Daylight Detector

A more interesting and effective way of activating your lamps is by using a daylight detector.

To make a daylight detector you will need to do some more farming in the Nether. You will need:

  • 3 glass blocks
  • 3 quartz
  • 3 wooden slabs (any)

A daylight detector can be used to detect the presence or absence of light. Once placed down you can set it to sense what you need.

In our case, we will want our lamp to turn on when it’s dark. That means that when we place down our daylight detector we have to interact with it to detect when it’s dark. Now whenever it’s dark the detector will turn our lamp on for us.

You will know it’s detecting darkness because the top side of the block will be a blue hue.

Though, if you understand redstone then you can expand further.

What to Do Next

For more fun and simple builds, you can read up on some of our sculk builds.

These are perfect builds for anyone who enjoys ideas on how to automate their redstone builds. We have even included a build with noise-activated redstone lamps!