How to make natural Easter egg dye

I’ve attempted to make natural Easter egg dye for a few years now. I’ve tested and tested again – playing with color combos and dipping eggs multiple times. This year I’m finally happy enough with a few of these recipes to share them with you!

Natural Easter egg dye has been a trend for a couple years and it is becoming more prevalent as people search for more natural solutions in their everyday lives. For me personally, using natural Easter egg dye has been about three things:

1. I want to do things more naturally for my kids.
2. Making things safer for the planet
3. Ensuring that any from-scratch cooking that I do contains real, wholesome ingredients.

Creating natural Easter egg dyes can be about all of those things. Since my kids stick their fingers in the dye (and then stick their fingers in their nose, eyes, ears, etc.), I dump them down my drain into my septic tank and I cook with these eggs after we’re done.

Things I love about natural Easter egg dye

One of the most beautiful things about using natural Easter egg dye is that there are limitless color combinations. It can be fun to try them year after year and see what new ones you can create. This year we created green by combining two colors. We also created black on accident. They’re what I like to call “Emo eggs” and I still think there’s something beautiful about them.

One of the most fun things about Natural Easter egg dye is that no two eggs will look the same. Even if you dip them in the exact same solution and let them sit for the same amount of time, you will probably still get different results.

Things I don’t love…

One of the most frustrating things about natural Easter egg is that the results can be inconsistent, and it can be difficult to get beautiful, solid color. You need about 1 – 1.5 tsp. of vinegar per half a cup of water to get consistent color – something I’ve found most blogs and instructions for creating natural Easter egg dye will not tell you. That said, you might still get some inconsistent results.

Patience makes the best colors

Through it all though, this has been a fun experiment for the kids and I. They surprised me because they had some stellar patience through this process. Unlike the boxed Easter egg sets, Natural Easter egg dye needs to sit a bit longer to give you really bright eggs.

The longer you leave them in, the brighter the color. If you leave them in 5 minutes, you will have light pastel eggs, which might be perfect if you want them that way.

Tips for making and using natural Easter egg dye

• Please, PLEASE use a heat safe container for your water and ingredient boil. I love using Ball Wide Mouth Mason Jars because the eggs fit into them nicely. In fact, you can fit more than one egg inside them at a time and you can use a regular spoon to lower and lift the eggs.
• Again, the longer you leave the eggs in, the better the color will be. To get the really dark colors I like to leave them in overnight.
• You should make the dyes one day and then dye the eggs the next day. I recommend this because it can feel like a lot of work to make the dye and boil the eggs if you don’t have a lot of pots going at once.
• Another bonus to using Ball Wide Mouth Mason Jars is that you can store the dye in these containers in the refrigerator. You can actually keep these for weeks in these containers and use them to dye fabric too.
• That said, once you add the vinegar, these mixtures WILL DYE all the things! I got some on my kitchen cabinets and spent 30 minutes trying to clean it off. Use something to cover your work surface like cardboard from a box. You want something the dye won’t soak through.
• We used both white and brown eggs. I think the brown eggs actually work the best for this and look the prettiest at the end. They tend to turn deeper colors than the white eggs.

Our favorite natural Easter egg dye recipes

Blueberries – Makes blue

• 3 cups of water
• ½ pint of blueberries (fresh)
• 2 Tbsp of vinegar – If you use all 3 cups of water. You want to use 1 tsp. per half cup of water.

Beets – Makes rose or pink

• 3 cups of water
• 4-5 small beets or 2 large beets
• 2 Tbsp of vinegar – If you use all 3 cups of water. You want to use 1 tsp. per half cup of water.

Turmeric – Makes yellow

• 3 cups of water
• 1.5 Tbsp. Turmeric
• 2 Tbsp of vinegar – If you use all 3 cups of water. You want to use 1 tsp. per half cup of water.

Onion Skins – Makes orange

• 3 cups of water
• Skins from two yellow or Spanish onions
• 2 Tbsp of vinegar – If you use all 3 cups of water. You want to use 1 tsp. per half cup of water.

Cabbage – Makes a light blue color

• 3 cups of water
• ½ red/purple cabbage
• 2 Tbsp of vinegar – If you use all 3 cups of water. You want to use 1 tsp. per half cup of water.

Combo color – Makes green. If you want to make this boil extra of the Blueberry and Turmeric

• 1.5 cups of the blueberry boil
• 1.5 cups of the turmeric color boil
• 2 Tbsp of vinegar – If you use all 3 cups of water. You want to use 1 tsp. per half cup of water.

Emo eggs – Black and brown*

• 2 cups of grape juice or red wine
• 4 tsp. of vinegar (or you could even leave it out)

Steps for making natural Easter egg dye

• Boil the water and the color ingredient in water for about 15 – 20 minutes.
  • * If you want to make the Emo eggs, you don’t need to boil the grape juice or wine. Just put it in a cup.
• When time is up pour your mixture into a heat safe jar or bowl. I used these wide-mouth Ball canning jars.
• Let it cool for about 20 minutes and add your vinegar.
• Hard boil your eggs or steam them like I do in the video above.
• Dip away and see what fun color combinations you can come up with!
• You can leave them in for about 5 minutes for very light, pastel colors. If you leave them in an hour or more you will get deeper colors. We left some in a few hours and overnight for the boldest and most beautiful moody colors.

Items in this post

I used Ball Wide Mouth Mason Jars for all the dyes. I bought them last year for pickling cucumbers and they are always helpful to have around. I’ve even made vintage farmhouse vases out of them that were just darling. You can find them {HERE}.

If you are interested in the tray I’m holding, it is from  a small shop here called The Counting House and they unfortunately don’t have a good website to order from. However, you can find some similar ones here.

•  Round Rattan Woven Serving Tray with Handles (Least expensive)
• Creative Co-op Bankuan Braided Tray with Handles (Square)
• Pottery Barn Seagrass tray ON SALE!
• 3R Studios Round Braided Bankuan Tray with Handles
• Brown Johnathon Braided Bankuan Ottoman Tray

The basket with the eggs that my daughter is holding is just from Michael’s!

The linens in the basket are napkins from William Sonoma and they’re on sale right now! I actually bought them last Easter for our Easter table.

Thank you so much for visiting today! I hope you’ll come back and see everything we’re up to here at Sugar Maple Farmhouse. You can find more spring ideas here and you can find more recipes from scratch here.