Minecraft in-game text color

OptiFine has, among many other improvements, a clear water option (under Video Options -> Details). This is a pure client modification and works just as fine in SMP. (Note that this is not compatible with MCPatcher, which is however not needed since OptiFine also includes HD texture support).

What to use

It is common to use /blockdata for changing placed sign data. So, we will use it for now. The syntax of /blockdata is /blockdata [x] [y] [z] [dataInJSON]. Note that we use JSON formatting for text.

Basic for sign

To input a text with /blockdata, we will use Text1 tag. To write "Hello World" into the first line of the sign, simply just do /blockdata [x] [y] [z] {Text1:"{\"text\":\"Hello World\"}"}. The quotes is there for JSON formatting. If you need multiple line to display, use either Text2, Text3 or Text4.

Coloring

There is a way to change color of the sign using the color sub tag. There is a lot selection of color. Here is all of the available one:

• gold
• red
• dark_red
• yellow
• dark_purple
• light_purple
• aqua
• dark_aqua
• black
• white
• green
• dark_green
• blue
• dark_blue

For writing "Hello World" in aqua, you write

/blockdata [x] [y] [z] {Text1:"{\"text\":\"Hello World\",\"color\":\"aqua\"}"}

into a command block. It will change the sign with the first line saying "Hello World" on aqua.

Bold

For bold text, you use bold sub-tag. This sub-tag is a boolean, meaning the value can be only true or false for example:

/blockdata [x] [y] [z] {Text1:"{\"text\":\"Hello World\",\"bold\":true}"}

will give you a sign with text "Hello World" with bold.

The real answer

Type this into a command block changing [x], [y], and [z] into the coords of the sign:

/blockdata [x] [y] [z] {Text1:"{\"text\":\"Place Block\",\"color\":\"dark_blue\",\"bold\":true}"}

Full list for Raw JSON tags