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How to Add Colors & Materials in Blender (Beginner Guide for Architecture & 3D Design)

When you first open Blender, you’re greeted by the famous gray cube. At first, it feels a little plain and lifeless. If you’ve ever wondered how designers make their models look like polished wood, frosted glass, or shiny steel, the secret lies in colors and materials. Adding materials in Blender transforms your models from flat shapes into objects that feel real. In this guide, we’ll walk step by step through the process of adding colors and materials, making them look realistic, and even importing external textures when Blender’s built-in options aren’t enough. Whether you’re a student, an aspiring architect, or simply curious about 3D, this guide will make sure you don’t get stuck in the gray world of Blender.

What Are Materials in Blender?

Think of materials as the skin or clothing of your 3D objects. An object can have the same shape, but the material makes it appear completely different. For example, imagine a chair model. If you apply a wooden material, it feels warm and natural. Apply shiny metal instead, and suddenly the chair feels industrial and cold. Add a fabric material, and it starts to look soft and comfortable.

A simple color is part of a material, but a full material includes much more: surface detail, roughness, reflectivity, and sometimes even tiny imperfections like scratches or pores. In Blender, materials are controlled mainly through shaders, and the default shader you’ll be working with is the Principled BSDF shader. Don’t let the name scare you. It’s just Blender’s all-in-one material system, built to be flexible and realistic.

Setting Up Blender for Materials

Before you dive in, you need to know how to view materials inside Blender. The viewport has four shading modes: Wireframe, Solid, Material Preview, and Rendered. Wireframe shows only the edges, Solid gives you flat shading, and Material Preview is the one most beginners should use when learning about materials. It lets you see colors and textures on your model without waiting for a full render.

Later, when you want to see exactly how your scene will look with light and reflections, you can switch to Rendered mode. Blender offers two render engines: Eevee and Cycles. Eevee is fast and good for real-time previews, while Cycles is slower but produces photorealistic results. Knowing which mode you’re in will help you understand why your materials may look different at different stages.

Adding a New Material

Let’s start with the basics. Select your object—in this case, the default cube works perfectly. Go to the Properties panel on the right side of the screen, and click on the Material Properties tab, represented by a red sphere icon. You’ll see a blank material slot. Click “New,” and Blender instantly assigns a material to your object.

By default, this material is connected to the Principled BSDF shader. This shader is a powerhouse that handles color, metalness, roughness, transparency, and more. Think of it as your material’s control panel. At first, it may feel like a lot, but we’ll break it down step by step.

Changing the Base Color

The simplest thing you can do with a new material is change its base color. Inside the shader settings, you’ll see a color field. Click it, and a color wheel opens up. Try selecting red, blue, or green. You’ll notice your cube instantly changes color.

You can also use the eyedropper tool to match colors from your screen. Imagine you want a stone wall that matches a photo reference. The eyedropper makes it easy. This step may seem simple, but it’s the foundation of all materials. Even complex materials start with a base color.

Adjusting Material Properties

Now that your object has some color, let’s make it more interesting. The Principled BSDF shader has several important sliders. Roughness controls how shiny or matte the surface looks. A roughness of 0 makes a surface look like a mirror, while a value of 1 makes it completely matte, like chalk. Metallic decides whether a surface behaves like a metal or not. If you slide it all the way up, your cube will start to reflect light like polished steel.

Specular adds reflections, while Transmission controls transparency, useful for glass and water. These may sound technical, but once you try them, it clicks. Imagine four cubes side by side: one glossy like a polished tile, one matte like concrete, one metallic like steel, and one transparent like glass. Each looks unique, and all it takes is adjusting a few sliders.

Applying Multiple Materials to One Object

Most real-world objects have more than one material. A chair has a wooden frame and a fabric cushion. A building has glass windows and a concrete structure. In Blender, you can assign multiple materials to different parts of a single object.

To do this, enter Edit Mode, select the faces you want to change, and create a new material slot. Assign a different material to those faces, and Blender applies it only where you want. For example, you can make the legs of a chair wooden and the seat fabric. This is where your designs start to look like real-world objects instead of toy models.

Adding Textures (Optional but Powerful)

While plain colors are fine, textures bring objects to life. Textures are images that wrap around your 3D models, making them look like real materials. A plain brown color may look like wood, but adding a wood texture makes it feel authentic, with grain and knots.

In Blender, you add textures using the Shader Editor. Add an Image Texture node, load your texture file, and connect it to the Base Color input of the Principled BSDF. Suddenly, your object looks much more realistic. But textures need proper UV mapping, which tells Blender how to wrap the image around the object. If you see stretched or misplaced textures, it usually means the UVs need adjusting.

Making Realistic Materials

If you want your objects to feel truly real, you need more than just a base texture. Real surfaces have depth, imperfections, and subtle light interactions. That’s where bump maps, normal maps, and roughness maps come in.

A bump map gives the illusion of surface depth by affecting how light interacts with the material. A normal map is similar but more detailed, often used for fine surface patterns. Roughness maps decide which areas are glossy and which are matte. When combined, these maps make your materials pop. Imagine a polished marble floor with tiny imperfections, a concrete wall with pores, or frosted glass that scatters light. These effects are subtle, but they add a huge amount of realism.

Rendering Your Model with Materials

After creating your materials, you’ll want to see the final result. Switch your viewport to Rendered mode. If you’re using Eevee, you’ll get quick results with real-time reflections and shadows. If you switch to Cycles, you’ll need to wait a bit longer, but the render will look much more photorealistic.

To finish, go to the Render menu and choose “Render Image.” Once the render is complete, save it as an image file. This step turns all your hard work into something you can share or present. For architects and designers, this is where your ideas start to look like real-world projects.

Bonus: Importing External Materials into Blender

Blender comes with powerful tools, but sometimes you need materials that aren’t included. For example, if you’re designing an interior with walnut wood panels or Italian marble floors, you’ll need high-quality textures. Fortunately, there are many places to find them.

For free resources, AmbientCG, Poly Haven, and CG Bookcase are excellent. They provide PBR texture sets, which include base color, roughness, normal, metallic, and sometimes displacement maps. For professional-level materials, you can explore Poliigon, Quixel Megascans, or Textures.com. These libraries are widely used in architecture and visual effects.

Once you download a texture set, importing it into Blender is simple. Create a new material, open the Shader Editor, and add Image Texture nodes for each map. Connect the Base Color map to the Base Color input, the Roughness map to Roughness, the Normal map to Normal, and so on. It may sound like a lot, but with practice it becomes second nature.

There’s also a faster way: the Node Wrangler add-on. Enable it in Preferences under Add-ons, and use the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + T in the Shader Editor. This lets you import all the maps of a PBR material in one step. It automatically connects them to the Principled BSDF shader, saving you a lot of time.

If you want even more convenience, BlenderKit comes pre-installed and offers both free and paid materials directly inside Blender. Paid add-ons like Materialiq or Extreme PBR Nexus give you thousands of optimized materials with one-click application. For professionals or educators, these plugins can save hours of work.

Common Mistakes Beginners Make

When working with materials, beginners often make a few common mistakes. One is forgetting to assign a material after creating it. You may have built a beautiful shader, but if you don’t click “Assign” in Edit Mode, nothing changes. Another mistake is making everything too shiny. In reality, very few surfaces are perfectly reflective. A subtle roughness value usually looks better.

UV mapping is another area where mistakes happen. If textures look stretched or misplaced, it’s usually because the UV map wasn’t adjusted. Finally, some people stick with the default gray cube material for too long, afraid to experiment. Don’t be afraid to try things, even if they don’t look perfect at first. Every mistake is a step toward mastering materials.

FAQs

How do I make an object transparent in Blender?
Use the Transmission slider in the Principled BSDF shader to make your object act like glass or water.

How do I apply different colors to different faces of the same object?
Go into Edit Mode, select the faces you want, and assign a new material to those faces.

Which render engine should I use as a beginner?
Start with Eevee because it’s fast and forgiving. When you’re ready for photorealism, try Cycles.

Conclusion

Materials are the skin of your objects, and learning how to use them is the key to making your models feel alive. By now, you’ve seen how to add colors, adjust properties, apply multiple materials, bring in textures, and even import professional materials from outside Blender. At first, it may feel overwhelming, but with practice, it becomes second nature.

If you’re an architecture student, designer, or simply someone exploring 3D, remember this: every great project starts with a small step. Today, you’ve gone beyond the gray cube and entered the colorful world of materials. Keep experimenting, keep learning, and soon your Blender projects will look as real as the world around you.