Coloring for Stress Relief: A Simple, Screen-Free Way to Unwind

By evening, a lot of us are tired and wired at the same time. We pick up the phone to relax and look up an hour later feeling worse. Coloring is one of the simplest alternatives: a quiet, hands-on thing to do that asks just enough of your attention to crowd out everything else.

Why coloring feels calming

Coloring gives your hands a simple, repetitive task and your mind one small decision at a time: which color, which shape next. There is nothing to win, nobody watching, and no wrong answer. For many people that combination is restful in the same way knitting, gardening or a jigsaw puzzle is.

There is some research behind the feeling. Small studies of adults, mostly college students, have found that people report lower anxiety after twenty minutes or so of coloring, especially structured designs. The studies are small and short, and coloring is not a treatment for anxiety or any other condition. But you don’t need a study to tell you whether something helps you unwind. You only need to try it.

Why the book matters

Not all coloring books are relaxing. The hyper-detailed adult books of the last decade, with hundreds of tiny sections per page, can feel like work: you need good light, a fine pen, a steady hand and a week of evenings to finish one page. Plenty of them end up abandoned a third of the way in.

Bold and easy books go the other way: thick outlines, big shapes, one design per page. A page can be finished in an evening, small slips don’t show, and there is a real sense of having made something. That is why we draw most of our shelf that way, from sleepy summer sloths to houseplants and friendly sea creatures.

Making it a habit

1. Keep it out. A book and a cup of markers on the table get used. A book in a drawer doesn’t.
2. Pick a time. After dinner, or the half hour before bed, instead of the phone.
3. Don’t finish. Stop when you’ve had enough. The page will be there tomorrow.
4. Use easy tools. Chisel-tip markers fill big shapes fast and need almost no pressure. Our guide to markers has suggestions.
5. Color with someone. A page each at the kitchen table is good company with no pressure to talk.

Try a page tonight

You don’t need to buy anything to find out whether coloring helps you. Print a free sample page from any of our books, put the phone in another room, and give it twenty minutes.