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5 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Adult Coloring Book

A few tips for those of you who color for stress relief.

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Amanda Nelson

Staff Writer

Amanda Nelson is an Executive Director of Book Riot. She lives in Richmond, VA.

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This post is sponsored by Animals of the World Coloring Book from DK.

animals-of-the-worldFeaturing 35 accurately hand-drawn animals shown in their natural habitats throughout the world, this unique adult coloring book includes a mixture of single- and double-page perforated entries. From a chameleon to a tiger to a bald eagle, color as creatively as you choose or use the inside-cover photographs as a reference for true-to-life representations. You can even learn interesting facts about each species along the way.


Whether you want to color for fun, to exercise mindfulness, or to relieve stress, get creative with Animals of the World Coloring Book.

Adult coloring books are everywhere, and you can get one for pretty much any visual topic and/or fandom. Our contributors aren’t exempt, so I asked them for their tips for getting the most out of the adult coloring book experience:

  1. Use good coloring tools. Crayons are obviously the traditional choice, but adult coloring books are often so detailed and intricate that the fatter tips of crayons don’t work. Contributor Rachel Manwill recommends the Prismacolor Watercolor pencils for books with thicker pages. Jamie uses Fiskar gel pens.
  2. Scan your pages. Rioter Amy recommends scanning your favorite pages (your library probably has a scanner you can use if you don’t have one) so you can do them more than once. Also, printer paper is usually thicker than coloring book pages, so if your pens bleed through, this is a good way to avoid that.
  3. Choose a color scheme ahead of time. Rachel also recommends picking a color scheme for your page in advance to keep anxiety down (the point here is often to de-stress, after all), especially if you have a large pack of pencils. Pick about ten colors out of the pack, and stick with those for the page you’re working on.
  4. peacockGive them as gifts! My best friend gave me a framed page of a peacock because I have a weird thing about peacocks (in that I love them). It might seem like a strange gift, but I appreciate knowing she picked a thing she knew I would like and spent time to make it–again, adult coloring book pages are more detailed and intricate than the version you remember from being a kid, so it really is a labor of love.
  • Ambient noise! This one’s for those of you who are into coloring for the de-stressing and anxiety relief: turn on some ambient noise while you color. Rioter Rincey found this Harry Potter ambient noise site, which is amazing (the Gryffindor common room page is just people chatting and fire crackling and it’s so soothing), but YouTube has ambient noise videos for pretty much anything you want.

    Leave your tips in the comments!