Supplies
The best adult coloring books
Everything on this site prints for free, so this page only covers the books that are worth buying anyway. There are fewer than you would think, and the reason is the paper.
A coloring book is not competing with a printed page on the drawings. It competes on the three things a home printer cannot give you: paper you did not have to buy separately, a hundred pages held in one place, and somebody else deciding the order. Judge a book on those, and most of the shelf falls away.
Read the back cover, not the front
Single-sided printing is the specification that matters most, and it is the one publishers bury. If the drawings are printed on both sides, a marker that goes through ruins the page behind it, and you cannot take a finished one out to keep. Look for the words single-sided, one side only or perforated.
Paper weight comes second. Anything from 120 gsm holds alcohol markers. Most mass-market books are lighter than that, which is fine for pencils and no good for anything else. The markers page explains which pens survive which paper.
Binding comes third and matters more than it sounds. A perfect-bound book will not lie flat, so you colour a curved page with your other hand holding it open. Spiral binding solves it. Perforated pages solve it better, because the sheet comes out and lies on the table like a printed one.
The detailed ones, for an hour at a time
These are the books that started the adult coloring shelf, and they are still the densest things on it. Both are hunts as much as coloring books: objects are hidden in the drawings and the pleasure is partly in finding them.
Secret Garden, Johanna BasfordBook
The book that started the adult coloring shelf, and still one of the most detailed. Printed on stock heavy enough for markers, which is half of why people buy it.
Enchanted Forest, Johanna BasfordBook
The follow-up to Secret Garden, and the denser of the two. A hunt runs through it, with objects hidden in the drawings, which is why people finish it rather than dipping into it.
The cozy shelf, and Coco Wyo
The fastest-moving corner of the shelf is the opposite of the ones above: bold outlines, large areas, cute animals in small domestic scenes, and a page that finishes in an evening rather than a week. It goes by cozy, comfort coloring or bold and easy, and Coco Wyo is the name most people are looking for when they arrive at it.
The four below are the ones worth knowing apart. Cozy Friends is the original and the boldest. Cozy Corner is the densest, closest to a room drawn to the corners. Cozy & Cute is the easiest of the four. Cozy Cuties puts more characters on each page, which suits an adult and a child working on the same book.
Cozy Friends, Coco WyoBook
The book that made the cozy style what it is. Bold, simple outlines with cute animal characters, which is the opposite of the dense hunt books and finishes in an evening.
Cozy Corner, Coco WyoBook
Reading alcoves, bakeries and kitchens drawn to the corners. Denser than Cozy Friends, and the closest of the four to what people mean by a cozy scene.
Cozy & Cute, Coco WyoBook
Bold and easy designs with hygge subjects: shelves, jars, small kitchens. The large areas make it the one to give someone who says they cannot colour.
Cozy Cuties, Coco WyoBook
The same characters at a smaller scale, with more of them per page. For adults and children together, which the bolder books handle less well.
If the style appeals but the price does not, our own cozy coloring pages are free and drawn to the same brief. They are not Coco Wyo, and they are not affiliated with them.
Color by number, for the evenings you cannot decide
The fastest-growing corner of the shelf, and the one that suits people who bounce off a blank page. The numbers remove the question of what colour goes where and leave the part that settles the mind. The Dover one is the format done properly: printed one side only, on perforated pages.
Creative Haven American LandscapesBook
Colour by number, and printed one side only on perforated pages, so a finished sheet comes out without a knife and nothing shows through from the back.
The Disney Mystery Coloring series is the same idea with a licence attached, and it runs to nine volumes, all listed on their own page. Each holds a hundred numbered illustrations, and the character stays hidden until enough of the page is filled, which is what holds a child who abandons an open drawing. These four are the ones to start with.
Disney Mystery Coloring: The ClassicsBook
Colour by number, and the character only appears as you go. It holds a child who gives up on an open page, because there is something to find out.
Disney Mystery Coloring: PixarBook
Colour by number across Toy Story, Monsters Inc., WALL-E and Ratatouille. Same format as The Classics: the character stays hidden until enough numbers are filled.
Disney Mystery Coloring: FamilyBook
The volume built around Lilo and Stitch and the family films. The easiest of the series to share between an adult and a child, because the reveal works for both.
Disney Mystery Coloring: SeasonsBook
The newest of the six, and the one to buy in autumn. Same hundred numbered illustrations, arranged around winter, spring, summer and fall.
The format works because the key is printed on the page itself, so nothing has to be looked up or remembered. That is worth checking before you buy: a book that prints its key on a separate card loses half the point the moment the card goes missing.
One for botanical drawing
Dover’s Creative Haven line is the quiet recommendation on every list, and it earns it on manufacturing rather than art: printed one side only, on perforated pages, at a price the licensed books cannot match.
Creative Haven Vintage FloralsBook
Thirty-one botanical drawings taken from archive plates, printed one side only on perforated pages. The finished sheet comes out without a knife.
What a book will not do
It will not be cheaper than printing. A hundred sheets from this site cost the paper and the toner, and the supplies page works out what that comes to. It will not let you print the same page twice, which matters with children. And it will not let you choose the subject: you get the book’s theme, all hundred pages of it.
If those three things matter more than the paper, print instead. The catalogue is free, the files are 300 dpi PDFs, and nothing on it needs an account.
Links to Amazon on this page are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases: the price is the same for you either way, and nothing here is recommended because of it. How this site is paid for.
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Coloring book questions
Why buy a coloring book when pages are free to print?
Three reasons, and none of them is the drawings. The paper, which is heavy enough for markers without buying a ream. The binding, which holds a hundred pages in one place instead of a folder of loose sheets. And not having to choose: a book decides the order for you, which is the whole point on an evening when deciding is the tiring part.
What makes a coloring book good rather than pretty?
Printed on one side only. Everything else follows from it: no bleed-through to ruin the page behind, and a finished sheet you can take out and keep. Look for the words single-sided or perforated on the back cover. A book printed on both sides is worth less whatever the drawings look like.
Are expensive coloring books better?
Sometimes, and you can tell which from the description. The money goes into paper weight and single-sided printing, which are real. It does not go into the drawings, and a fifteen-pound book with two hundred double-sided pages is worse value than a ten-pound one with sixty single-sided.
What is a color by number book for adults?
The same format children get, drawn at adult density: twenty to forty colours, small areas, and a key printed on the page. It removes the decision of what colour goes where, which is the part that stops people starting.
Which coloring book should a beginner buy?
One with fewer, larger drawings, not the two-hundred-page collection. A first book that gets finished is worth more than a thick one that gets abandoned on page four, and the dense hunt-style books are genuinely hard to complete.