Harry Potter Coloring Pages

These Harry Potter coloring pages are drawn as places rather than portraits. You arrive the way a first year does: the Hogwarts Express steaming under a brick arch with a snowy owl caged on the platform, a boat of first years crossing the black lake toward the cliff, then the castle itself with its towers above the water. Inside there is the Great Hall laid for a feast under floating candles, the Sorting Hat frowning on its stool, a potions dungeon of bubbling cauldrons, the library, a common room fireplace with a chess set waiting, and a staircase lined with empty portrait frames.

Outside the walls the creatures take over. A hippogriff bows in its paddock and another takes a treat from a student, a dragon curls around its eggs, a centaur stands with his bow among twisted trees, and the giant squid lifts its tentacles beside a rowing boat. Dobby folds laundry in the kitchens, a niffler tips a pouch of gold across a desk, and a phoenix sits on its perch in the headmaster's office.

Which house is this page?

The banners in the Great Hall, the pennants on the Quidditch stands and the crest on a school robe are all left plain, and that is on purpose: the child decides the house. It is the question every young reader answers first, and a page they have claimed gets finished.

• Gryffindor is scarlet and gold. A red pencil and a yellow one, with a brown underneath the yellow where it needs to look like metal.
• Slytherin is green and silver. Leave the silver as bare paper with a light gray edge, which reads as shine better than any gray pencil.
• Ravenclaw is blue and bronze in the books, and blue and silver in the films. Either is right, and children who have both will have an opinion.
• Hufflepuff is yellow and black. Use black sparingly, on stripes and edges only, or it swallows the page.

A set of house pages makes a good sibling solution: each child colors the same common room in their own colors, and the argument about whose house is best happens on paper.

Gentler pages, for younger witches and wizards

Most of the set is a whole room, and a room in line art is a great many small shapes. A few are one big object on a quiet background: the Golden Snitch hovering over a gloved hand, the Sorting Hat on its stool, a quill and a candle on a sheet of parchment. None of them is a five-minute page, but they are among the gentler ones in the set.

A six-year-old who has only seen the first film can do any of these in one sitting, and the Snitch needs just two pencils.

The colors the books give you

Fans check, so here is what the stories actually say about the things on these pages.

The Hogwarts Express is scarlet, a red steam engine with black and gold details. The Golden Snitch is a walnut-sized gold ball with silver wings, not gold ones. A phoenix has scarlet and gold plumage and a golden tail. The niffler is small, black and fluffy, with a long flat snout, and it steals anything that shines, so the coins spilling from its pouch are the brightest thing on its page. Dobby's skin is a pale grayish green, his eyes are huge and green, and his only clothing is an old pillowcase.

The hippogriff is eagle at the front and horse at the back, and in the books you bow to it and wait for it to bow back before you go near. That is exactly the moment on its page. The Sorting Hat is old, patched and frayed, which means it wants browns laid over each other rather than one flat color.

Everything else, the stone, the wood, the lake, the forest, is yours to decide.

Following the first book, one page at a time

The castle pages happen to line up with the first story. Handing them out chapter by chapter while reading aloud turns them into a reading chart that fills up as the book goes on:

1. The trunk packed with robes, a cauldron and a telescope, for the shopping trip.
2. The wand shop with its boxes stacked to the ceiling.
3. The Hogwarts Express and the compartment with the sweet trolley at the door.
4. The boats crossing the lake, then the Sorting Hat.
5. The first flying lesson on the lawn.
6. Hagrid's hut, the dragon curled around its eggs, then the giant chess knight near the end.

Pinned in order along a hallway, they make a timeline a child can walk along and retell. Teachers use the same idea for a book club: each reader colors the scene they liked best and explains why.

For a long, quiet afternoon

Lots of detail keeps the densest pages: the owlery with an owl in every alcove, the clock tower full of gears, the sweet shop with a jar on every shelf, the library climbing out of sight. These are for older children and adults who read the books when they came out.

• A library with an open book by candlelight
• The Hogwarts Express waiting at the platform
• A phoenix on its perch in the headmaster's office

Sharp colored pencils work best here. Markers bleed across shapes this small. For stonework, color the whole wall one warm gray and go back over a few blocks slightly darker, so the castle does not look like a flat pattern.

A Hogwarts party or a book night

Print the parchment scroll with its quill and candle and write each guest's name on it by hand, and you have an invitation or an acceptance letter. The trunk, the owl with its letter and the Sorting Hat suit a table of children at a birthday: sort them into houses at the door, then give each one the common room in their colors.

Press Add to pack under each drawing, keep browsing, then print the selection as one PDF. Stapled at the corner, a handful of pages becomes a small activity book for a party bag. The pack stays in your browser between collections, so a few dragons, something from the Halloween pages for October, or the rest of the character shelf can go in the same print. The fantasy drawer gathers the other magical collections.

Printing, and a word on the artwork

Each drawing downloads as a free printable PDF at 300 dpi, with no watermark and no account. The sheets are A4: print at 100 % on A4 paper, or choose fit to page on US Letter so nothing is trimmed. The printing guide covers paper and settings, and a heavier paper holds up better under the many layers a stone wall invites.

These are original drawings made for this site, not film stills and not official artwork, and the site is not affiliated with or endorsed by the author, the publishers or the film studio. They are free for home, classroom and party use.