Coloring for Stress Relief: What the Studies Found
Does coloring relieve stress? Several small studies with university students found that anxiety scores fell after a short coloring session, and one found lower anxiety and depressive symptoms after a week of daily coloring. Other experiments found no change. The studies are small and short, and none of them makes coloring a treatment. If you want to try it, a pre-drawn page you like, a short session, and no pressure to finish are a sensible start.
What the studies tested and found
| Study | Who took part | What was compared | What it found |
|---|---|---|---|
| Curry and Kasser, Art Therapy 22(2), 2005 (DOI) | Adults | Coloring a mandala, coloring a plaid pattern, or drawing on blank paper | Anxiety fell in the mandala and plaid groups; the free-drawing group showed no change (as summarized by Mantzios and Giannou, 2018) |
| van der Vennet and Serice, Art Therapy 29(2), 2012 (DOI) | A replication of the 2005 study | The same three activities | The mandala group reduced anxiety more than the plaid and free-drawing groups |
| Flett and colleagues, Creativity Research Journal 29(4), 2017 (DOI) | 104 female university students | Daily coloring for a week, or daily logic puzzles | The coloring group showed lower depressive symptoms and anxiety afterwards; the puzzle group did not |
| Mantzios and Giannou, Frontiers in Psychology 9:56, 2018 (DOI) | 88 students, then 72 students | Unguided mandala coloring versus free drawing; then unguided versus mindfulness-guided coloring | No change in anxiety or mindfulness in the first experiment; in the second, the guided group reduced anxiety more |
What this does and does not mean
- The groups were small and mostly students. Mantzios and Giannou list the student samples and small numbers as reasons for caution in their own study.
- The effects were short term and measured with questionnaires, right after a session or after one week.
- The results do not all agree. The same kind of mandala session lowered anxiety in some experiments and not in another.
- Most used mandalas or patterns. Coloring Nest pages are scenes and characters, so we do not claim these results for our pages.
Coloring is not a substitute for care. If stress or anxiety is affecting your daily life, talk to a doctor or a licensed mental health professional.
How to set up a calm coloring session
- Pick a page you want to color. In the mandala studies, free drawing on a blank sheet did not lower anxiety the way a ready-made design did. Choose a subject you enjoy from the free coloring page library.
- Match the detail to the time you have. A page with large open shapes can be finished in one sitting; a fine-line scene can take several.
- Keep the kit small. One set of pencils or crayons, a firm support, and a spare sheet are enough; a one-page adult coloring kit lists the rest.
- Decide the colors before you start so you are not stopping to choose every few minutes. A five-color swatch strip takes a few minutes.
- Set a length, not a goal. The week-long study used a daily coloring session. Stop when the time is up, finished or not.
To keep the pages you finish, see how to store finished coloring pages in a portfolio. For paper and printer settings, use the coloring page printing guide.
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