Is Coloring Good for Anxiety? What the Studies Actually Found

Coloring appears to help some people feel calmer for a short time. Four published studies, with 50 to 193 participants each, found lower anxiety scores after a session of coloring, mostly in students and mostly right after the activity. Coloring is not a treatment for anxiety, and none of these studies say it is. Here is what each one measured, what they did not show, and how to try coloring for yourself in a way that keeps expectations honest.

What did the studies actually find?

Research on coloring is real but modest in scale. The studies below are the ones most often cited, and they should be read as promising rather than conclusive.

• Curry and Kasser (2005), Can Coloring Mandalas Reduce Anxiety?, in the journal Art Therapy, asked 84 college students to color a mandala, color a plaid pattern or draw freely on a blank page after an anxiety-inducing task. Anxiety dropped in the mandala and plaid groups but not in the free-drawing group.
• Van der Vennet and Serice (2012), Can Coloring Mandalas Reduce Anxiety? A Replication Study, also in Art Therapy, repeated the experiment with 50 students and the same three conditions. This time only the mandala group showed a significantly larger drop in anxiety than the plaid and blank-page groups, which suggests the pattern itself may matter.
• Flett, Lie, Riordan, Thompson, Conner and Hayne (2017), Sharpen Your Pencils: Preliminary Evidence that Adult Coloring Reduces Depressive Symptoms and Anxiety, in the Creativity Research Journal, randomly assigned 104 female university students to a week of daily coloring or daily logic puzzles. The coloring group reported lower depressive symptoms and anxiety afterward, while the puzzle group did not.
• Carsley and Heath (2018), Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Colouring for Test Anxiety in Adolescents, in School Psychology International, had 193 eighth-grade students color a mandala or draw and color freely just before a test. Test anxiety fell and state mindfulness rose after both activities, and the mandala was not more effective than free coloring.

What do these studies not tell us?

Quite a lot, and it matters.

• They measured short-term, situational anxiety. A test, a stressful task, a single week. None of them followed people with an anxiety disorder over months.
• The groups were small and specific. University students and eighth graders, in one case women only. Results may not carry over to everyone.
• The effects were measured after the activity, not months later. Nobody knows from these papers how long the calmer feeling lasts.
• The studies disagree on whether mandalas matter. One replication found mandalas beat plaid; another found mandalas and free coloring did equally well.

So the fair summary is: coloring is a low-cost, low-risk activity that several small studies associate with feeling less anxious for a while. That is useful. It is not the same as evidence that coloring treats anxiety.

Is coloring a treatment for anxiety?

No. Coloring is not a treatment for anxiety or depression, and it does not replace professional care. If anxiety is heavy, persistent or getting in the way of sleep, work or relationships, speak to a doctor or a counselor. Coloring can sit alongside whatever they recommend as a pleasant way to spend twenty quiet minutes, the way a walk or a bath might.

Quick answer: how to try coloring for a calmer evening

1. Pick a page that interests you rather than one that feels like a task. A mandala, a pattern or a photo of someone you love all work.
2. Set a timer for 15 to 20 minutes. Stopping early is allowed.
3. Choose three to five colors before you start, so there is nothing to decide mid-page.
4. Put the phone in another room.
5. Notice your breathing now and then, and let the page be imperfect.
6. Do it again tomorrow. Short and regular beats long and rare.

Our ten minute mindful coloring routine is a slightly more structured version of the same idea.

Which pages are best to start with?

The studies used mandalas and plaid, so a mandala is a reasonable first choice. The mandala lotus template is symmetrical and not too dense, and mandala lace suits a longer, slower session. A repeating pattern such as pattern honeycomb is close to the plaid condition in spirit: no choices about shape, only about color.

Some people prefer coloring a face they love or a place they miss. There is no study comparing personal photo pages with mandalas, so the honest advice is to try both and notice how you feel. If a photo page appeals, Coolorio converts a photo into line art at four detail levels, and the Detailed level is the one made for adults. The first page is free, with no account or card. See for grown-ups for examples.

Frequently asked

Does coloring help with anxiety in adults specifically?

The adult evidence comes mostly from university students: Curry and Kasser (84 students), van der Vennet and Serice (50) and Flett and colleagues (104 female students). In all three, the coloring groups reported lower anxiety afterward. Whether the same holds for older adults or for people with diagnosed anxiety has not been shown by these studies.

Do I have to color mandalas, or does any coloring work?

The research is mixed. Van der Vennet and Serice found the mandala group improved more than the plaid and blank-page groups, while Carsley and Heath found a mandala was not more effective than free coloring in adolescents. A sensible reading is that structured coloring of some kind helps and the exact pattern is a matter of taste.

How long should I color to feel a difference?

The studies do not give a prescription: three measured anxiety after a single coloring session and one after a week of daily coloring. For your own evenings, 15 to 20 minutes is a reasonable starting point. If it does nothing for you, that is useful information too; coloring is one calm activity among many, not an obligation.