Does Coloring Help With Stress? Here’s What Research Says

You know those days.

Your to-do list somehow got longer while you were working on it. Your phone won’t stop making noises. Someone needs something. And apparently deciding what to make for dinner is now a major life decision.

Sometimes you just need to turn down the volume for a little while.

That’s where coloring comes in.

But does sitting down with a coloring book and a box of colored pencils actually help with stress?

As it turns out, researchers have looked into this—and there’s some encouraging evidence that it can.

So… Coloring Really Can Help You Relax?

It looks that way.

Several studies have found that structured coloring activities can help reduce short-term feelings of stress or anxiety for some people.

One study had adults spend 20 minutes coloring, drawing, or reading. The group coloring mandalas showed lower anxiety afterward than the reading group.

And a 2026 review looked at 17 different studies involving nearly 1,000 adults and found that mandala-coloring activities were associated with reductions in stress and anxiety.

Does that mean your colored pencils have magical therapeutic powers?

Sadly, no. We checked.

But it does suggest there may be something to this whole coloring-to-unwind thing.

Why Does Coloring Feel So Good?

Think about what’s normally bouncing around in your head.

Did I answer that email?

What’s for dinner?

Why did I walk into this room?

Where is my phone?

(It’s in my hand.)

Then you sit down with a coloring page.

Suddenly the biggest decision in your life is whether that flower should be blue or purple.

Your attention has somewhere else to go.

Coloring gives you something creative to focus on without asking you to start from scratch. The picture is already there. You just get to decide what happens to it.

And unlike your inbox, your coloring book doesn’t care if you ignore it for three days.

The Best Part? You Don’t Have to Be Good at It.

Somewhere along the way, adults decided creative things needed to be done correctly.

We disagree.

Your tree can be blue.

Your cow can be purple.

You can own 72 colored pencils and somehow still use the same six every time.

And you absolutely do not have to finish the page.

Color for ten minutes. Color for an hour. Color until you realize you’ve been sitting there for two hours and probably should go see what everyone else in the house has been doing.

The point isn’t creating a masterpiece.

It’s enjoying the time you spend making it.

Give It a Try

The next time you’ve had one of those days, try something simple.

Put your phone somewhere you can’t reach it without actually getting up.

Grab a coloring book.

Pick a few colors.

And start.

No notifications. No scrolling. No Wi-Fi required.

Just you, a coloring page, and the extremely important decision of which shade of green that leaf needs to be.

Sometimes a little quiet creativity is exactly what the day was missing.

Relax. Create. Color.

Sources

Koo M, Chen HP, Yeh YC. Coloring Activities for Anxiety Reduction and Mood Improvement in Taiwanese Community-Dwelling Older Adults: A Randomized Controlled Study. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. 2020.

Pehlivan S, Erbay Dalli Ö. The Effectiveness of Mandala Coloring on the Psychological and Physiological Symptoms in Adult Hospitalized Patients: A Meta-Analysis. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies. 2026.

This article discusses coloring as a recreational relaxation activity and is for general informational purposes. It is not medical advice.