Coloring has become a widespread hobby for adults over the past decade. With the increased popularity of adult coloring books, some may wonder why adults have started to enjoy coloring books so much. Are you curious yourself why adult coloring has become such a craze lately? We have all the answers you need to know, including the scientific reasons why adults love coloring and why you should join the new trend.
Why Do Adults Like Coloring Books?
There are countless reasons why adults have turned to coloring as a new hobby. The main reason adults enjoy coloring books is for the mental health perks that come along with coloring. Our society has started to recognize the importance of mental health now more than ever before. We have started paying more attention to our mental health and doing what we can to make it one of our top priorities.
The appeal of coloring for adults goes beyond the mental health benefits. There are countless other reasons why adults like coloring books. One of the biggest factors is it’s a relatively inexpensive hobby that you can take anywhere! This is a major benefit for those who may travel often or may have a tight budget.
As an adult, many of the hobbies that we take up can come with costly price tags. This includes outdoor activities, sports, and traveling. Even other art hobbies are quite more expensive than coloring. For example: If you paint, the price of your paints, brushes, and canvas can add up quickly! When it comes to coloring, you as the artist are the ultimate decider on how much money you spend on your coloring hobby.
If you want coloring to be as inexpensive as possible and mainly want to focus on the mental health benefits of coloring, you can purchase very inexpensive colored pencils and coloring books. Websites like Amazon offer countless inexpensive options for both colored pencils and coloring books. You can often even find them at your local discount store, if your budget is on the lower end.
However, if you want coloring to be more about the art and you want to get your coloring projects to look as realistic as possible, then you can also spend more on professional art colored pencils, and art paper. Professional colored pencils are ideal for those who wish to improve their skill at shading and texture through colored pencils.
There are countless possibilities and a wide range of availability when it comes to your coloring tools! You can spend anywhere from $5 on your colored pencils to hundreds of dollars on professional colored pencils. Coloring can become whatever you want it to be for yourself.
Coloring also reminds us of being a child. When we color, we experience a lot of nostalgic emotions. For many of us, coloring takes us back to happy memories as a child. It gives us a carefree type of feeling. Coloring brings out the playful side that we may not see often. Many of us could use more play in our daily lives!
Another major reason why adults seem to love coloring and coloring books is because anyone can color! It is not a hobby only for artists who have a large amount of experience with creating art. Everyone can color, no matter what artistic ability you may have.
As you begin coloring more, your skill level and artistic abilities will begin to greatly improve! Coloring is a hobby that you can easily get better at once you start to consistently practice. If you want to improve your skill level for coloring, all you have to do is practice your coloring more often! Plus, there are countless online tutorials available for those who want to learn more skills for coloring as well.
Our last reason why we think adults like coloring books is all the fun coloring book options available today! There are endless amounts of coloring books available for us to purchase now. You can find coloring books that are based on inspirational quotes, religions, movies, comics, animals, and countless other subjects.
As you begin to color more, you can widen your coloring skills by experimenting with different coloring subjects. Even companies like Disney have multiple coloring books available! You can try different coloring books till you find the subjects that you enjoy coloring the most.
The great thing about coloring books is they are easy to find! Most of us can find coloring books at stores located near us like Walmart or bookstores like Barnes and Noble. You can also find countless coloring book options available at great prices on sites like Amazon. You don’t have to look far to find a coloring book that you’ll love!
Scientific Benefits of Adult Coloring
When it comes to the scientific benefits of adult coloring, the main benefit is what it does to our brain and our overall mental health. As we mentioned before, our society has started to take our mental health much more seriously over the past few years. This is a large reason why coloring has become so popular!
Scientifically, when our brain focuses on one simple task, it gives our mind permission to relax. It allows our brain to focus on the task of coloring and not on any stressful situation that may have happened previously in our day. Instead of overthinking or analyzing something that happened earlier, you turn your focus to the shapes in your coloring book and apply your color. Your focus narrows in on the paper in front of you.
This is why coloring is such a powerful resource when it comes to reducing the amount of anxiety we experience in our lives. If you experience large amounts of anxious feelings daily, coloring regularly can reduce your anxiety by incredible amounts. Coloring has a calming effect on everyone.
Stress and anxiety can truly cause our bodies far more harm than we may initially realize. Large amounts of stress can cause us to get sick, lose sleep or experience difficulty falling asleep, lose our appetite or make us overeat, increase the amount that we lash out at those around us, cause our bodies to take longer to heal, etc.
This is a significant reason why coloring has been shown to shorten the time patients spend at hospitals. When patients in a hospital color during their visit, they experience less stress during their stay and often are released from the hospital quicker. When your body experiences less stress, it can heal at a much faster pace.
Another scientific benefit is coloring also reduces the amount of negative thoughts that pass through your mind and makes us think more in the present moment. When you are coloring, you are likely not going to be complaining or thinking negative thoughts. You are much more likely to be thinking about the paper in front of you, with calm emotions.
Adult coloring works a lot like meditation and increases our level of mindfulness. When you think of meditation, you think of sitting still in a quiet place and focusing on your breath. When you are meditating, you are keeping your focus off any thoughts from the day and coming back to your breath. Coloring is very similar. Instead, you keep your focus on your hand movement and coloring. It puts your mind in a similar state to meditation.
Coloring gives our minds time to rest. This is especially true when it comes to technology. Many of us spend large amounts of time every day in front of a work computer, laptop, or mobile device. However, staring at a bright screen for large lengths of time can be hard on our eyes and it can also decrease our overall happiness. It makes it difficult to truly unplug and decompress from the day. When we’re using technology, we feel constantly plugged in!
Coloring gives us a chance to take our attention off an electronic screen. Even though our focus is on coloring, it still gives our eyes time to relax since looking at bright screens for large amounts of time can be hard on our eyes.
Ways Coloring Can Improve Other Areas of Your Life
As you likely have noticed by now, coloring comes with a large amount of benefits. However, you may not expect that coloring can also improve many other areas of your life, outside of your hobbies and your mental health!
Coloring can also improve your work life. By coloring regularly, you will use your creativity much more frequently. When you use your creativity more often, your level of creativity only increases overall! This can be very beneficial at work, especially if you have a job where you need to use your creativity regularly.
When our creativity increases, we also have an easier time-solving problems. We can come up with solutions at a much faster rate. Coloring also helps us make decisions quicker as well. When we’re coloring, we are making more decisions than we realize! We decide what colors to use and where to place them for each section of our coloring page. Being decisive comes in handy in a wide range of workplaces as well.
Coloring also improves your ability to focus, which can benefit any type of work atmosphere. When you color regularly, you have an easier time focusing on a task without interruption. This means you will have an easier time focusing on a specific project at work until it’s completed or time to move on to a different project.
Another area that we’ve noticed coloring can also improve is our relationships, which you may be surprised by. When you color regularly, your mind will be a lot calmer. You will experience less stress in your daily life. When you do experience stress, you will be able to handle it better when you color regularly. Your overall happiness largely increases when you take up adult coloring as a hobby.
When we are happier and calmer, our relationships also tend to improve. We are less likely to start arguments or get angry easily with our partners or friends. By coloring regularly, we are less likely to take out our stress or anxiety on the people around us. It makes us more pleasant to be around and it makes everyone happier overall!
Ways to Start Coloring Easily as an Adult
Coloring is an extremely easy hobby to start, especially if you use our recommendations to help you adjust more quickly. If you are new to coloring, we recommend starting by buying less expensive tools. Down the road, as your skill level increases and you start taking your coloring to the next level, you can always invest in more professional tools.
Purchasing inexpensive tools, in the beginning, gives you the chance to get used to coloring. It also gives you a chance to experience all of the benefits of adult coloring for yourself, without having to spend a large amount of money. Once you start to notice the difference it can make in your overall happiness, you will likely want to start coloring more often, and then you can purchase more expensive tools if you’d like.
As you begin trying out more expensive colored pencils, you will start to form your preferences. You’ll start to figure out what brands and types of colored pencils you like to use the most. Everyone will be slightly different in what they prefer for their colored pencils.
When you buy colored pencils that have a higher quality, you will get more vibrant colors out of your pencils. You will be less likely to see little grains of white in your coloring projects. Your colored pencils will also last a lot longer when you purchase pencils with a higher quality. Lower-quality colored pencils are made out of harder lead wax, which means they will be a lot more prone to breaking when you sharpen them.
As you are first starting to get more professional colored pencils, Prismacolor is an excellent brand to consider. This brand is great for those who are just starting with their coloring hobby because the price can be a lot lower than some other high-quality pencils. You can also get these pencils in full sets, which will give you a wider range of colors!
When it comes to purchasing coloring books, we recommend finding subjects that you like or find interesting. As we previously mentioned, the great thing about coloring books is there are countless options available. You can find coloring books about everything from subjects on Christianity, flowers, Christmas, celebrities, animals, etc.
Coloring is an incredibly beneficial hobby for adults. There are countless mental health benefits that coloring can provide. Plus, it’s an inexpensive hobby and it takes us back to our childhood. In our opinion, there are no downsides to taking up adult coloring!
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