The best answer to why adults color in coloring books is that it is a pleasant pastime that helps relieve stress and tension. It requires relatively low amounts of personal invention or creativity, low pressure to perform, and can result in something pretty to hang on your wall or even to put on your refrigerator door. You do not have to have children or grandchildren to decorate that space.
Adults color in coloring books for a wide variety of reasons, but the biggest one is that it is a low-pressure activity that can be enjoyable. It can be inexpensive and might even result in something that you would feel comfortable giving as a gift. But, if it does not turn out as expected, you can throw it away or put it in the back of your coloring book where no one will see it. No pressure, no problem.
Psychology Behind Coloring as Stress Relief
Coloring works like meditation in the way that it allows the amygdala to let go of fear responses. It also helps you to clear the frontal cortex of all those worrying thoughts that have built up during the day. People often complain that when the instructions for meditation say, “Clear your mind of troublesome thoughts,” those thoughts just keep popping up, sometimes even more often than if they had not been instructed to let them go. It is the old thing of “Don’t think about the purple elephant.” As soon as you are told that, your mind immediately pictures a purple elephant, maybe rampaging around and stamping on everything in sight.
Coloring Provides an Active Focus
Coloring in a coloring book provides an undemanding but active focus for your thoughts. The picture or pattern is already made, so you do not have to think about it a lot. You can enjoy selecting creative colors, or you can even color by a number if you would rather.
Coloring in a Coloring Book is Non-Electronic Entertainment
Although it is wonderful to explore all the informative and entertaining things that are available on television or the Internet, it has been found that continually staring at a computer or television screen is not good for your eyes. Furthermore, most screens emit “blue light,” which mimics the sun’s rays. Too much blue light can upset your sleep patterns. Even though most cell phones, tablets, and computers now have blue light blockers, watching an exciting movie or even using meditation patterns displayed on a screen can have the effect of keeping you up at night.
Coloring in a coloring book can be combined with activities such as listening to music, an audiobook or podcast, or simply enjoying nighttime quiet. There is no pressure to finish a picture before you go to bed, no pressure to make it perfect.
Coloring in a Coloring Book Helps Let Go of the Competitive Edge
In our modern world, we are often in competition with others. While attending school, students are pushed to make better grades, then, as adults, to make the best grades when learning at the college level. In work situations, we are pushed to do our best, to look our best, and to always put on a bright and cheery front for co-workers and customers. Even when playing computer games online, especially if you are a devotee of MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games), the competition can be fierce, and there is the drive to get the newest costume, the strongest gear, and to make the best scores.
As an adult, coloring in a coloring book, you can let go of all of that. You do not have to color a perfect picture. You can color alone and you do not compare your coloring with anyone else. If you do choose to color with a family member, perhaps a grandchild, set down the ground rules before you begin. There might be no criticizing, no coaching, and no comparing. Or you could just stick to coloring by yourself.
Coloring in a Coloring Book as Physical Therapy
Eyes are not the only body parts that suffer from working in front of a computer. You can develop carpal tunnel syndrome from typing all day and suffer from repetitive motion damage from using a computer-pointing device.
Computer work is not the only job that places strain on your body. Factory work, janitorial, teaching (because teachers are often required to stand) on their feet all day, clerks who must stand at a cash register, and many other jobs create physical demands.
Coloring helps maintain hand/eye coordination and allows a different type of hand movement from that used during the day. For people who do a lot of large motor activity during the day, it can help keep their fingers limber.
Adults Coloring in Coloring Books Are in Control
Adults who are coloring in coloring books are in control of their activity. They can color outside the lines if they want to, they can scribble furiously if their mood demands it, they can select their colors (or not, if they like color by number), and there is no consequence for coloring style.
It helps kids to allow them the same kind of creative freedom with their coloring books. If a child needs to develop the skill to color inside the lines to please teachers, offer a book of their own in which they can have complete freedom for how they color. Being a kid is not always a breezy cup of joyful jellybeans. They need a place to freely express themselves, too.
Your coloring book should be a place where you can let go of the rules. You can even select a defiant coloring book (although you might not want to offer certain adult coloring books to a kid) if you think your mental strength can be improved by “sounding your barbaric yawp,” at least in the privacy of your home.
Check out where to buy adult coloring books HERE.
So, Coming Back Around to the Beginning
Adults color in coloring books for a lot of different reasons. The biggest one is because it is fun. But here is a bullet list of all the possible reasons you might want your very own, personal, private coloring book. You can use these the next time someone asks, “Why are you coloring in a coloring book? Is that not for kids?”
- Because it is fun
- It is like meditation but keeps the random thoughts at bay
- It relaxes my fingers after typing all day
- It gives me something to do while I listen to my audiobook or favorite music.
- I do not have to think about it.
- No one cares if I scribble outside the lines
- I like using the pretty colors
- I can make my refrigerator decorations
- I share coloring with my child or grandchild
- It helps my arthritis
- I cannot draw to save my life, and I want to make something pretty
- I love illustrating the words I cannot say at work (or on television).
- I feel relaxed and happy after I color a picture.
You might even come up with a few more reasons that are all your own for coloring in a coloring book. If you have not tried coloring in a coloring book, you can get started for under $20 with a fat coloring book that you will enjoy for a long time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will not people laugh at me for coloring in a coloring book?
“People” do all sorts of weird things, including laughing and shaming people for doing fun, harmless things. The “people” do not need to know that you like to color and are only likely to know unless you tell them. If they do, brag about your best pictures, and challenge them to do better. Show them listings of some of the extremely expensive coloring books that are on the market or the ones that celebrate less than socially acceptable language.
What if I do it wrong?
That is the beauty of coloring in a coloring book. There is no right or wrong, just having some quiet, relaxing fun. Aside from the paper used to make the book and the materials used to make the coloring agent, coloring in a coloring book has little to no environmental impact. It is non-threatening; unless you post pages from the “adult language” coloring books, it is relaxing, and it gets you away from computer monitors and television screens.
My kindergarten teacher scolded me for coloring outside the lines. What if I color outside the lines?
That is the beauty of adult coloring. You can do all the coloring outside the lines you want to do. (Incidentally, coloring outside the lines should be fine for anyone unless it is on a test booklet. Then, you need to be as neat as you possibly can.) In a coloring book, especially one that you used your own money to buy, you are free to color outside the lines, inside the lines, to add new lines, if that is what you want to do. Because it is your coloring book and not anybody’s business but your own. In a world where there is a plethora of laws, rules, and regulations, that’s freedom – in anybody’s book.
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