Reference · Evidence review
Coloring pre-drawn mandala templates for roughly twenty minutes reliably produces a small-to-moderate reduction in short-term state anxiety, according to two independent controlled studies (Curry & Kasser 2005; van der Vennet & Serice 2012). Related evidence supports similar effects on depressive symptoms (Flett et al. 2017) and on salivary cortisol after 45-minute art-making sessions (Kaimal, Ray & Muniz 2016). What the evidence doesn't show is that coloring treats clinical anxiety disorders, rewires the brain, or replaces therapy or medication. This page is a source-cited review of what the studies do and don't demonstrate.
This is an editorial evidence review, not medical advice. If anxiety, low mood, or other mental-health symptoms are affecting your life, the appropriate step is to talk with a qualified clinician. Coloring is a supportive practice; it is not a treatment. We take the honesty of that framing seriously because the trustworthiness of the review depends on it.
Coloring therapy, in the sense that has entered widespread modern use, is the self-directed practice of coloring pre-drawn geometric templates — commonly mandalas — as a technique for stress relief, mood regulation and attentional focus. It is sometimes also called mindful coloring, therapeutic coloring, or anti-stress coloring. The term should be distinguished carefully from art therapy, which is a clinical practice conducted by a credentialed therapist and includes both a diagnostic and a relational dimension that self-directed coloring does not.
The empirical study of coloring's effects on mood and anxiety is small — a few thousand participants across roughly a dozen well-designed studies, most published between 2005 and 2020. This is much smaller than the evidence base for meditation, exercise, or psychotherapy. But it is not nothing: the core finding — that brief structured coloring sessions produce measurable short-term reductions in state anxiety and self-reported low mood — has been replicated across independent labs and populations.
The rest of this page walks through the studies that establish that finding, the proposed mechanism, the honest limits of the evidence, and how to apply it practically.
The therapeutic use of mandalas has a hundred-year history, beginning with the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961). Jung began drawing spontaneous circular images in 1916 during his personal “confrontation with the unconscious,” documented in The Red Book. He noticed that his patients produced similar images unprompted at critical moments in analysis, and by the 1930s was using mandala drawing as a clinical technique, asking patients to draw a circle and fill it with whatever came. The mandala, in Jung's reading, expressed what he called the Self — the psyche's regulating center and its drive toward wholeness. We treat the Jungian frame in more detail on our companion what is a mandala page.
Jung's clinical technique passed into art therapy as the field became credentialed in the mid-twentieth century, with the founding of the American Art Therapy Association in 1969. Mandala protocols — both drawing and coloring — became standard tools in art therapist training, alongside a range of other structured drawing and image-making exercises.
The empirical study of coloring's mood effects — controlled, quantitative, using standard psychology measures rather than clinical case reports — began later. Nancy Curry and Tim Kasser's 2005 experiment at Knox College is generally treated as the founding study of the modern coloring-therapy literature.
Public adoption of the practice exploded a decade later, with the adult coloring book boom of 2013–2016. Johanna Basford's Secret Garden (2013) sold over 22 million copies. According to industry data compiled by the NPD Group, the adult coloring book market reached roughly one billion US dollars in annual sales at its 2015–2016 peak. Mandala designs consistently dominated the bestseller lists throughout that period, and the framing of coloring as a stress-relief technique — sometimes invoking Curry and Kasser's evidence, sometimes not — became a mainstream popular understanding.
Since the 2016 peak, the market has settled to a smaller but stable size, with mandala coloring absorbed into the broader mindfulness and wellness sector. The academic literature has continued to accumulate carefully-conducted studies at a slow rate.
This is the study that established mandala coloring as a subject worth studying empirically. It is short, well-designed, and repeatedly cited. Anyone reading about coloring therapy in the popular press is reading, directly or indirectly, from this paper.
Curry, N. A., & Kasser, T. (2005). Can Coloring Mandalas Reduce Anxiety?
Design Between-subjects experiment, three conditions.
Participants 84 undergraduate students at Knox College, Illinois.
Procedure Participants completed the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), then underwent a brief anxiety induction (writing about a frightening experience). They were then randomly assigned to one of three 20-minute conditions: color a mandala; color a plaid pattern; or color a blank sheet however they wished. STAI was re-administered afterward.
Finding State anxiety dropped significantly in the mandala condition and in the plaid condition, but did not drop significantly in the blank-paper condition. Structured geometric coloring reduced state anxiety; unstructured coloring did not.
Interpretation Curry and Kasser argued that the structure of the pre-drawn pattern is the operative variable: it provides a “container” that supports absorbed attention and reduces the cognitive load of open-ended choice.
This is a well-conducted small-N controlled experiment. It provides good evidence that a specific short intervention (twenty minutes of structured geometric coloring) produces a measurable reduction in a specific outcome (state anxiety, measured by a standard psychometric instrument) in a specific population (young adult college students in the United States).
It does not establish that mandala coloring is uniquely different from other structured coloring — both the mandala and plaid conditions worked. It does not establish long-term effects. It does not establish effects on clinical anxiety disorders. And 84 participants is a small sample — the effect could easily have been a statistical fluke had it not been replicated. Which is why the replication matters.
van der Vennet, R., & Serice, S. (2012). Can Coloring Mandalas Reduce Anxiety? A Replication Study.
Design Between-subjects experiment, three conditions, same core structure as Curry & Kasser.
Participants 50 graduate art therapy students.
Procedure Anxiety induction, then random assignment to color a mandala, color a plaid pattern, or color a blank sheet, for twenty minutes each. STAI administered before and after.
Finding The mandala condition produced a significant reduction in state anxiety. The plaid and blank-paper conditions did not. Effect size for the mandala condition was substantial.
Interpretation Van der Vennet and Serice's replication more strongly supported a mandala-specific advantage over structured but non-mandala coloring. They speculated that the radial symmetry and organized complexity of the mandala provide something specific to attention regulation that the plaid pattern does not.
Between them, Curry & Kasser and van der Vennet & Serice establish, at reasonable confidence, that a brief structured coloring session — specifically mandala coloring — reduces short-term state anxiety in adult populations. The mechanism is likely structure-plus-symmetry rather than any content-specific magic in the mandala form. The effect is moderate in size, short-lasting (no long-term follow-up), and generalizes across at least two different populations (undergraduates in Illinois and graduate art therapy students).
The evidence is not overwhelming. It is a small literature. But it is more evidence than a great many wellness claims can produce.
Flett, J. A. M., Lie, C., Riordan, B. C., Thompson, L. M., Conner, T. S., & Hayne, H. (2017). Sharpen Your Pencils: Preliminary Evidence that Adult Coloring Reduces Depressive Symptoms and Anxiety.
Design One-week randomized trial with two arms.
Participants 115 adult women, aged 18–36, at the University of Otago, New Zealand.
Procedure Baseline questionnaires on depression, anxiety, stress, mindfulness and flourishing. Random assignment to color daily for one week (coloring group) or to complete a logic puzzle daily for the same period (active control). Post-week questionnaires.
Finding Both groups improved on some measures. The coloring group showed significantly larger reductions in self-reported depressive symptoms and anxiety than the puzzle group. There were no significant between-group differences in stress or mindfulness scores.
Interpretation The authors positioned this as preliminary evidence for coloring as an accessible, low-cost supportive practice for mild depressive symptoms and anxiety in adult populations. They were careful not to overstate the finding.
The Flett et al. study is important because it moves the coloring literature beyond the single 20-minute session. A one-week trial with an active control condition (a logic puzzle, controlling for “daily focused activity”) is a meaningfully harder test than a single-session experiment. The coloring group still showed a modest additional benefit. That said, all participants were adult women, all the measures were self-report, and the effect size was small. It is preliminary evidence, not a strong claim.
Kaimal, G., Ray, K., & Muniz, J. (2016). Reduction of Cortisol Levels and Participants' Responses Following Art Making.
Design Pre-post measurement of salivary cortisol.
Participants 39 adults, mean age 33, at Drexel University, Philadelphia.
Procedure Salivary cortisol measured before and after a 45-minute self-directed art-making session. Participants chose from a range of materials including markers, oil pastels, modeling clay and collage supplies.
Finding Salivary cortisol dropped significantly after the art-making session. 75% of participants showed lower cortisol post-session than pre-session. Prior artistic experience did not predict the magnitude of the drop.
Interpretation Art-making appears to trigger a physiological stress-reduction response measurable at the endocrine level, independent of participants' skill or experience.
Girija Kaimal's study is the one commonly cited for the claim “coloring reduces cortisol.” That claim needs a small footnote. Kaimal's study measured cortisol changes after art-making, defined broadly — participants could color, draw, use clay, make collage. The cortisol reduction is well-supported for art-making broadly. A direct experiment specifically on mandala coloring and cortisol has not, to our knowledge, been published as of mid-2026. It is reasonable to expect the finding to generalize (there is no obvious reason mandala coloring specifically should be excluded from a phenomenon shown for art-making broadly), but it is a reasonable expectation, not an established fact.
Our Bold & Easy Mandala Bundle is designed for a twenty-minute practice at moderate complexity — the setup that the controlled studies actually tested. Not longer, not fussier.
Why would coloring reduce anxiety? The best-supported mechanistic story combines three components, each with independent support in adjacent literatures.
Coloring is a moderately demanding perceptual-motor task. It occupies working memory: you have to track which region you are in, choose a color, guide the pen or pencil. That occupation displaces rumination — the repetitive, self-focused, negatively-valenced thinking that maintains anxious and depressive states. This mechanism connects the coloring literature to a much larger body of work on attentional interventions for anxiety, including mindfulness training and cognitive behavioral therapy techniques targeting rumination. In this reading, mandala coloring is not doing anything magical; it is simply an accessible way to get the same attention-redirection benefit that other structured tasks provide.
Curry and Kasser's original interpretation emphasized this component. A pre-drawn geometric pattern — especially one with radial symmetry — provides a “container” that reduces decision-making load. Instead of facing the open question “what should I draw?” the colorist faces the constrained question “what color goes here?” The reduction in cognitive load appears to be therapeutically significant on its own. This may explain why the plaid and mandala conditions both outperformed blank-paper in the original study — both provided containment; the blank paper did not.
The physical act of laying down pigment provides low-grade sensorimotor feedback — the pressure of the pencil, the visible color emerging on the page, the completion of a region. This kind of low-stakes tangible progress activates reward circuitry in a mild, sustainable way. This is the mechanism that plausibly explains why coloring works when other attention-redirection tasks (a logic puzzle, for instance, in the Flett et al. active control) do not work as well: the puzzle provides the attentional demand but not the sensorimotor reward.
Neuroimaging studies of mandala coloring specifically have not been published. Kaimal's cortisol data provides one endocrine-level datum. Beyond that, mechanism claims below the psychological-process level — claims about “activating the parasympathetic nervous system,” “engaging the default mode network,” “triggering serotonin” — are speculative extrapolations from adjacent literatures. They may well be correct; they have not been directly tested for mandala coloring.
This section is a practical protocol based directly on what the controlled studies tested. It is not the only way to color a mandala, but it is the one for which the strongest empirical support exists.
A regular practice. Flett et al. (2017) showed that daily coloring for a week produced more mood benefit than a single session. Doing this three or four times a week appears more useful than doing it occasionally. This is preliminary; longer-term regularity has not been well-studied.
Coloring as transition, not as therapy. Many users report benefit from using a 20-minute coloring session as a specific transition — between work and evening, between activity and sleep — rather than as an intervention when acutely stressed. There is no experimental evidence directly on this, but it fits the mechanism: predictable, low-stakes, decision-light activity works well in transition moments.
The following is an honest breakdown of what the evidence does and does not say for particular populations. In each row we grade the evidence as Moderate, Preliminary or Thin.
| Population | Evidence strength | What is supported |
|---|---|---|
| General adults, brief acute stress | Moderate | Curry & Kasser (2005), van der Vennet & Serice (2012), Kaimal et al. (2016). Short-term state anxiety and cortisol reductions after 20–45 minute sessions. |
| General adults, sub-clinical low mood | Preliminary | Flett et al. (2017). Modest additional benefit over an active control across a one-week daily practice. |
| Older adults, dementia care | Preliminary | Widely used in clinical practice with generally positive observational reports. Direct controlled evidence on outcomes is limited. Practical driver behind the large-print bold-and-easy style. |
| Children with attention difficulties (ADHD) | Thin | Clinical intuition and case-series reports. No large-scale controlled trials specifically on mandala coloring and ADHD symptom reduction. Coloring may be supportive; it is not a treatment. |
| Cancer patients, palliative care | Preliminary | Included in art therapy protocols in oncology settings, with generally positive but variable outcomes. Mandala coloring specifically has not been systematically compared to other art activities in this population. |
| Clinical anxiety disorders | Not established | No evidence that coloring treats generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, or other clinical anxiety disorders. Established treatments (CBT, medication where appropriate) should not be delayed or replaced by coloring. |
| Clinical depression | Not established | Flett et al. (2017) showed mild effects on self-reported depressive symptoms in a non-clinical sample. There is no evidence coloring treats clinical depression. |
| PTSD | Not established | Some inclusion in trauma-informed art therapy protocols. No controlled trials on mandala coloring specifically for PTSD outcomes. |
A responsible reference includes what its subject isn't. This section names the claims that are commonly made in popular writing about coloring therapy that outrun what the studies actually establish. If you are reading a source that makes any of these claims without qualification, treat it with skepticism.
There are no neuroimaging or neuroplasticity studies of mandala coloring that support this specific claim. It is a heavy-lifting metaphor for a phenomenon — short-term stress reduction — that does not require any brain-rewiring account.
Kaimal's cortisol data is consistent with this claim at a very high level (cortisol is downstream of the HPA axis, which interacts with autonomic tone), but there are no direct autonomic measures during mandala coloring — no heart rate variability, no skin conductance, no vagal tone data in the specific mandala-coloring literature we have found. The claim is a plausible extrapolation, not an established finding.
They are related but not equivalent. Flett et al. (2017) explicitly tested whether coloring produced mindfulness gains and found no significant advantage over the puzzle control on mindfulness measures. Coloring reduced anxiety and depressive symptoms; it did not measurably increase mindfulness. The claim that coloring “is” meditation is an overreach; the more careful claim is that coloring may produce some overlapping attentional and affective effects while remaining a distinct practice.
No. The studies show a measurable, moderate, short-term reduction in state anxiety in non-clinical samples. That is a real and useful effect. It is not a cure for clinical anxiety, and framing coloring as a treatment for anxiety disorders is a category error and, in the marketing context, arguably a harmful one.
Van der Vennet and Serice (2012) supports this claim; Curry and Kasser (2005) is more equivocal (mandala and plaid conditions both produced significant reductions). The current best-supported claim is that structured, moderately-complex geometric coloring outperforms unstructured coloring. A specifically mandala-related advantage is plausible but the evidence is thinner than the popular framing suggests.
“Scientifically proven” is not language scientists use. What the evidence supports is: for the specific intervention that was tested (twenty minutes of structured mandala or geometric coloring), and the specific outcome that was measured (state anxiety on the STAI), the effect has been replicated across independent labs. That is meaningful. It is not the same as “proven.”
A trustworthy account of coloring's value means saying honestly where it sits relative to other well-studied practices. The following is a comparative table across four low-cost self-directed practices. Grades in the “evidence strength” column reflect the size and quality of the empirical literature.
| Practice | Evidence strength for mood & anxiety | Time cost per session | Skill barrier | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aerobic exercise | Large. Effects on mood are among the best-supported findings in behavioral psychology. | 20–45 min | Low | You want the largest reliable mood effect and can physically exercise. |
| Mindfulness meditation | Substantial with caveats. Effects are real but smaller than often claimed, particularly in short-term programs. | 10–30 min | Moderate (developing the skill takes practice) | You want to train sustained attention as a general capacity, not just relief in the moment. |
| Expressive journaling | Substantial for processing specific emotions and events. Effects on generalized mood are more mixed. | 15–30 min | Low, but requires willingness to engage verbally with difficult content | You have a specific stressful event or emotional situation to process. |
| Mandala coloring | Small but real. Short-term state anxiety reduction well-established; broader effects preliminary. | 20 min | None | You want a non-verbal, low-stakes attention-redirection practice. Useful when journaling or meditation feel too demanding, or as a transition activity. |
The honest positioning: coloring is not the strongest intervention on this list. Exercise is. But coloring's niche is real: a non-verbal, near-zero-skill, sensorily rewarding practice that produces measurable mood benefits at low cost. It works well as a repeatable transition activity, and as a supportive practice alongside other things. It is not competitive with exercise for headline mood effects, and it should not be marketed as though it were.
Yes, in the specific sense that has been tested. Curry and Kasser's 2005 controlled study in Art Therapy showed a statistically significant reduction in state anxiety among undergraduates who colored a mandala for twenty minutes compared with those who colored a plaid pattern or a blank sheet. Van der Vennet and Serice replicated the effect in 2012. The evidence base is small but consistent for short-term state-anxiety reduction after brief coloring sessions.
Twenty minutes is the session length used in Curry and Kasser's original 2005 study and in van der Vennet and Serice's 2012 replication. Kaimal, Ray and Muniz (2016) measured cortisol changes after a 45-minute art-making session and found a significant reduction. Shorter sessions have not been systematically studied. The evidence-anchored answer is: aim for a 20-minute session as a floor.
No, they are related but not identical. Coloring engages the hands and eyes in a structured task, which can produce a state of absorbed attention (sometimes described as flow) that shares some phenomenological features with meditative concentration. Formal meditation trains attention as an end in itself; coloring uses a task-based anchor. Flett et al. (2017) directly compared coloring against a puzzle control on mindfulness measures and found no significant advantage for coloring on the mindfulness axis specifically, though coloring did produce larger anxiety and depression benefits.
No. Art therapy is a clinical practice conducted by a credentialed therapist and involves a therapeutic relationship. Coloring pre-drawn templates as a self-directed activity is not art therapy; the American Art Therapy Association has issued clarifying statements distinguishing the two. Self-directed coloring can be therapeutic in the informal sense of the word, and may share some of the mechanisms studied in the coloring literature, but it is not a substitute for professional care where that is needed.
The controlled studies specifically test mandala coloring against other coloring conditions. Curry and Kasser (2005) compared mandala coloring to plaid-pattern coloring and to blank-paper coloring; the mandala and plaid conditions both outperformed blank-paper. The specific advantage of the mandala over the plaid is less clear-cut in that study; the replication by van der Vennet and Serice (2012) more strongly supported mandala-specific effects. The current best-supported claim is that structured, moderately complex geometric coloring reduces state anxiety more than free drawing; a mandala-specific advantage over other structured patterns is possible but not conclusively established.
One study — Kaimal, Ray and Muniz (2016) at Drexel University — measured salivary cortisol before and after a 45-minute art-making session in 39 adults and found a statistically significant reduction. Seventy-five percent of participants showed lower cortisol after the session. The art-making in that study was open-ended, not specifically mandala coloring; it included coloring, drawing, collage and modeling clay. So the cortisol claim is supported for art-making broadly, and there is no reason to expect coloring specifically to be excluded — but the direct experiment on mandala coloring and cortisol has not been published.
Flett, Lie, Riordan and colleagues (2017) at the University of Otago followed 115 adult women for a week, with half randomly assigned to color daily and half to complete a logic puzzle. The coloring group showed larger reductions in self-reported depressive symptoms and anxiety at week's end. This is preliminary evidence and the effect size was modest. It should not be taken to mean that coloring treats clinical depression; the appropriate reading is that it may function as a low-cost supportive practice in mild-to-moderate low-mood states.
The direct evidence is thin. There is a general clinical intuition, and some case-series evidence, that structured art activities including coloring can be a useful part of behavioral interventions for children with attentional difficulties. There are no large-scale controlled trials specifically on mandala coloring and ADHD symptom reduction. Anyone making decisions about ADHD care should be doing so with a qualified clinician; coloring is at best a supportive activity, not a treatment.
The controlled studies used moderately detailed mandalas; there is no direct head-to-head comparison of bold-and-easy versus fine-detail designs on anxiety outcomes. The bold-and-easy style — thick lines, fewer regions, more open space — is designed for accessibility (easier for beginners, seniors with visual or motor difficulties, and children) and for shorter sessions. The plausible expectation is that it will produce a similar effect for a similar reason (structured absorbed attention), and that it may work better than fine-detail designs when the fine detail becomes frustrating rather than absorbing.
The best-supported mechanism combines three components: (1) attention absorption — a repetitive, mildly demanding task occupies working memory and displaces rumination; (2) mild sensory pleasure — the physical act of laying down pigment provides low-grade sensorimotor reward; (3) predictable structure — a bounded geometric field with a clear task-completion signal reduces the load of decision-making. The Curry & Kasser mechanism discussion emphasizes structure and containment specifically; Flett et al. emphasize the flow-state aspect. Neither imaging nor neurotransmitter measures have been directly reported for mandala coloring, so mechanism claims below that level are speculative.
There is no evidence that specific colors or specific tools materially change the effect. Curry and Kasser used markers on standard paper. Van der Vennet and Serice used colored pencils. Both showed the effect. Kaimal et al. allowed participants to choose from several media. Choose the tools you enjoy handling — the mild sensory pleasure aspect of the mechanism means comfort matters more than any specific brand or color.
No. The studies show a measurable but modest short-term reduction in state anxiety after a brief structured session. That is a real effect and a useful tool in a broader repertoire. It is not a treatment for clinical anxiety disorders, for which established treatments include cognitive behavioral therapy, medication and other clinician-supervised approaches. If anxiety is significantly disrupting your life, the appropriate step is to talk with a qualified clinician; coloring can be part of your day, but not a substitute for care.
Coloring — including large-print and bold-line coloring — is widely used in dementia care settings and in reminiscence therapy protocols. Direct controlled evidence specifically on mandala coloring and dementia outcomes is limited, but the practice is generally regarded as safe, non-pharmacological, engaging, and useful for supporting attention and providing calming activity. This is one of the practical drivers behind the large-print bold-and-easy style.
Journaling, exercise, mindfulness meditation and coloring share overlapping mechanisms (attention re-orientation, engagement of executive resources away from rumination), but they engage different systems. Exercise has by far the largest evidence base for general mood improvement. Journaling has substantial evidence for processing specific emotions. Mindfulness has substantial evidence with careful caveats. Coloring's specific niche is a low-cognitive-load, easily-repeatable, non-verbal practice — it works when writing or exercise are not accessible, tolerable, or wanted in the moment.
For most people, no — coloring is a low-risk activity with a mild positive effect. Two caveats worth naming. First, a coloring practice framed as productivity or self-optimization can defeat its own purpose; the effect appears to depend on absorbed low-stakes attention, and any framing that reintroduces performance pressure works against that. Second, and more importantly: if you are experiencing significant mental-health difficulties, coloring is not a substitute for professional care, and anyone marketing it as such (including websites selling coloring bundles) is overreaching the evidence.