How to Give a Coloring Book as a Gift Without It Feeling Like a Filler Present

A coloring book is one of the easiest gifts to get wrong and one of the best to get right. Wrong, it reads as something grabbed near the till. Right, it is the present someone is still using in March, which is more than most gifts manage.

The difference is almost entirely in the choosing.

Match the book to the person, not to the category

"She likes crafts" is not enough to go on. The useful question is what kind of evening she would use it in.

• Someone who winds down with the television on wants big shapes and low detail. She is half watching something. A page of microscopic mandalas will sit untouched.
• Someone who wants to disappear into it properly wants detail and a scene to get lost in. Give her a simple book and she will finish a page in ten minutes and feel nothing.
• Someone who has said she is not artistic needs a book with thick lines and obvious spaces, because the fear is not of coloring, it is of ruining something. Thick lines make it feel possible.
• Someone who already colors has supplies and standards. Her complaint will be tiny gaps, grey shading, or a design printed on the back of the one she just ruined. Buy accordingly.

The four things worth checking before you buy

Single sided printing. Look for "one design per page" or "single sided". If there is artwork on both sides of the sheet, every marker page ruins another one. This is the single most common complaint in coloring book reviews.

How big the spaces are. Look at the sample images. If it looks like lace, it is a specialist interest, not a general gift.

Whether there is grey or solid black in it. Areas already filled with black are areas taken away from the person coloring. Some books are half decided before she opens them.

Who is in it. If you are buying for a woman in her fifties, a book where every figure is a twenty year old with the same face is a small, quiet insult. Books exist that draw adults as adults.

What to pair it with, so it is a real present

A book on its own can feel thin. A book plus the right pens feels considered, and the pens are the part that decides whether she enjoys it.

• Safest pairing: a set of dual tip water based brush pens. Brush end for filling, fine end for edges, and far less likely to bleed through than alcohol markers.
• If she already has pens: a pad of white cardstock, so she can print or trace pages and use anything she likes on them without worrying.
• If she is a pencil person: a decent sharpener beats twelve more colors. Blunt pencils make flat looking pages.
• Do not buy the hundred marker set as the safe generous choice. Twelve good pens beat a hundred chalky ones and she will know the difference immediately.

There is a longer version of all of that on the supplies page, with honest notes on which things are genuinely worth buying first.

Three gift shapes that work

The quiet one. The book, a set of pens, and a note that says this is an hour that belongs to you. That is the whole gift and it lands.

The pair. Two copies of the same book, one for each of you, so it becomes something shared rather than something she does alone. Works particularly well for a sister, a mother, or a friend who lives far away.

The one with a page already colored. Color one page yourself first, badly, and leave it in the front. It gives permission, it is funny, and it removes the pressure of the blank first page. This is the version people remember.

Wrap it so it does not read as filler

Take the shrink wrap off. Put a ribbon around the middle. Write the note on the inside of the front cover rather than on a card that gets lost. A coloring book with a handwritten date and a line in it becomes a keepsake, and it costs nothing.

If you are posting it, a large envelope with a stiffener is fine. It is a paperback; it travels well.

The books here, if they suit

Kindred Creations is an autumn coloring book: women in knitwear, pumpkins, porches, plants carried home. It is drawn as scenes rather than patterns, which makes it the easier gift for someone who is not sure she is artistic.

Gilded Calm is art deco, made specifically for women over 40, with fifty designs and a lot of open space. It is the more elegant present of the two, and it looks expensive.

Both are 8.5 by 11 inches, one design per page, nothing printed on the reverse, thick lines and no grey fill. Those choices exist because of the complaints in the section above.

If you are not sure which, three free pages are here. Print one, see if it suits her, then decide.

The last word

The reason this gift works is not the book. It is that you handed someone a reason to sit down for twenty minutes without apologising for it. Almost nobody gives themselves that. Being the person who did is the actual present.