The way we see and perceive color each day greatly impacts our lives, though it does so on a mostly subconscious level. Understanding color psychology and how colors can be useful to help relieve anxiety and stress is a way to make the most out of the atmospheres you surround yourself in each day.
Why Colors Impact Us Emotionally
Seeing various colors can evoke emotion in us due to connections with real-life experience as well as how we feel a color is interpreted. While some colors are bright or dark by nature, others are muted or paler in comparison, allowing for drastically different interpretations.
Color Psychology in Marketing
Color psychology is one of the most common tricks used in marketing in order to encourage shoppers to make purchases or to remember brands and advertisements a brand is currently running. The color green is often used with companies that are trying to promote sales or work with money (such as banks or financial apps). The color green helps to encourage shopping while also putting trust in the brand, relating the color itself to money.
In many corporate situations, businesses choose to go with the color blue, as it symbolizes trustworthiness and professionalism. Because of the neutrality and trustworthiness associated with the color blue and businesses, companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and even Reddit have all defaulted to using the color blue to draw in new users while keeping the attention of current ones.
Peaceful and Calming Colors
Peaceful and calming colors are also found in advertising and marketing along with plenty of pampering and soothing products on the market. Popular peaceful and calming colors include pale and light blues and greens, along with deeper muted versions of the colors. Blue and green often symbolize serenity and a sheer sense of calmness, ideal for office or bedroom settings where the goal is to either remain focused or relaxed.
Coloring Books for Adults
Once you have a basic understanding of color psychology and how colors impact your mood, consider coloring books for adults to help alleviate stress and worry while allowing you to relax and unwind. Adult coloring books are great ways to integrate soothing colors while calming the mind and reducing the amount of anxiety you feel at any given time. Additionally, coloring books are affordable on most budgets and provide plenty of opportunity to get creative in your downtime.
Becoming more familiar with colors and how they typically make us feel is a great way to rearrange decor in the home or change up an entire wardrobe. Surrounding yourself with the right colors and including additional positive external influences such as an adult coloring book is a way to relieve anxiety and stress while allowing you to remain relaxed, focused, and at peace.
Adult coloring is not a new concept, but it’s one many people aren’t sure they understand. Sure, coloring is fun. It reminds you of a simpler time in your life when you were a child and coloring was a fun pastime. Now it’s an escape, and it reminds you of the joy found in simplicity. What you might not know is coloring in an adult coloring book is more than a fun pastime. It’s a mental break filled with benefits designed to help you ease stress.
Adult Coloring Calms You
Have you heard of amygdala? If not, you’ve certainly heard of a fight or flight response. This is what happens when you’re overwhelmed, overworked, and anxious. It gets worked up and leaves you feeling panicked. Coloring helps calm the amygdala, which can help you focus on a more positive life experience.
Adult Coloring Encourages Mindfulness
It takes a great deal of time and effort to color a page in a book made for adults. It takes precision and careful thought, which can help you manifest mindfulness. It’s a great way to help you focus. When you learn to focus and be genuinely present in the moment, you learn to be more mindful. Mindfulness helps you in other areas of your life, such as finding enjoyment in the simple things. What you might not know you can focus on your mindfulness while you color, and you can sharpen the tools you use to practice being more present in life.
Adult Coloring Relieves Stress
Stress isn’t always negative. Many forms of stress are actually quite helpful in that they help you focus on things that need your attention. This is called positive stress that motivates you to work harder and more efficiently. When stress is overwhelming, however, it’s negative. This kind of negative stress occurs when you focus on things you can’t change in life no matter how hard you think about them or focus on them. It stems from worry, which is a wasted emotion.
Adult coloring books take your mind off the things you fear or worry about, and it helps you focus on the here and now. It’s much like mindfulness only it allows you to feel calmer and less stressed. You might even walk away from your coloring pages with a renewed sense of energy and a newfound sense of peace thanks to the stress relief.
Adult coloring books are an excellent way to improve mental health. You needn’t suffer from health issues to use these books to help you improve your life, either. Even if you aren’t anxious or too stressed, you can benefit from adult coloring. It’s designed to remind you of the simple pleasures life has to offer.
If you’re feeling a bit silly, confused, or even a little embarrassed to begin coloring as an adult, put those fears to the side. Adult coloring is simple, it’s fun, and it’s beneficial to your mind and your health. Getting started is the hardest part. Once you realize just how peaceful and calm coloring makes you feel, you’ll be recommending it to everyone you know as a way of relaxing and focusing on what’s good in life. Here’s how you get started.
Buy a Few Supplies
You don’t need anything fancy to begin coloring. You can get a piece of blank paper, a crayon or some colored pencils, and you can color. You don’t need a picture because you can draw something and color it. Even if it’s just your name in big bubble letters, you’re coloring. You don’t need much of anything to color as an adult. You can buy what you want or feel you need. Know that there is no right or wrong way to color as an adult.
Sit Down and Start
Keep in mind there is no one but you present while you color. You needn’t show your artwork to anyone if you don’t feel comfortable doing so. All you need to do is sit down and color. Don’t let yourself feel self-conscious or strange about it. You’re the only one here, the only one looking at your work, and you are the only person judging yourself. Let that go and just color. Don’t worry about being perfect. Just worry about doing what you want to do to make the kind of art you want to make.
Focus on Coloring When You’re Overwhelmed
Do you recognize your body’s signs and what it’s trying to tell you about things? If you do, you probably recognize when you feel a bit overwhelmed or out of sorts. You know when you’re stressed or overworked, and you know you can do things to counteract that. Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is sit back and take a break from what’s bothering you with a coloring book.
Coloring is inexpensive, it’s easy, and it’s a great way to de-stress and unwind. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, this is a tool that can help you feel better about life by clearing your mind and allowing to you go feel more in control. Try it and see how well it works for you.
As a child, coloring was just a fun learning activity. Adults have come to realize that coloring has many soothing benefits in a world full of stresses. Relaxing with a coloring book is simple. Grab a child’s coloring book from the dollar store, open a fresh box of crayons and begin. If you want a more adult feeling when you color, here are some suggestions that may help:
Coloring Page Choices
You don’t have to settle for a juvenile coloring book. Today there are fantastic adult coloring books with geometric patterns, beautiful pictures and intricate designs. Choose a wonderful geometric design and color each repeating block a different color. Decide to create repeating color schemes (squares are blue, circles are orange) or do a picture in all pastel colors. The choice is completely up to you – whatever makes you happy. That is the wonderful thing about coloring.
What Will You Use?
Today, adults who enjoy coloring are not limited to a box of waxy crayons (they are great, though!) to color their landscapes and Greek goddesses. Select a box of pre-sharpened colored pencils for a more mature coloring experience. There are plenty of other options, too. Opt for pens in a kaleidoscope of colors; decide that chalk or oil pastels are what your artwork needs. The only limit of your mediums is your mind. You can choose to mix-and-match your coloring choices for different textures and color depths.
Picture Pages
You are not limited to coloring books for your pleasure, either. Try some posters that come with markers for your coloring fun. Superheroes, princesses, kittens – the list is almost endless. Just pick a picture that makes you smile. You could pick up a tiny picture to color or a full poster-sized image. Print them off from your home printer. It’s easy to find wonderful subject matter online.
Relax Like an Adult
The key to coloring fun is to have fun. Relax. Stretch out on your bean bag or a rug in front of the fireplace. Pour a glass of wine. Put on some music that makes you mellow (maybe some Kenny G?) and grab your crayons. Block out the rest of the world, the ringing phone, the pressing matters at work. This is your time. Make light strokes or press down on the crayons for heavy, thick color. Remember- this is your time. This is your art. This is your relaxation. Have it your way.
When you were a child, you probably enjoyed using crayons and a coloring book, and today, you can also enjoy this activity by using adult coloring pages. There are multiple mental health benefits from coloring therapy, so you should participate in this activity as much as possible.
Eliminating Your Mental Stress
Mental stress is detrimental for your health, and it can lead to physical problems. If you have constant stress, then you can develop high blood pressure or digestive issues. Rather than using food or alcohol to relieve your stress after a difficult workday, keep an assortment of coloring pages and beautiful crayons ready at home.
Relieving Your Depression
If you feel depressed, then coloring therapy can lift your mood. When you are feeling sad, you can choose brightly colored crayons and coloring pages that have a positive or happy theme. Use crayon colors such as yellow, orange or red to stimulate the emotional center of your brain while you create artwork such as flowers. While coloring, concentrate on positive thoughts and say positive affirmations to yourself.
Preventing Dementia Conditions
When you are worried about developing dementia, use adult coloring books and an assortment of crayons or color pencils to create gorgeous artwork. You can find adult coloring books and pages that will stimulate the synapses in your brain so that you won’t develop Alzheimer’s disease. It is easy to take coloring pages and crayons with you to other locations such as when you are visiting your grandchildren.
Reducing Your Anxiety Levels
If you suffer from anxiety, then find adult coloring books that focus on mindfulness so that you can feel better. The best crayon colors to reduce anxiety include shades of blue or pale pink. These soothing colors can help you to feel calmer, and you will notice that your breathing becomes slower while your symptoms of digestive stress decline when you use an adult coloring book.
Stimulating Your Own Creativity
After using adult coloring pages for a few weeks, you may notice that you are more creative. In addition to coloring with crayons, you might want to write poetry, play the piano or paint on a canvas. When it has been many years since you enjoyed creating any type of art, coloring with crayons can stimulate the part of your brain that is creative.
Do you find yourself feeling stressed and tense, to the point that you feel you’re going to burst? Pull out a coloring book, seriously. What might have once seemed like a leisure activity for elementary school-aged children has now become one of the hottest trends in terms of stress reduction. Here are some ways that coloring can help reduce stress in your life.
You can’t color mindlessly. If you’re trying to color while watching TV or talking on the phone, you’re not going to be able to focus on it and your work will suffer. In order to get the most out of your coloring book, you need to get rid of distractions.
Put your phone on silent and turn off the TV. Set a timer for about 20 minutes and just color. Focus on the page (or pages) you’re working with and just notice the sensations. Pay attention to the color of the colored pencils and how they feel on the paper. When the timer ends, you might feel motivated to keep going. If you do, listen to it. This shows that you’ve gotten in the zone. You might soon find that coloring is your go-to method when it comes to reducing stress.
Many people find that their creative endeavors help them feel less stressed. After a long day, some people like to pick up their instrument or write some poetry. You can make coloring a form of expression. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t create the images you’re coloring. The additions you’re making via the coloring can make for an incredible display of creativity.
Before coloring, evaluate your mood and how you would like to reflect that mood on the page. You might be feeling tense and want to use calming colors like light blue or gray. You might also be feeling angry and want to use aggressive colors like red to get your rage out. Additionally, you might not be sure how you’re feeling and use an assortment of colors.
If you’ve looked into cures for stress, you’ve likely read about or practiced meditation. In a mindfulness meditation practice, you work to alleviate stress by sitting in quiet solitude, observing your breath. By focusing on your breath, you can reduce the power of thoughts.
Similarly, coloring gives you something to focus clearly on. As you bring the colored pencil across the page, you can feel like there is nothing else in the world that matters at this moment. You might be aware of your concerns outside of this practice, but you can put them on hold. Instead, your focus can be on the moment and your process.
Mindful coloring is a very simple concept. It is the art of coloring while practicing mindfulness. Being mindful is all about being in the moment and being engaged and involved in what’s going on around you. The art of mindfulness is lost on so many these days. The presence of cell phones and instant access to the lives of millions of people across the world is so tempting. Many people miss out on the basic pleasures and the simple little things in life because they are so focused on doing more than one thing at a time they have no idea how to be mindful. Adult coloring is here to change that.
How is Coloring Mindful?
Mindful coloring is simple. You are busy coloring, which means you’re busy doing one thing. You can’t color and carry on a conversation with the kids. You can’t color and watch a television show or cook dinner. You can focus on one thing, and you then clear your mind of everything as you choose colors, work to stay within the lines, and you focus on what you’re doing.
Mindful Coloring is A Teaching Tool
This is the type of teaching tool you use to help you create better habits. Mindful coloring allows you to learn to clear your mind and focus on the task at hand. The task here is the page you are coloring, but it transcends into other areas of your life as well. When you learn to be mindful while coloring, you’re learning the tools to practice mindfulness in other areas of your life.
Mindful Coloring is Relaxing
One of the biggest benefits of mindful coloring is the way it relaxes you. You’re no longer focused on all the things that overwhelm you and make you feel down or stressed. You’re focused on something so simple and so easy, and you are really focused on it. You don’t have to sit back and think about it further. You are now engaged in something that doesn’t bring you stress or anxiety, and it relaxes you. Many people use this tool when they feel angry or upset as a way of calming down and focusing.
Coloring is beneficial to anyone, even if you are a little worried you seem childish. This thought process is not uncommon, but it’s one that’s quickly changed once you realize just how beneficial it is and how it’s not childish at all. If you begin to practice mindful coloring, it won’t take you long at all to realize it’s beneficial to you in more ways than one. It can help you change your life for the better over time.