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Coloring Book Statistics 2026: Sales, Trends and Fun Facts

Updated · 50 facts, each with its source and year

The short answer

Coloring books are bestsellers again. In 2025, four of Brazil's five best-selling books were Bobbie Goods coloring books (more than 1.5 million copies combined), and two Coco Wyo titles made Australia's overall top 10. US children's coloring and activity books sold 16.7 million copies in 2025, up 18%. UK sales of Coco Wyo books rose 478% in 2025 up to early November. At the 2015 peak, the US sold 12 million coloring books, up from 1 million in 2014.

Key takeaways

  • The second coloring boom is global. Brazil, Australia and the US saw coloring books near the top of the charts in 2025, and in the UK Coco Wyo drove almost all the growth in arts and crafts books.
  • Simple, "cozy" and "bold & easy" styles lead — unlike the intricate designs of the 2015 boom.
  • A few brands drive it: Coco Wyo (a quarter of US coloring books sold in 2026 so far) and Bobbie Goods.
  • Adults are a big share of buyers: over half of Crayola's household purchases in 2024 came from homes without children.
  • AI has arrived: the top-grossing US coloring app in late 2025 was AI-based.

Who buys coloring books?

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  • More than half of household purchases of Crayola products in 2024 came from households without children, according to Crayola's CMO (Chief Marketer, 2025).
  • US toy sales for recipients aged 18 and over rose 18% in the first half of 2025, and arts and crafts toys rose 4% (Circana) (The Toy Association, 2025).
  • 20% of adults in England did painting, drawing, printmaking, calligraphy or coloring in 2024/25 (DCMS Participation Survey, 2025).
  • In a 2015 Nielsen survey, 71% of US adult coloring book buyers were women and the largest age group was 18–29 (Nielsen, 2016).

Coloring pages for adults →

How big was the 2015 adult coloring book boom?

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  • About 12 million coloring books were sold in the US in 2015, up from about 1 million in 2014 (Nielsen BookScan) (Nielsen, 2016).
  • More than 2,000 coloring books were published in the US in 2015, against about 300 in 2014 (Nielsen, 2016).
  • US sales of colored pencils rose 47% to $128.2 million in the year to April 2016 (Nielsen, 2016).
  • Johanna Basford's Secret Garden holds the Guinness World Record for best-selling adult coloring book in a year, with an estimated 2,213,988 copies sold worldwide in the year to May 7, 2016 (Guinness World Records, 2016).
  • Secret Garden had sold 3 million copies in China and 6.8 million worldwide by August 2015 (The Bookseller, 2015).
  • In 2015 coloring books made Amazon's annual US best-seller list for the first time, with Enchanted Forest at No. 13 (Amazon, 2015).
  • The UK arts and crafts book category, where many adult coloring books are filed, rose 261% in volume in 2015, then fell 22% in value in 2016 and 31% in 2017 (The Bookseller, 2018).
  • In the week ending March 21, 2020, as US schools closed, weekly sales of coloring and art supplies rose 86% (NPD) (Licensing International, 2020).
Coloring books sold in the US
2014
1 million
2015
12 million

Source: Nielsen BookScan, 2016

Crayola facts

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  • Crayola makes nearly 3 billion crayons a year, an average of 12 million a day (Crayola FAQ).
  • Crayola crayons come in 269 unique colors as of 2026: 121 regular and 148 in specialty lines (Crayola FAQ).
  • The first box of Crayola crayons, sold in 1903, held eight colors and cost a nickel (Crayola FAQ).
  • In 2025 Crayola brought eight retired colors back for the first time in its 122-year history (Crayola, 2025).
  • Cerulean topped Crayola's 2025 global color vote; blue had been America's favorite in 1993 and 2000 (Crayola FAQ).
  • Crayola renamed its "flesh" crayon "peach" in 1962, recognizing that skin tones differ (Crayola FAQ).
  • Crayola Creativity Week 2025 drew more than 13 million students from 122 countries, according to Crayola (International Literacy Association, 2025).
  • Faber-Castell, the German pencil and art-supply maker, had revenue of €601.8 million in 2024/25, down 2.7% (Faber-Castell, 2026).

How much art do children get at school?

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  • In a 2025 YouGov survey of 569 UK primary teachers, 18% said they teach no art in an average week (NSEAD / YouGov for art-K, 2025).
  • Arts GCSE entries in England fell 42% between 2010 and 2023, and arts teaching hours in secondary schools fell 21% between 2011/12 and 2022/23 (Cultural Learning Alliance, 2024).
  • In a 2023 Ipsos poll of 3,062 US adults, 9 in 10 said it is important for students to get an arts education (Americans for the Arts, 2023).
  • A 2024 Crayola study found more than 60% of US parents either don't think their children get enough creative activity or aren't sure (Lehigh Valley Public Media, 2024).
  • 83% of US public elementary schools offered visual arts in 2009–10, the latest national survey (NCES, 2012).

History and world records

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  • The "Little Folks" Painting Book (1879), outline engravings by Kate Greenaway with verses by George Weatherly for children to color, is often cited as one of the first coloring books (Internet Archive, 1879 copy).
  • The Executive Coloring Book, made by three Chicago advertising men in 1961, is generally cited as the first coloring book for adults (The New Republic, 2015).
  • The longest coloring page on record is 520 meters (1,706 ft), made in Beijing in September 2025 (Guinness World Records, 2025).
  • The largest coloring book on record measures 16.85 m² (181 sq ft), made in Nanjing, China, in May 2021 (Guinness World Records, 2021).
  • The largest display of coloring pages is 7,284, set in Fukushima, Japan, in November 2021 (Guinness World Records, 2021).
  • The record for most people coloring at once is 6,210, set in Madurai, India, in January 2020 (Guinness World Records, 2020).
  • The world's largest crayon, verified in October 2017, is 5.21 m (17 ft 1 in) long and weighs 681 kg (1,502 lb) (Guinness World Records, 2017).

Questions

Are adult coloring books still popular?
Yes. In the first half of 2025, the four best-selling US young adult nonfiction books were adult coloring books, Coco Wyo titles made Australia's top 10, and UK sales of Coco Wyo rose 478% up to early November 2025.
What are the best-selling coloring books right now?
Coco Wyo (a quarter of US coloring books sold in 2026 so far) and Bobbie Goods (four of Brazil's top five books in 2025), both in simple "cozy" or "bold & easy" styles.
How many coloring books are sold each year?
US children's coloring and activity books sold 16.7 million copies in 2025 (Circana). At the 2015 adult peak, the US sold about 12 million coloring books (Nielsen).
How big is the coloring book market?
Nobody publishes a reliable figure. Paid research estimates of the global adult coloring book market in 2025 range from about $150 million to $1.8 billion.
What was the first coloring book?
The "Little Folks" Painting Book (1879, Kate Greenaway) is often cited as one of the first; the first for adults is generally said to be The Executive Coloring Book (1961).

Sources and method

Sales figures come from NielsenIQ and Circana BookScan as reported by Publishers Weekly, The Bookseller, PublishNews (Brazil) and Books+Publishing (Australia). Company facts come from company pages and named executives. Records come from Guinness World Records. App figures are Sensor Tower estimates or store listings and are marked as such. Paid market-size estimates are shown as a range because they disagree.

All 38 sources
  1. Hot Activity Book Sector Offers Screen-Free Fun — Publishers Weekly, 2026
  2. Print Book Sales Slipped in First Half of 2025 — Publishers Weekly, 2025
  3. Print Book Sales Dipped 0.9% This Winter — Publishers Weekly, 2025
  4. More Bold Than Cozy: Drama In The Coloring Book Community — Book Riot, 2024
  5. The rise of 'cozy coloring' — CNN, 2025
  6. Going loco for Coco: Coco Wyo bucks the trend in Handicrafts — The Bookseller, 2025
  7. Quatro dos cinco mais vendidos em 2025 são livros de colorir — PublishNews, 2026
  8. Varejo de livros cresce em 2025 e supera R$ 3 bilhões em faturamento — Terra (Nielsen Book / SNEL), 2026
  9. Livros de colorir representam 11% do total de exemplares vendidos — PublishNews, 2025
  10. Entre os 20 livros mais vendidos em livrarias brasileiras, 12 são livros de colorir — PublishNews, 2025
  11. What Australians read in 2025 — The Sydney Morning Herald, 2026
  12. Australian bestsellers in 2025 — Books+Publishing, 2026
  13. Crayola CMO crafts campaigns that resonate for adults — Chief Marketer, 2025
  14. Circana Reports First Half 2025 U.S. & Global Toy Industry Performance — The Toy Association, 2025
  15. DCMS Participation Survey 2024/25 annual data tables — DCMS, 2025
  16. Child's Play: Millennial Women Drive Sales of Adult Coloring Books — Nielsen, 2016
  17. Top 5 Drawing & Coloring Apps in the US: Q4 2025 — Sensor Tower, 2026
  18. Happy Color – Google Play listing — Google Play, 2026
  19. Pinterest Wedding Trends Report 2026 — Pinterest, 2026
  20. Adult Coloring Book Market — DataHorizzon Research, 2026
  21. Adult Coloring Book Market, Global Industry Size — TechSci Research (via GII), 2026
  22. Best-selling adult colouring book (current) — Guinness World Records, 2016
  23. Basford's Secret Garden reaches 3m sales in China — The Bookseller, 2015
  24. Amazon Announces Best-Selling Books of 2015 — Amazon, 2015
  25. Colour money: craft market realigns following record colouring-fuelled years — The Bookseller, 2018
  26. U.S. Families Turn to Activity-Based Toys, Books and Art Supplies (NPD) — Licensing International, 2020
  27. Crayola FAQs (production, colors, 1903 box, favorite color, peach) — Crayola
  28. Crayola Brings Back Retired Crayon Color Collection — Crayola, 2025
  29. Crayola Creativity Week — International Literacy Association, 2025
  30. Faber-Castell zieht positives Fazit zur Fachmesse Ambiente — Faber-Castell, 2026
  31. Survey reveals a decline in pupils' fine motor skills (YouGov for art-K) — NSEAD, 2025
  32. Cultural Learning Alliance Report Card 2024 — CfEY / Cultural Learning Alliance, 2024
  33. Americans Speak Out About the Arts in 2023 — Americans for the Arts / Ipsos, 2023
  34. Crayola launches Campaign for Creativity — Lehigh Valley Public Media, 2024
  35. Arts Education in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools: 1999–2000 and 2009–10 — NCES, 2012
  36. The "Little Folks" painting book (catalogue record) — Internet Archive, 1879
  37. The Radical History of 1960s Adult Coloring Books — The New Republic, 2015
  38. Guinness World Records: longest page, largest book, largest display, most people coloring, largest crayon — Guinness World Records, 2017–2025

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