ADULT colouring books, championed as a way of reducing stress and anxiety, appear to be going mainstream. They have appeared in the Irish bestsellers list for the first time, holding a position in the top 10 non-fiction titles consistently since July.
Last week, two colouring books occupied eighth and ninth place in the Irish paperback non-fiction charts, selling nearly 300 copies between them. In August, Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Colouring Book was in second position on the chart, while The Mindfulness Colouring Book was sixth.
The Irish model Rozanna Purcell, radio presenter Daniella Moyles and television presenter Angela Scanlon are advocates of colouring as a method of relaxation.
The trend is also helping bookstores, which are experiencing a decline in sales in other genres. Last week WH Smith credited colouring-therapy books with helping the chain to increase its profits over the past six months.
Stephen Boylan, books category manager at Eason, said staff had been hearing about adult colouring as a trend for several months but only noticed sales pick up in the past six to eight weeks. Eason currently has 30 to 35 types of adult colouring books on sale. “It started in France a couple of years ago and it’s been travelling across. It started to take off for us only in recent weeks and it’s fantastic,” he said.
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Johanna Basford’s Secret Garden and Enchanted Forest are the biggest sellers at Eason, while new titles are constantly being published.
“We’ve seen a lot of different themes: nature, cities, mandala symbols, and those kinds of designs,” said Boylan.
“What we’re seeing now is moving into a more geeky and nerdy space. There are colouring books coming for Game of Thrones, for Harry Potter, and The Hobbit. The subject matter is starting to expand. People are picking up two or three at a time because they just want to see which ones they prefer.”
Diane O Doherty, a postgraduate student living in Limerick, has been using adult colouring books for the past year. She spends 30 to 60 minutes colouring most evenings as a way to relax. On public transport, she uses an app that allows her to colour on her mobile phone.
“As a person I’m organised and a bit of a perfectionist so I like small details,” she said. “Some of the colouring books on the market let me bring out my creative side but also offer a means of zoning out. I have a busy schedule at the moment and I have suffered anxiety attacks in the past, so I liked the fact that colouring could be seen as art therapy and to promote mindfulness and self-care.”
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Purcell, who also runs a health-food website, said she came to colouring after trying several other forms of mindfulness, such as daily gratitude, meditation and body scans. None of them worked for her, but once she started colouring she was hooked.
Boylan said it was difficult to determine whether adult colouring would be a fad. He said the practice was linked to mindfulness, a form of meditation that has been going strong for several years.
“If people have bought a self-help book, then they are looking to have a more practical aspect,” he said. “As long as the mindfulness trend keeps going — and it doesn’t show any sign of slowing down — I think the colouring books will keep going to reinforce what people are learning in self-help books.”
O’Doherty said a lot of her friends had started to use colouring books and found them beneficial. “I think one of the reasons why it is so popular now is because people are under so much pressure, whether it’s stress from work, college or personal lives, that they are looking for something that allows them to switch off, even for a little while,” she said.
“It brings a lot of people back to when they were children and the feelings of being young and carefree.”
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