It seems that the adult coloring book craze is at an all time high. If you visit Amazon, one of the world’s largest retailer’s, you will find that there are over 70,000 results for adult coloring books. There are coloring books covering all topics from animals, to architecture, cuss words, tattoos, and even desserts. Having a large selection is great, but it also makes it very difficult to find quality coloring books among the thousands of options.

What exactly makes a quality coloring book? Well, after years of working in the industry we would like to weigh in our opinion.

High Quality Coloring Designs and Assembly

The most important part of a coloring book are the designs in it. After all that is the first thing you look at when you are thinking about buying one, what the designs are. However, not all designs are created equal. I am about to let you in on a little secret, many coloring books on the market are thrown together by large publishers based on topic, with the designs being taken from massive stock “galleries”. This means that these designs are unoriginal and not made specifically for that book. Many times these designs are also low quality and can even appear pixelated.

A good coloring book should feature high quality, original designs. A truly great coloring book takes this a step further by using not only high quality designs, but also thinks of a coloring book as an art gallery in which the designs must be curated. The designs are specifically selected and arranged in the coloring book so that the colorist is constantly entertained, being introduced to a complex and intricate design, followed by a simpler one that can be a bit of break before being shown another complex one. This ensures the best possible coloring experience.

Thick Quality Paper

After a great design the next most important thing to consider about a coloring book is the paper that the designs are printed on. Many Amazon coloring books are printed using what is called CreateSpace. CreateSpace is Amazon’s self publishing service which has made it possible for anyone to become an author. It's an amazing and groundbreaking service that has drastically reduced the cost of print books, but CreateSpace was not meant for coloring books.

The paper that is used by CreateSpace is thin and not very absorbent. While this is fine for regular books like the service was designed for, this paper quality is not good enough to color on, and will allow a lot of bleed through possibly damaging other designs in the book. A quality coloring book should have thick paper that can absorb pen and marker ink, and that allows your coloring tool to smoothly glide over the page.

A Continuous Relationship

A great coloring book is not something that you buy once and forget about, it should establish a relationship. When the creators of a coloring book want to create a quality product they want to hear from the customer and make sure they are satisfied. They want to discover any mistakes they have made, or where they can improve in order to make the best product available. They also want their customers to connect and share their experiences.

Our goal here at Creatively Calm Studios has always been to create high quality coloring books that our customers love. We also want adult coloring book fans in general to be as knowledgeable on the industry as possible, because we believe that then you can enjoy things to the maximum. That’s why we started this blog - in order to share new coloring book advances and tips on how to improve your coloring.

With all this considered, we believe that we have produced not just 3, but 9 of the best adult coloring books on Amazon. We don’t say this lightly. We set out to create the best products that we can and hope that you feel the same way.

Our designs are created by multiple artists from around the world which keeps the designs from becoming stale. We also use some of the thickest paper in the industry and a dedicated printer with experience printing high quality products such as our coloring books. Finally, we love our customers and want you to share your art with one another. This is why we started the Creatively Calm Studios Facebook Coloring Club.

Check out our coloring book sets and let us show you why we think we make some of the best adult coloring books on Amazon.

Happy Coloring!