Meditative Coloring: 50 Free Mandala Designs for Coloring In

by Denise Tempone @denise.tempone

Draw, design, and color in your own mandalas with this free app and website

Mandalas inspire artists of all disciplines: architects, illustrators, painters, embroiders, 3D designers, and beyond. They have a deep and ancient connection with meditative and spiritual practices, used to visually represent energy, waves, or even sound; they also appear as a form of self-expression in the field of art therapy.

If you're interested in understanding their influence on the arts, exploring the art form yourself and crafting your own designs is a great place to start.

Read on to find out more about mandalas and how to access loads of models to copy, color, or study.

A mandala design ready to print or color in digitally from the Color Mandala website.

What are mandalas?

In Sanskrit, mandala means circle. Circles, as symbols, are present in all cultures: we see them in the halos of sacred figures, in prayer rounds, and in other religious symbols that reflect a cyclical conception of the world. In India, mandalas date all the way back to the 8th century have long been used to facilitate meditation.

Mandalas inspire artists of all disciplines. Photo credit: Mandala design via Unsplash.

Mandalas can be drawings or paintings but can also be represented by ephemeral art, such as sand mandalas, which are erased after the performance of a ritual.

The main circle shape of a mandala is filled with various geometric shapes and symbols that represent balance and harmony. These are often repeated in symmetrical patterns using striking color schemes.

Mandalas can be found in religious architecture.

Mandalas in art therapy

Mandalas are also used in art therapy, a form of psychotherapy that encourages people to explore their deepest emotions, enjoy freedom of expression, and communicate through artistic pursuits under the supervision and guidance of a trained art therapist.

In such contexts, some people find the visual impact of mandalas—and the practice of coloring, drawing, or designing them—helpful for lowering anxiety and immersing themselves in a meditative practice.

Design by Domestika teacher Lizzie Snow, a visual artist specializing in geometric mandala design.

How do you make art with mandalas?

There are many ways to approach mandalas artistically. One easy way is to color in templates—for which you'll only need basic materials like crayons, colored pencils, chalks, pastels, paint, or markers in various colors. Alternatively, there are platforms that allow you to color in mandalas online (even from your cell phone if you're traveling or on the go).

Contrary to what many believe, when coloring, it's better to try not to overthink the choice of shades and not to worry about combining them. The idea is to let your instinct guide you. Those who recommend coloring mandalas as a means to lower anxiety often believe that there is an inherent intelligence in these designs that allow an intuitive choice.

You can color, embroider, or collage mandalas. Photo credit: Swati H. Das via Unsplash.

Mandalas can also be embroidered or crafted using collage techniques. Whatever your chosen method, understanding the shape of mandalas can serve you in many forms of art, from architecture to video editing and 3D imaging.

Free mandala to color in

If you're just starting to explore mandalas or looking for a therapeutic coloring exercise, you can find up to fifty different shapes on the free resource and app, Color Mandala—all of which you can either print out or color them online. (You don't need to download the app, but the option is available if you want to save your designs).

Examples of mandala designs to download or color online on Color Mandala.

Color Mandala also features tools to create your own designs with shapes to choose from including diamonds, polygons, circles, flowers, braids, twists, open stars, leaves, hearts, overlapping circles, and rectangles.

If you want to experiment with coloring in, designing your own mandalas, or even discovering new templates for your embroidery projects, check out the Color Mandala website here.

If you're inspired to explore the art of mandalas in more depth, check out visual artist Lizzie Snow's course, The Art of Mandala Drawing: Create Geometric Patterns, in which you'll find out all about the meditative practice of mandala drawing by exploring ink techniques like hatching, line work, and stippling.

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