Rainbow Coloring Pages

Every band is empty

Black-and-white rainbows are almost always drawn with alternating dark and light bands, standing in for the colours. It looks right in a book and it is the worst thing you can do to a coloring page — half the arch arrives already filled, and the half you get is the half someone else chose. On all twenty of these pages the seven bands are separated by a single clean line and every one of them is left white.

Seven bands, and what to put in them

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet is the order, and it is worth keeping — but the arch also looks good in any seven shades of one colour, or in warm colours on one half and cool on the other. Colour the clouds last, in the palest tint you have, and the arch lifts off the page.

Rainbows somewhere new

Ten of the pages put the arch somewhere it is not usually found: inside a glass jar on a shelf, behind a hot air balloon, over the sea with a lighthouse, above a waterfall, over a cottage garden in full bloom, and set in the lead of a stained glass window.

Six pages for older colourists

The stained glass window, the cottage garden, the doodle sheet, the patterned rainbow, the flower frame and the mandala.

Pages for younger children

The kawaii rainbow with two smiling clouds, the classic arch with a sun, the hearts page and the balloons — big open bands and lines thick enough for a crayon.

Printing

Print at 100% scale rather than “fit to page”, and match the file to your paper — Letter or A4. The button at the top bundles all twenty into a single download.