I do enjoy a colouring book. I’ve blogged about them often before as I go through little phases of indulging in them. I’ve pondered about the adult colouring book market, along with adult advent calendars, as maybe being a sign of the fall of our species and the apocalypse, but once again double down on taking part all the way. If you follow me on Instagram you’ll have seen my 1980s’ style My Little Pony duvet from my stories yesterday, so I am very much one of those adult children.

Adult colouring books are proven as useful stress relievers. I find them fun to do while listening to a podcast or audiobook. You can pick them up super cheap from places like The Works, or used book sellers on eBay. That might sound odd, but big resellers like WeBuyBooks and WorldofBooks on eBay have grading systems, and with the colouring books they are guaranteed to be blank.

I bought a handful of colouring books I had my eye on from those two sellers and similar on eBay and got them for £2 rather than £6 each new, and sure enough they’ve turned up as new. I got three Mid Century print colouring books (naturally) but the book I wanted to share with you that might have a broader appeal is ‘The Wallpaper Colouring Book’ curated & edited by Natalia Price-Cabrera, with illustrations by Gemma Latimer and Jessica Strokes.

It’s an absolutely fabulous book even on its own, uncoloured, as the pages are a nice thick quality, and there is a wealth of information about the eras of wallpaper design starting as early as 1730 right through to 2004.

Each era has a description of wallpaper of that time, with 2 pages of the print to practise colour schemes & combinations. You turn the page & have the most unique part of the book. The wallpaper print from that year is printed as if ‘hung’ on a 2 page spread, blank for you to colour, but there are full colour, photographic image ‘props’ of furniture from the period to stage the ‘room’ you are decorating.

It’s such a simple, but such a clever idea, and it really helps bring the book to life. It means you are doing more than just repeating a pattern. You can really have fun decorating an imaginary, tiny, little, two page spread room. You can use the colours you’ve practiced on the pages previously, or go by the furniture props.

Each room also has a furry friend, pugs, sausage dogs and cats will judge your colour coordination! If you need a guide to the trends and tones of the eras, then there is a swatch colour guide at the end of the book to help you match your pens, or pencils if you don’t want to wing it.

Amazon has The Wallpaper Colouring Book, but I got my copy from a used book seller on eBay for a few quid, and it was as new.

I'm rather particular about the type of colouring book I like. They have to be colour by numbers, and be a picture where you don't know what you are colouring until you start to shade the shapes and the image appears.

I like the Colour Quest books, but whilst browsing Amazon I also found these French books, which obviously don't require translation to enjoy.

I bought the pair of Vice Versa books, where the page is a mass of swirls with one bold image you initially can see, which is a clue to the finished coloured piece you are filling in.

The publisher also has a massive range of Disney mystery colouring books, with Stars Wars, Manga and architecture filling other books.