Mandala and pattern coloring5 patterns
Geometric coloring pages
A framed page filled edge to edge with one repeating shape pattern, in a large size for children or a small size for adults. You choose the colors, and the pattern you bring out is up to you.
- Set it up your way
- Print or PDF, Letter or A4
- Free, no sign-up
On this page
These pages are grids of repeated shapes. Nothing in them is a picture, so the finished page depends entirely on how you shade it. A few colors used in a plan can make stripes, stars or zigzags show up.
What prints
The title reads "Geometric Coloring Page". Below it, the instruction line says to color each shape, or to use a few colors to bring out a bigger pattern such as stripes, stars or zigzags hidden in the grid. A rectangular frame fills the body of the sheet, and the pattern runs to the frame on all four sides, with shapes cut off at the border. The sheet has no name line or key.
There are five patterns. Triangles are rows of equilateral triangles. Hexagons are a honeycomb. 3D cubes is the same honeycomb with three lines drawn from the center of each hexagon to alternate corners, which makes each one look like a cube, and the arrangement is known as tumbling blocks. Overlapping circles is a field of circles that cross each other, giving many small leaf-shaped spaces. Squares and diamonds places a square and a tilted square inside it on each grid cell, so each cell splits into a diamond and four corner triangles.
The settings
- Pattern: Triangles, Hexagons, 3D cubes (tumbling blocks), Overlapping circles, Squares and diamonds. The page opens on Triangles.
- Shape size: Large (for kids) or Small (for adults). The preset is Large.
Large has around half as many shapes in each direction as Small, so a large page can be finished in one sitting.
Coloring tips
Try a limit of three colors and give each shape a color based on position. On hexagons, color in rows. On cubes, make all the tops one shade, the left sides a second and the right sides a third, so the blocks look solid. On the triangles page, color pointing-up triangles one way and pointing-down triangles another, and you get stripes. Overlapping circles reward a plan too: start from one circle and shade the leaf shapes in a ring around it.
Because the tessellations fill the whole page, they are a natural link to geometry talk about shapes that fit together without gaps. NRICH has tasks on this topic. Plain paper and markers work, though pencil crayons give more control on the Small size.
Worked example: a fifth-grade pattern challenge
A teacher selects 3D cubes at Large and prints a page for each student. The task: shade every cube with exactly three colors so the top, left and right faces are consistent. Priya picks yellow, orange and brown and ends up with a set of rows of stacked blocks. A neighbor reverses the faces and the blocks look hollow, as if seen from below. The class compares the two, which leads to a short chat about how the eye reads depth.
Related pages
The mandala coloring pages offer round designs and color by number hides a picture. For a tessellation you can fold and build, the cube template prints a flat net.