Does Painting Reduce Stress? What the Research Shows

Search this question and you get two kinds of answer. Shops telling you painting melts stress away, with nothing behind it. Or academic abstracts you have to pay to read.

There is real research here. It is smaller and more careful than the marketing suggests, and more interesting, because it found a few specific things rather than one vague one.

Below is what the studies measured, what they found, and where they stop. Every study named is published, with the author, year and journal, so you can look it up. We sell paint by numbers kits, which is a reason to read the last section carefully. None of this is medical advice.

What the studies actually measured

Almost all of this work sits in two small fields: art therapy research and the psychology of mood. The studies are short sessions with a few dozen people, usually students or healthy adults, measured before and after. They measure three kinds of thing.

• A stress hormone in saliva. Cortisol, spat into a tube before and after a session.
• Self reported anxiety, usually a standard questionnaire where you rate how you feel right now.
• Self reported mood, on scales for negative feeling filled in before and after.

That is the honest scope: short sessions, small groups, mostly immediate effects. Nobody has followed a room of people painting for a year.

The cortisol study, and what it found

The study most often pointed at is Girija Kaimal, Kendra Ray and Juan Muniz, published in Art Therapy in 2016 under the title "Reduction of Cortisol Levels and Participants' Responses Following Art Making" (volume 33, issue 2, pages 74 to 80).

Thirty-nine healthy adults gave a saliva sample, made art freely for forty-five minutes with collage materials, markers and clay, and gave another sample afterward. Across the group, cortisol was significantly lower after the session than before it.

Two details matter more than the headline. First, it was not everyone. Roughly three quarters had lower cortisol afterward and roughly a quarter had higher, so an average drop across a group is not a promise about one person at one table.

Second, the researchers found no significant difference in the result based on how much art experience people already had. Being good at it was not the thing doing the work.

The authors also said plainly what their study could not do. They asked for larger samples, comparison groups, psychological stress measures alongside the saliva, and a better cortisol biomarker. That sober conclusion is the part most articles quoting this study leave out.

A printed pattern beat a blank page

Nancy Curry and Tim Kasser, in Art Therapy in 2005 ("Can Coloring Mandalas Reduce Anxiety?", volume 22, issue 2, pages 81 to 85), put university students through a short anxiety induction, then gave them twenty minutes of one of three tasks: coloring a printed mandala, coloring a printed plaid pattern, or drawing freely on a blank page.

Coloring the printed mandala lowered reported anxiety. Free drawing on the blank page did not.

Renée van der Vennet and Susan Serice ran the study again and published the replication in Art Therapy in 2012 (volume 29, issue 2, pages 87 to 92). Fifty students, anxiety measured with the State Anxiety Inventory at baseline, after a writing task, and after coloring. Coloring the mandala lowered anxiety more than coloring the plaid design or coloring on blank paper.

Two studies, the same direction. A structure already on the page did better than an empty one. That matters if you have ever sat in front of a blank sheet and felt worse.

Making something beat looking at something

Chloe Bell and Steven Robbins, in Art Therapy in 2007 ("Effect of Art Production on Negative Mood: A Randomized, Controlled Trial", volume 24, issue 2, pages 71 to 75), randomly assigned fifty adults either to make an artwork or to view and sort art prints. Negative mood and anxiety were measured before and after.

The group that made something improved more than the group that looked at art, on all three measures the researchers used. The authors concluded that the effect came from producing rather than from viewing.

Jennifer Drake and Ellen Winner added a twist in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts in 2012 ("Confronting Sadness Through Art-Making: Distraction Is More Beneficial Than Venting", volume 6, issue 3, pages 255 to 261). Eighty undergraduates were put in a sad mood and asked to draw. Some were told to draw something that would take their mind away from it. Others were told to draw the feeling itself.

Drawing as a distraction lifted mood more than drawing to express the feeling. The old idea that you have to get the emotion out onto the page did not hold up.

Together those two studies point at something ordinary. The benefit people describe seems to come from being absorbed in a task you do with your hands, more than from the art meaning anything.

Why repetitive work settles the mind

The research above does not explain why any of this works, so treat this section as description. No study tested it.

A numbered canvas, a mandala, a row of knitting and a tray of jigsaw pieces have the same shape as tasks. Small, clear, immediately checkable. You can see whether you did the last one right. There is no judgement waiting at the end.

The usual description is that the task takes up just enough attention to crowd other things out while staying easy enough that it never becomes work. An hour goes somewhere. That is what people mean when they call a kit relaxing, and it fits the distraction finding.

It does not fix the thing you were worrying about. The worry is generally still there afterward. It has just had an hour of not being the loudest thing in the room.

How long a session needs to be

The studies give rough numbers rather than a rule. The coloring studies used twenty minutes and the cortisol study used forty-five. Both found a measurable change in that window. Nobody has tested five minutes against an hour in a way that would let you pick a best length.

Practically, twenty minutes looks like the floor and an hour or two is where most people stop. What seems to matter is being uninterrupted. A session cut into four pieces by a phone is not the same session, and nothing in this research tested a distracted one.

Frequency is barely studied. A 2017 randomized study in the Creativity Research Journal by Jayde Flett and colleagues asked one group to color briefly every day for a week and compared them with a group doing logic puzzles. The authors described their own evidence as preliminary, which is a fair summary of the field on anything longer than one sitting.

What painting does that watching television does not

No study has put painting head to head with television, so this section is reasoning from what was measured and it is worth less than the sections above.

What the research does suggest is that two things were doing the work: using your hands to produce something, and having a structured task to be absorbed by. Television gives you neither. It fills the evening without asking anything of you, which is why it is easy and why it tends to leave you feeling like nothing happened.

There is also what is left over. Two hours of television leaves nothing on the table. Two hours on a canvas leaves a visibly larger painted area, which is the part people find hard to stop. None of that makes television bad, and the research does not let anyone claim more.

Why a numbered canvas is an easier place to start

Here is where we have an interest, so judge it accordingly.

The clearest practical finding here is the printed pattern result. Structure on the page beat a blank page twice, in the original study and in its replication. A paint by numbers canvas takes that further: the shapes are drawn for you, the colors are chosen, and each shape tells you which pot it wants. That removes the two things that make a blank sheet stressful. You do not have to decide what to make, and you cannot be bad at it in a way that shows.

Our kits print each shape in a light version of the color it will become, so the canvas is never bright white and a missed sliver does not stand out. Every pot has its number on it, the paints cover in one coat, and six brushes come in the box. For big open shapes rather than hundreds of small ones, the beginner collection is sorted that way. To paint something you already have feelings about, send a photograph and we will make it into a custom kit.

That is the honest case, and it stops short of a claim. No study has tested a paint by numbers kit. What a kit gives you is the version of this activity with the least friction at the start, and friction at the start is what stops people.

What the research does not claim

• It is not treatment. None of these studies tested painting as a treatment for any diagnosed condition. If you are struggling, that is a question for a doctor rather than a craft shop.
• It did not work for everyone. In the cortisol study, around a quarter of participants had higher cortisol afterward, published alongside the headline number.
• The samples are small. Thirty-nine people, fifty, eighty. The authors of the cortisol study asked for bigger samples themselves.
• The effects measured were immediate, before and after one session. Lasting change is not what these studies looked at, and the one week study called its own evidence preliminary.
• Memory and brain rewiring claims are not in these papers. You will see them on craft sites with no study named.
• Painting is not the active ingredient on its own. The pattern points at absorbed, hands-on, structured work. Knitting, puzzles and gardening plausibly sit in the same family, and nobody has shown painting beats them.

The fair summary: several small published studies found that making something with your hands for twenty to forty-five minutes lowered measured stress and negative mood for most people who did it, and that a structure on the page helped. That is a modest, useful finding, and anyone selling it to you as a health claim is going past the evidence.

Questions people ask about painting and stress

Do I need to be any good at painting for this?

The cortisol study found no significant difference in its results based on prior art experience. That is one small study, and it matches what most people report. Skill does not appear to be the part that matters.

Is coloring in a book the same as painting a canvas?

The two strongest structured-page findings came from coloring studies, so if anything that is the better evidenced version. A canvas takes longer and leaves something you can hang, which is the main practical difference.

How often should I do it?

The research will not tell you. One session a week of an hour or two is what most people settle into.

Does it help if I am stressed right now, this evening?

The studies that measured an immediate effect induced stress or sadness first, then measured again after twenty to forty-five minutes of art making, and most participants came out lower. That is the closest thing to a yes the evidence offers, and it is not a reason to skip proper help if you need it.

Which designs are the calmest to paint?

Fewer, larger shapes and a limited palette are easier going than dense detail, whatever the subject. The aurora collection and most open landscapes fall that way, and our buyer's guide explains how to read a design before you buy it.