Kawaii Coloring Pages (Free Printable PDFs)

What’s in this kawaii coloring collection

These kawaii coloring pages are 23 original designs in one easy style: round shapes, thick even outlines and tiny happy faces on almost everything. Baby animals, snacks and sweets, a ramen bowl, potted plants, a rainbow and two repeating patterns. Every character is our own. No famous mascots sneaking in.

Hi, I’m Niks. Most kawaii pages I found online were one long jumble of cats, sushi and famous cartoon characters, with no clue which page was easy. So I sorted this set by kawaii family, counted the spaces on every page and drew only original characters. Want the lot? The all-pages PDF has all 23.

The four kawaii families

Kids almost always have a favorite kind of kawaii, so I put each of these kawaii coloring pages in exactly one family. Print by mood.

Notebook doodlers go straight for the last row.

Our favorite kawaii coloring pages

Kawaii Kitten in a Polka Dot Teacup

A chubby kitten peeks out of a polka dot teacup on a saucer, with hearts and sparkles around it. It’s the cover of the set and always my first print: 29 spaces, and every dot can be a different color.

Nine Mochi Faces with Kawaii Expressions

Nine round mochi, each pulling a face: a wink, a giggle, a worried frown, heart eyes, a tongue out. Only 15 spaces, so toddlers love it. Older kids use it as a cheat sheet for drawing their own faces.

Smiling Bento Box Lunch

An open bento box with a smiling rice ball, rolled egg slices, a smiling sausage, a little octopus, broccoli and two cherry tomatoes, chopsticks in front, inside a wavy border. That tiny octopus gets me every time.

Stay Cute Bubble Tea Cup

Bubble letters spell STAY CUTE over a smiling bubble tea cup with bunny ears on the lid, a striped straw and round tapioca pearls. This one tends to end up taped to bedroom doors.

Happy Sprinkle Donuts Pattern

Smiling sprinkle donuts with drippy frosting, edge to edge. At 134 spaces it’s the busiest page in the set, and the one I save for a slow Sunday.

Which kawaii coloring page is right for your child?

Go by spaces to color: fewer spaces, younger hands. Treat these as a starting point.

How do you draw a kawaii face?

Every face in this set uses the same four-step recipe, and a kid can learn it in a minute:

1. Start with a round shape: a circle, a bean or a soft square.
2. Put two solid dot eyes low and wide, lower than feels right.
3. Add a tiny mouth between them, like a little “u” or “w”.
4. Finish with two small blush ovals under the eyes.

The mochi page doubles as the practice sheet. Color it, then draw a tenth mochi next to it with your own expression.

Kawaii animals coloring pages in this set

Ten pages star animals, including a doodle page of twelve animal faces with a fox, a frog and a piglet. For whole sets of critters, try our animal coloring pages.

My panda tip: color the ears, arms and eye patches soft gray, not black. Black crayon swallows the dot eyes, and gray still reads as panda. And the axolotl can go bubblegum pink, which is a real color for pet axolotls.

Kawaii food coloring pages in this set

Seven pages are pure food, from Kawaii Sweets and Candy Doodles to a sheet of nine snacks with a rice ball, sushi and pizza.

The secret to kawaii food is shine. Leave a small white curve on frosting, tapioca pearls, syrup and cherries. That little gap makes food look glossy, even in crayon.

How to color kawaii pages: 6 tips

1. Pick a pastel palette first

Three or four pastels, say pink, mint, lavender and butter yellow, repeated across the page. A small palette is half of what makes kawaii look kawaii.

2. Keep faces light

Color faces cream, peach or white and the background darker, so the tiny eyes stay easy to see.

3. Add blush anyway

There’s no line for it, so dab a light pink circle on each cheek. A pink pencil works. So does a fingertip of chalk pastel.

4. Give every eye a white dot

After coloring, add one white gel pen dot to each black eye. The faces wake up.

5. Color patterns in a rhythm

On the strawberry and donut patterns, cycle two or three frosting or leaf colors in order. It looks planned instead of random.

6. Match the tool to the child

Chunky crayons for the 15-space pages. Colored pencils for doodle collages and patterns. Markers go on light cardstock.

A little kawaii history to share while you color

Something to chat about while the crayons move:

1. Kawaii (かわいい) is the Japanese word for cute, lovable or adorable.
2. Kawaii culture took off in Japan in the 1970s, when teenagers popularized a round, bubbly handwriting style, often decorated with little hearts and faces.
3. A bento is a packed lunch in a box with compartments. Bentos made to look like characters are called kyaraben.
4. Mochi is a soft Japanese rice cake made from pounded sticky rice.
5. Bubble tea, or boba, comes from Taiwan, where it caught on in the 1980s.
6. Axolotls are salamanders from the lakes around Mexico City, and they keep their feathery gills all their lives.

Kawaii classroom and party ideas

My niece had a sleepover last spring: six girls, one stack of these pages, two hours of quiet. Ideas that came out of it:

• Family sorting. Hand out a mix and ask kids to sort the pages into the four families. Then ask why the bento box isn’t an “everyday thing.”
• Japanese food words. Mochi, onigiri (rice ball), bento, ramen, boba. Kids find each one and write its name beside it.
• Counting rows. The snacks sheet sits in three rows of three, and the Smiling Strawberries Pattern has twenty strawberries in five rows of four. Early multiplication, with snacks.
• A kawaii story. Line up Bunny at a Mushroom House, Best Friends Bunny, Kitten and Bear Hug, Smiling Bento Box Lunch and Baby Unicorn Napping on a Cloud, then tell one day from breakfast to bedtime.
• Stickers and a book. Cut the colored doodles out for a journal, or staple the all-pages PDF into a coloring book with a homemade cover.

Our free classroom license covers printing for a group.

Printing tips for kawaii coloring pages

• Print the whole set at once. The all-pages PDF is a free 23-page kawaii coloring book.
• Print in black and white with “Fit to page.” It’s pure line art, and it fits A4 if you’re printing kawaii colouring pages in the UK.
• Use light cardstock for markers. Pastel markers won’t bleed through.

How I made and checked these pages

Every one of these cute kawaii coloring pages is an original ColorTheDay design, checked before it went live: bold, closed outlines, simple enough for a preschooler, and a title that says what’s drawn. Nine pages were redrawn at least once. A SO KAWAII page that kept misspelling itself became BEST FRIENDS, and two pages were cut for doubled faces. The families are my own sorting, and the spaces to color are counted, not guessed.

More cute sets live in our character coloring pages, including our Hello Kitty coloring pages and a cartoon coloring pages set of our own characters. Then scroll up, pick your favorite printable kawaii coloring pages and tap Download PDF!