Adult colouring books? Inevitably, there's an app for that

Developer behind Repix and Relook photography apps turns its attention to stressed-out smartphone and tablet users

Recolor is a colouring app for adults.

Stuart Dredge

The theory behind colouring books for adults is that they relieve the stress and anger of our daily lives, even if their very existence makes some critics purple-faced with rage.
These books are a bona fide publishing industry trend, though: boosting business for retailer WHSmith in the UK, fuelling a rise in non-fiction sales for US publishers, and helping Amazon chill out some of its customers in south London.
This being 2015, inevitably there are now apps for that. iOS app Recolor is the work of developer Sumoing, whose Repix, Relook and Camu photography apps have been downloaded more than 25m times.

The Finnish company has created more than 200 illustrations for the app, with a simple set of colouring tools to change individual areas of each picture with a tap.
This being 2015 (still) the app uses the freemium model that’s now dominant on the major app stores: it can be downloaded and used for free, but individual illustration packs – from animals, fishes and insects to isometric images and bejewelled skulls – can be bought using in-app purchases.

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“The fresh and harmonic color palettes are designed for stress relieving coloring,” suggests Recolor’s App Store listing, blissfully ignoring the fact that for grammatically-sensitive British users, the missing ‘u’ may well spark the kind of stress that the app is hoping to relieve.
Recolor is not alone on the App Store: it will compete with other adult colouring apps including Colorfy, Flower Mandalas and 1000 Dot-to-Dot, among others.
What these apps miss is the physical element of colouring books: tapping a space to turn it green isn’t a match for the tactile relief of scribbling with a pencil. What’s more, these apps are on devices where emails, social networks, incoming calls and other digital sources of modern stress are only a couple of taps away.

On the plus side, for less-coordinated colourists, Recolor makes it impossible for you to colour over the lines in a picture. Although that, too, arguably takes some of the fun out of the process.