Diwali Coloring Pages

Diwali runs for five nights and the whole festival is built on one image: a small flame in a clay bowl, repeated until it lines every doorstep on the street. That makes it unusually good material for a coloring page. A diya is a simple shape a four year old can fill in one pass, a rangoli is a symmetrical pattern that keeps an adult busy for half an hour, and both belong to the same festival. These 15 Diwali coloring pages cover that whole range. You get lamps, lanterns, rangoli floor patterns, marigold garlands, sweets, fireworks and two children celebrating, drawn in three tiers of difficulty. Every sheet downloads as a free printable PDF sized for US Letter paper, so a classroom can print a set without anyone signing up for anything.

Start with Big Simple Diya Lamp if the child is small. It is one bowl, one flame and nothing else. Simple Rangoli Circle For Kids and Simple Star Lantern For Diwali sit at the same level. Move up to Row Of Diya Lamps On A Doorstep, Hanging Paper Lanterns For Diwali and Plate Of Diwali Sweets once they can handle repeated shapes. Round Rangoli Pattern With Lotus Petals, Peacock With Its Tail Fanned Out and Patterned Diya Oil Lamp are the detailed ones.

Color the flame last

Every lamp sheet here has the same quiet problem. The flame is the smallest shape on the page and it is the only part that gives off light, so whatever you put around it decides whether it reads as lit or as painted. Fill the clay bowl first, in any color you like. Then come back to the flame and keep it paler than everything touching it. Yellow inside, a thin orange edge, and stop there. The Big Simple Diya Lamp sheet draws a second smaller teardrop inside the first one specifically so a child can do this without blending anything.

The same logic runs backward on Fireworks Over Rooftops On Diwali Night. Those bursts sit against a night sky, so the rays only pop if the paper around them goes dark. Color the sky in and leave the rays white. It is the one sheet in the set where the background does more work than the subject.

What the symbols mean

Children ask, and the answers are short. The lamps are diyas, and people light rows of them to mark light winning out over darkness. The pattern on the floor is rangoli, drawn fresh each morning in rice flour or colored powder and swept away by evening, which is why Round Rangoli Pattern With Lotus Petals is built from lotus shapes rather than random ones. The lotus belongs to Lakshmi, the goddess the festival honors. The garland over the door on Marigold Garland Over A Doorway is a toran, and it goes up before guests arrive. The sweets on the plate get boxed and carried to neighbors all week.

If the pattern work is the part your family enjoys, Henna Patterns is the closest thing on this site. Mehndi and rangoli share a vocabulary of petals, paisleys and dots, and the henna sheets take it further than any of these do. Lotus Mandalas picks up the same flower at the center of the rangoli here and builds whole pages out of it. Diwali also opens the new year in several Indian calendars, so New Year Coloring Pages covers the same idea from a different tradition.