Gingerbread Coloring Pages

Gingerbread is the one Christmas subject that works as a coloring page and as a craft template at the same time, and this collection is built to do both. There are stripped-back outlines you can cut out and hang, decorated gingerbread people with buttons and icing trim, three gingerbread houses, and a tray of mixed cookies. Every design downloads as a free printable PDF sized for US Letter paper, 8.5 by 11 inches, with no sign-up and no watermark.

The split matters, because people arrive at a page like this wanting two different things. Some want a finished picture to color in. Others are looking for a blank gingerbread man template, which is a different drawing altogether: one clean closed outline with almost nothing printed inside it, so a child can decorate it however they like, or an adult can cut it out for an ornament, a gift tag or a name card. Both kinds are below, and the plainest sheets are listed first so you do not have to hunt through the decorated ones to find them.

Simple Outlines and Templates

These three are as close to empty as a drawn cookie gets. None of them carries icing, pattern or trim, which is what makes them usable as templates rather than as pictures, and it is why they print well on heavier paper.

Simple Gingerbread Man Outline is the cookie cutter shape itself, one unbroken line around a head, two arms and two legs, with the arms angled down and the legs set wide. Count the marks inside it and you get five: two small buttons, two ringed eyes and a short curved smile. Gingerbread Man Template With Arms Raised puts both arms straight up instead, which makes the silhouette tall and narrow and leaves an obvious gap for a ribbon. It carries three buttons and no trim at all.

Plain Gingerbread House Outline does the same job for a building. Its roof is drawn as two parallel lines, so there is a long empty band down each slope where icing would normally sit, and the walls, the single round gable window and the tall door are all left bare.

A nearly empty outline is also the easiest sheet in the whole collection for a very young child. There is almost nothing to stay inside except one large shape, so a two year old with a fat crayon can finish it and have it still look right.

Gingerbread People

Gingerbread Man With Icing Buttons is the classic: head, arms and legs all cut from the same flat body, three open circles down the middle, and a wavy icing band at each wrist and each ankle. Gingerbread Woman With a Bow adds a wide skirt with a deep scalloped hem and a ribbon bow high on the side of her head, which is the one part of her that is not made of cookie.

Gingerbread Family puts three cookie people on one page, two tall ones side by side and a small one standing on its own below them, with clear white paper between every figure and nothing overlapping anything. Color them identically and they read as a batch off one tray; color them differently and they read as a family, which is what most children choose.

Three sheets give the cookie something to do. Gingerbread Man Running is caught mid stride with nothing on the page vertical, Gingerbread Man Holding a Candy Cane sets him beside a striped cane nearly as tall as he is, and Gingerbread Man Wearing a Scarf winds a long striped scarf once around his neck and drops the fringed end down his front.

Two more put him with something to eat or drink. Gingerbread Man on a Plate looks straight down at a flat biscuit on a scalloped dish, which is what a gingerbread man actually is, and Gingerbread Man and a Mug of Cocoa stands him beside a tall mug heaped with marshmallows, with clear paper between the two so neither shape runs into the other.

Gingerbread Houses

A gingerbread house coloring page asks for more patience than a cookie does, because the roof and the walls are large flat areas and the candy trim along their edges is small and repetitive. That combination suits an older child or an adult with colored pencils better than it suits a crayon. If it is buildings in general you are after rather than the holiday, the house coloring pages hub carries cottages, tree houses and a houseboat alongside its own gingerbread house.

Gingerbread House With a Candy Cane Trimmed Roof is the busiest of the three. Twisted candy sticks run the length of both roof slopes and stand as columns at the front corners, and the two windows are divided into four panes each. Gingerbread House With a Gumdrop Path swaps that trim for round swirled candies and runs four big gumdrops away from the door and off the bottom of the page. Nearly every decoration on it is a circle, which makes it the easiest of the three.

Gingerbread House With a Snowy Roof goes the other way. One thick wavy slab of snow covers the roof, a row of long icicles hangs from its lower edge, and the walls below carry no windows at all, so they are the largest uninterrupted areas anywhere in this collection.

A Tray of Cookies

Gingerbread Cookies on a Baking Tray is the one sheet here that is not a single subject. A tray with a slot handle at each end holds two rows of cookies: little gingerbread people with buttons and icing, a pair of stars and a pair of Christmas trees. Mixed shapes like that turn the page into a sorting exercise as much as a coloring one, and the blank tray between them is worth a light wash rather than leaving it white.

Printing and Paper

Ordinary copy paper is fine for coloring these in. It is not fine for cutting them out, and cutting out is half of what the plainest sheets are for. If you plan to hang one on a tree, trace around one onto felt, or use one as a place card at a holiday table, print it on cardstock at 160 gsm or heavier. The outline will survive scissors, and the shape will stand up on its own.

One more thing worth knowing before you print a set for a group. Gingerbread sheets look best when the children are not all handed the same one. Mix the plain outlines in with the decorated figures and the houses, and the finished pile reads as a gingerbread village rather than as twenty copies of one cookie.

Brown is the obvious choice and it is not the only one. Gingerbread dough bakes to a wide range, from pale honey to nearly black, and a tray of cookies colored in four different browns looks far more like real baking than a tray colored in one. The icing is where the color goes: white, red and green are traditional, and a child who wants a purple roof should have one.

More Christmas sets sit on Christmas and Winter, and if what you are after is sweets rather than the holiday, Ice Cream is the nearest thing on the site.