21 Christmas Tree Coloring Pages: Easy to Intricate

Twenty-one Christmas tree coloring pages, sorted so you can find the right one fast: three-line beginner outlines near the top, dense mandala and shaded pages further down, and a few genuinely strange trees in the middle that nobody expects from a holiday printable.

Each page below is described by what is actually on it — how many separate shapes there are to fill, where the tricky bits sit, and which colors do the most work. Print the ones you want, or work through the set as a run of short evening sessions.

1. Detailed Fir with Gifts Underneath

The needles here are drawn as hundreds of individual strokes, so this is a page you shade rather than fill. Leave the white paper showing between strokes and the tree reads as textured instead of flat — one solid green wash and all that linework disappears.

The gift pile at the base is the reward: eight or nine boxes, each its own closed shape, each a chance to try a different ribbon color while the tree stays a single family of greens.

2. Three-Tier Beginner Outline

Three swooping tiers, a hollow star, a stub of trunk. Every line is thick and every shape closes, which is exactly what a four-year-old needs to stay inside them.

The small circles scattered across the tiers are the whole lesson: pick two colors, alternate them, and a child learns pattern-making without being told that is what they are doing.

3. Geometric Banded Tree

A triangle sliced into horizontal bands, dotted with small crosses. It is the flattest design in the set and the easiest to make look intentional — give each band its own value, dark at the base to pale at the tip, and the tree gains depth from nothing but tone.

Beginners often find this one easier than it looks because there is nothing to stay inside except straight lines. Older colorists can push it further by treating the crosses as tiny stars and leaving a halo of white paper around each one.

4. Bold Brush Pine

Heavy tapered strokes for needles, a handful of asterisk ornaments, a filled black trunk. The high contrast is already doing the work, so restraint wins here: one green, maybe a gold star, nothing else. It is also a useful shape to copy freehand if you are collecting tree sketching references.

Mind the black trunk. It is already solid, so anything you add over it is lost — run your darkest green right up to its edge instead, and the join will read as shadow rather than as a gap.

5. Feathery Fir with Mixed Ornaments

Look closely and the ornaments are not all baubles — there is a candy cane and a gingerbread shape tucked among them. Coloring each ornament type consistently across the tree ties the page together and stops it turning into confetti.

The branch tips are drawn as thin feathered strokes that a heavy hand will smudge into a blob. Work from the trunk outward with a light touch and let the strokes stay separate; that fringed edge is what makes the tree look soft.

6. Tree on a Phone Screen

The tree sits inside a drawn smartphone, notch and side buttons included. The frame is the fun part: color the tree as a wintry scene and leave the phone body a flat grey or black, and the finished page genuinely looks like a wallpaper someone screenshotted.

There is a temptation to color the phone screen background as a solid block of sky. Resist it. A pale wash lets the snowflakes stay visible, and the falling dots are the only thing telling you this is a scene rather than a sticker.

7. Girl Sitting by the Tree

A girl with a full head of curly hair sits cross-legged on the floor, presents stacked at her side and a bow perched on the treetop. Skin tone and hair are the two decisions that matter; the tree behind her is dense enough that it can stay loose and impressionistic without hurting the picture.

8. Scalloped Layers in Falling Snow

Soft rounded tiers, evenly spaced baubles, and a background of large open circles that read as out-of-focus snow. Those circles are a trap — color them and the page gets busy. Leave them white, or ghost them in the palest blue you own.

The baubles sit at regular intervals down the tiers, which makes this a good page for practising a repeating three-color rotation. Do the same three shades in the same order all the way down and the tree gains a rhythm the original line art only hints at.

9. Floral Mandala Tree

The whole silhouette is built from stacked flowers and leaves with almost no negative space. This is an hour of work minimum, and it rewards ignoring Christmas colors entirely: purples, teals and pinks make the pattern legible in a way that flat green never does. If this is your kind of page, the zentangle coloring pages use the same slow, repetitive logic.

10. Snow-Laden Fir

Snow sits on top of every branch, which means the page is really about leaving white. Work green only on the undersides of the boughs and let the paper carry the snow — that restraint is what sells the weight of it. The grey sky behind is pre-shaded, so a light blue over it is plenty.

The falling snow dots are scattered across the shaded sky, and they will vanish if you color over them. Work around them, or use a white gel pen at the end to put them back. Either way, they are what stops the sky reading as a flat grey wall.

11. Family of Five

Dad, mum, an older boy, a younger boy and a toddler, lined up on snowy ground with the tree behind them. Five outfits is five separate palettes, and the easiest way to keep it from clashing is to repeat one accent color — a red on somebody’s scarf, again on somebody’s jumper.

12. Smiling Cartoon Tree

This tree has a face: two round eyes and a wide grin, with a small puppy at the base and ornate snowflakes drifting behind. Kids will go straight for the face, so hand them the page and stay out of it — a purple tree with an orange dog is a perfectly good outcome.

For adults sitting alongside, the ornate snowflakes in the background are the interesting part. They are drawn at a completely different level of detail from the cartoon tree, so shading them carefully creates a nice tension between the two halves of the page.

13. Skull-Faced Tree

Three hollow-eyed skulls hide in the branches, half-buried in wispy tendrils. It is a Halloween drawing wearing tinsel, and it is the best page here for anyone bored of cheerful. Cold greys and a sickly green in the foliage, warm color only in the presents below, and the contrast does the rest. Same appetite as the haunted house coloring pages, if that is where you are headed.

The tendrils drifting off the branches have no closed ends, which means color will run out of them if you fill loosely. Feather your strokes and let them fade to nothing at the tips — that dissolve is far creepier than a hard edge would be.

14. Eye Ornaments and Burst Lines

Three enormous eyeball ornaments run down the centre of a heavily shaded tree while straight burst lines radiate out behind it. The lines are the composition — keep them pale so they read as light rather than as fence posts, and save your darkest value for the tree itself.

The tree body is pre-shaded quite dark, so heavy color on top will kill the detail. Go lighter than feels right here. The three eyes are the exception: fill those solid and dark, and they will hold the page together from across the room.

15. Boy on a Step Ladder

A boy stands on a wooden ladder, arm up, hanging a bauble near the top. The line weight is light throughout, so this page suits colored pencil far better than marker; colored pencil layering techniques will hold the delicate shading instead of flooding it.

The ladder is worth slowing down for. Four rungs and two rails, each catching light differently, and getting the wood tone to shift between them is the small technical exercise hidden in an otherwise gentle page. Keep the boy’s jumper bright so he separates from the tree behind him.

16. Shaggy Tree with a Lit Flame

Staring eye ornaments again, baubles hanging on long strings, and a single small flame at the bottom left — the only spot on the page that wants a genuinely warm color. Put your orange there and nowhere else, and that one flame will glow against everything around it.

Everything else on this page should stay cool — greys, muted greens, ice blues in the baubles. The flame only works as a focal point if nothing competes with it, and a page full of warm color turns it into just another orange shape.

17. Doodle Tree Under a Star Sky

Beaded garlands loop across the branches and the sky is packed with stars and starbursts. There are hundreds of tiny closed shapes here. Fine liners or sharp pencils only — a marker tip will bridge two beads and the pattern collapses.

The garlands loop in front of the branches rather than following them, so decide early which layer sits on top. Coloring the beads a shade darker than the foliage behind them keeps the loops reading as strands rather than melting into the tree.

18. Penguin Hanging an Ornament

A round penguin in a scarf and earmuffs reaches up to hook a bauble on the tree. The scarf and earmuffs are the accents; keep them loud and let the penguin’s body stay mostly white with a soft grey along the edge so it still reads as round. More birds like this one live in the penguin coloring pages.

The tree itself is quite finely drawn behind the penguin, and it is easy to lose him against it. Keep the foliage a mid green with no dark accents directly behind his outline, and the penguin will stay clearly in front where he belongs.

19. Spiral Ribbon Tree

Not a tree so much as a coiled ribbon narrowing to a star, its whole surface speckled with dots and small stars. Follow the spiral with your color and shift the tone slightly on each turn — that is what makes a flat swirl look like it is wrapping around something.

The dots covering the spiral vary in size, from pinpricks to small circles. Filling the large ones and leaving the small ones white gives the surface a scattered, glittery quality, and it takes half the time of coloring every single one.

20. Poinsettia Tree

Big open poinsettia blooms are layered over the branches, with lit candles and gift boxes at the base. The flowers are large enough to blend properly: red at the petal base fading out toward the tips beats a flat fill every time. Worth a look if you also work through flower coloring pages.

The candles at the base are the second focal point and the only light source suggested anywhere on the page. A warm yellow around each flame, fading into the gift boxes nearby, gives the whole bottom third a glow that the flowers above can then sit against.

21. Tree in a Snowy Forest

Patterned baubles hang on the branches and more float loose in the sky, with a dark pine forest behind. Each floating ornament carries its own pattern, so treat them as twenty small studies. The forest behind should stay dark and low-contrast, or it will compete with the tree.

The pine forest behind is drawn with the same needle strokes as the main tree, which is exactly why it needs to be quieter. Use a single flat dark green with no highlights back there. Contrast, not detail, is what pushes the main tree forward.

Ways to make a finished page look finished

Most of these pages fail in the same two places: flat green foliage and an over-colored background. These fixes cover both.

• Use three greens, not one. A light green on the top surface of each branch, a mid green in the body, and a dark green pushed into the gaps under the boughs. Three values is the difference between a tree shape and a tree.
• Keep the background quieter than the tree. Snow, sky and stars should sit behind, which means paler and lower contrast. If your background is as saturated as your subject, the eye has nowhere to land.
• Pick one warm accent and repeat it. A single red or gold that appears in the star, two or three ornaments and a ribbon will tie a busy page together faster than any other trick.
• Match the tool to the linework. Dense pages like the mandala and doodle trees need a sharp point. Bold pages like the brush pine can take marker without losing anything.
• Leave white on purpose. Unfilled paper reads as snow, as light on a bauble, as shine. Filling every square millimetre is the most common way a good page turns muddy.

Personal touches worth adding

Once the page is colored, a few extra minutes turn it into something worth keeping rather than something that ends up in the recycling.

• Break the color rules. Nothing requires a green tree. A blue-to-purple gradient running base to tip looks deliberate and modern, and works especially well on the geometric and spiral designs.
• Add metallic last. Gel pen or metallic marker over finished color catches the light on ornaments and star toppers. Underneath color, it just goes grey.
• Draw in the missing background. A fireplace, a window with snow piling on the sill, a string of stockings. The simpler pages have room for it and gain a lot.
• Name the gifts. Small tags on the presents, one per family member, turn a coloring page into a card. Pair it with a handmade present from these Christmas knitting projects and the whole thing becomes a gift in itself.
• Mount the good ones. Trim the finished page, glue it to slightly larger colored card, punch a hole and hang it. The border makes ordinary coloring look framed.

Why coloring trees is worth the hour

• It is genuinely calming. Repetitive, low-stakes, no wrong answers — useful in December specifically, when very little else that month is any of those things.
• It builds real skill. Staying in the line, controlling pressure, layering two colors into a third: these are drawing fundamentals arriving through the back door.
• It works as a shared table activity. Different pages suit different ages, so a five-year-old on the three-tier outline and an adult on the poinsettia tree can sit at the same table doing the same thing.
• It produces something. Finished pages become gift tags, window decorations, place cards and cards for grandparents. Little else you do for an hour on a winter evening leaves an object behind.

Frequently asked questions

What paper should I print these on?

Standard printer paper is fine for pencils. For markers or anything wet, print on 120gsm or heavier — thin paper buckles and alcohol markers will bleed straight through onto whatever is underneath. Set the printer to its highest quality so the fine linework on the mandala and doodle pages does not break up.

Which page should a five-year-old start with?

The three-tier beginner outline, then the geometric banded tree. Both have thick lines, large closed shapes and no fiddly detail, so a child can succeed at them without an adult hovering. The smiling cartoon tree is the next step up and usually the one they actually want.

How long does the floral mandala tree take?

An hour at minimum, and closer to three if you shade each petal properly. It is not a page to start at eleven at night. Split it across several sittings and work one horizontal band to completion each time, so you never lose your place in the pattern.

Can I use these for cards or classroom handouts?

Yes — print as many as you need for personal, family or classroom use. Reduced to about 40 percent, the simpler designs make excellent gift tags. For more seasonal designs beyond trees, the wider Christmas coloring pages collection covers wreaths, stockings and characters.

Start with whichever page you scrolled back up to look at again. That is usually the right one.