Mermaid Coloring Pages

All the underwater magic, none of the swimming lessons. These mermaid coloring pages feature big-eyed mermaids with flowing hair and scaly tails — simple enough for little kids, pretty enough that older ones will want one too.

About Mermaids

Mermaids — half human, half fish — appear in the stories of nearly every seafaring culture on Earth. Sailors once blamed (or thanked) mermaids for storms, rescues, and strange singing heard over the waves, and some historians think manatees and dugongs, glimpsed from ships, started the legend. Older tales made mermaids dangerous and mysterious; newer ones, from Hans Christian Andersen’s little mermaid onward, made them curious, kind, and longing to explore the wider world above the surface. The mermaids in this collection are firmly the friendly kind: all flowing hair, shining tails, and bubbles.

A mermaid’s tail is where colorists get to play with everything the sea offers. Green and teal are the classic choices, fading from deep emerald at the waist to bright aqua at the fin, but real reef fish argue for bolder palettes — sunset orange, coral pink, violet, even full rainbow gradients, one color melting into the next down the tail. Hair carries the other half of the palette: the famous red, mermaid-teal, gold, or deep sea-blue. Shells, pearls, and starfish accessories are the jewelry — small pops of cream, gold, and coral that finish the picture.

All 12 Mermaid Coloring Pages

Scroll down to browse every page below, or use the Print button under any image to print just that page.

A mermaid with long flowing hair and a scaly tail smiles among rising bubbles. Medium — great for kids.

Long flowing hair deserves a signature color: the famous red is famous for a reason, but sea-glass teal or deep violet look just as striking against a classic green tail. Run the tail in a gradient — emerald at the waist melting to aqua at the fin — and let the rising bubbles stay white with pale blue rings so the underwater feeling stays light.

Hair this long should be colored in long, following strokes, root to tip, with the shade deepening where strands overlap. Keep your pressure even and the hair will look like it is floating, which is the whole physics of being underwater: nothing hangs straight, everything drifts, including the ends of her smile-wide hair.

A chibi mermaid with huge eyes and a scale-patterned tail grins at you. Medium — great for kids.

Chibi style means everything is exaggerated and cute, so push the colors sweet and bright: bubblegum-pink or candy-violet scales, each one a slightly different pastel, and huge eyes finished in glossy black or deep teal. The tail's scale pattern is drawn big on this page, which makes it the friendliest place in the set to practice the row-by-row rainbow.

Because chibi proportions put the face first, give the eyes your best work: dark, wet-looking, with big white shines left in both. A tiny bit of pink on the cheeks — drawn in by color, two soft circles — turns the grin up to full power. Keep the bubbles small, pale, and out of the face's way.

A mermaid wearing a little necklace poses with her wavy hair and scaled tail, bubbles all around. Medium — great for kids.

A necklace means this mermaid dressed up, so let the pendant be the jewel of the page: gold, pearl-white, or one bright gem color like ruby or sapphire, set against a honey-blonde or chestnut wavy hairstyle. The scaled tail can go classic teal, and the bubbles around her stay pale, so the small bright pendant draws the eye exactly where she would want it.

Small details deserve a fine tip: switch to a sharpened pencil or fine liner for the necklace, and keep every other color around it softer. Wavy hair looks best colored wave by wave — crest light, dip darker — a simple rhythm that turns a flat hairstyle into something with bounce and shine by the time you reach the ends.

A sweet mermaid with side-swept hair drifts among bubbles, her tail covered in scales. Medium — great for kids.

Side-swept hair is a glamour move, so color it in one smooth sweep of gradient: deep violet melting into magenta, or copper into gold, all the strands traveling the same direction. Her tail, covered in scales, can run cooler — sapphire into turquoise — so warm hair and cool tail play against each other, and the bubbles drift pale between them.

Swept hair only reads as swept if your strokes obey it: root to tip, one direction, no exceptions, deepening the color underneath where the hair folds over itself. This is a medium-difficulty page that teaches a grown-up skill — directional coloring — and the tail's tidy scale rows are a relaxing place to rest between hair sections.

An elegant mermaid with curly hair and a pearl necklace shows off her shimmering scaled tail. Medium — great for kids.

Elegance is pearls and curls: color the pearl necklace in soft whites and warm grays, one shadow dot at the bottom of each pearl, and they will look round and real. Her curly hair can be a rich auburn or dark chocolate, and the shimmering tail is the place for emerald melting into gold-green, the most regal gradient in the sea.

Pearl technique is all about restraint: mostly white, one gray crescent, one tiny highlight — anything more and they turn into gray beads. For the tail, lay the gradient first, then, when it is fully dry or finished, add sparse white gel-pen dots along the scale tops; elegance whispers, so use fewer sparkles than your hand wants to.

A mermaid wearing a shell pendant floats between bubbles and little crescent moons. Medium — great for kids.

Crescent moons mean this mermaid is out after dark, so give her a night-sea palette: a tail in deep sapphire melting into violet, hair in a dark, glossy shade, and the shell pendant in warm peach or gold — the one warm note, hung like a tiny lantern. The little moons themselves should be pale gold with white edges.

Make the moons glow the quiet way: before coloring anything else, lay the faintest ring of pale yellow around each moon and the pendant, then color the water a step darker than usual right up to those rings. Against deep water, the untouched halos read as light. Keep the shell's spiral lines darker so the pendant still looks carved, not flat.

A mermaid swims gracefully with her hair and tail streaming behind her. Medium — great for kids.

Swimming changes the physics of everything: hair and tail stream behind her, so color them in long strokes that all flow backward, like a current is combing them. A deep-sea palette suits the motion — sapphire and teal tail, hair in a rich contrasting shade — and the water around her can darken toward the edges of the page to suggest open ocean.

Speed lines are already drawn by the pose itself; your job is not to fight them. Keep the background wash smooth and even, darker behind her body and lighter ahead of her face, as if she is swimming into clearer water. Any bubbles should trail behind her, smallest and palest at the far end of the stream.

A mermaid with bouncy curls and a jeweled top smiles amid a flurry of bubbles. Medium — great for kids.

Bouncy curls and a jeweled top call for a party palette: curls in two alternating tones — say, coral and gold, or lilac and pink — so each ringlet reads separately, and the jewels on her top picked out in ruby, sapphire, and emerald dots. The flurry of bubbles around her can be left white and plentiful; they are the confetti of the underwater world.

Curl by curl is the method, as always: finish one ringlet completely, both tones, before touching the next. The jewels reward a fine point and a steady hand — tiny, saturated, and dark at the edges with a pinprick of white left in the middle. Against all that color, keep the tail in one calm gradient so the page sparkles in the right places.

A mermaid with her hair swept up in curls poses with her scaled tail curled to the side. Medium — great for kids.

An updo is the formal hairstyle of the sea, so dress the page up: hair in a glossy shade — near-black violet or rich mahogany — swept into its curls, and the tail curled to the side in a gradient that follows the curl, deep teal at the waist flowing to seafoam around the bend. Pearls or shells, if you color her accessories simply, will keep the mood evening-elegant.

A curled tail is a lighting puzzle with a pretty answer: the outside of the curl catches the light, so keep it brightest; the inside of the curl falls into shade, so deepen it a full step. Follow that one rule and the tail looks genuinely curved and heavy, like it is resting in the water instead of lying flat on the paper.

A mermaid in a bow top spreads her arms wide, her big flowing tail fin fanning out below. Medium — great for kids.

Arms wide and a fin fanned below — this is the grandest pose in the set, and the fin is the canvas: a flowing tail fin looks translucent when you color it in one light wash of aqua or rose and leave its brightest parts white. The bow top can be coral or pink, and the tail above the fin runs a stronger version of the fin's color.

Translucency is a light-touch technique: whatever tool you use, the fin gets about half the pressure of the rest of the tail, and any veins drawn in the fin get only the faintest extra line of color. If you color the fin as dark as the tail, it turns solid and heavy; keep it ghostly and she seems to float on it.

A gentle mermaid with long wavy hair floats peacefully among rising bubbles. Medium — great for kids.

Peaceful drifting wants the softest palette in the set: a tail in seafoam and pale aqua, hair in long waves of honey or rose-gold, and water left almost entirely bare, with bubbles in the palest blue outlines. Everything about this mermaid is slow, and the coloring should be too — light layers, long strokes, no hard contrasts anywhere on the page.

Wavy hair at rest is colored differently from streaming hair: follow each wave's own curve, deepening the dips and leaving the crests light, so the hair looks thick and heavy with water. Leave generous white space around her. On a page about floating peacefully, the empty water is not unfinished — it is the quiet she is floating in.

A mermaid with a shell top stands in swirling water, bubbles rising on both sides. Medium — great for kids.

Standing in swirling water gives you the set's best background: the swirls themselves. Color them in two or three blues — a deep band, a mid band, a pale band — following each spiral as it turns, so the water looks like it is moving around her. Her shell top can be coral, peach, or purple, and the bubbles on both sides stay white to frame her like curtains.

Spirals punish straight strokes: always color along the curve, and deepen the color on the inside edge of each swirl where the water would fold. If the two sides of the picture mirror each other in brightness, she stands in a perfect frame; that symmetry is the quiet design trick the drawing is offering you, so take it.

Coloring Tips for Mermaids

• Mermaid hair is the fun part: try ombre — pink at the roots fading to purple at the tips — using two markers or blended colored pencils.
• Scaly tails: color each scale row a slightly different shade (teal, aqua, sea green) for a shimmery fish-tail effect.
• Bubbles: leave them white with just a light blue outline, or add a tiny white highlight dot so they look glassy.
• Palette ideas: (1) Classic storybook — red hair, green tail, purple top; (2) Pastel dream — lavender hair, mint tail, pink top; (3) Deep sea — dark blue hair, teal tail, silver bubbles.
• Crayons vs. markers: crayons for toddlers on the simple chibi mermaids; fine-tip markers or colored pencils for the detailed scale patterns.

FAQ

Can I use these in my classroom?
Yes — free for personal and classroom use.

What size paper should I print on?
US Letter (8.5x11) works best; A4 is fine with fit-to-page enabled. Each coloring page below has its own Download and Print buttons.

How do I make a mermaid's tail shimmer like real fish scales?
Work row by row and melt colors: color each row of scales a slightly different shade — deeper at the top of the tail, brighter toward the fin — so the tail glows with a gradient. Then add one white dot or crescent to the upper edge of some scales with a gel pen. That repeated sparkle is the shimmer.

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