Open Late: A Cozy Ghost Town Coloring Book

Open Late is a printable coloring book of 48 bold, easy pictures, all set in one small town where everybody is a ghost and everything opens at dusk. It was drawn for teens and adults who want something cute, cozy and simple to color, and the thick lines and big shapes mean children can color it too. You print the pages yourself, on your own paper. US Letter and A4 are both in the download.

The book follows a single night, from the first alarm clock at 6:00 pm to lights out at 6:40 am. The bakery takes its first buns out at half past seven in the evening. The laundrette is busiest at eight, because the spin cycle is the best ride in town. The post goes by bat. The last bus home leaves at five in the morning. Every picture has its number, its name, the time of night and one line about what is going on.

Who it is for

• Teens and adults who want to relax with something easy: a page can be finished in one sitting, and there is no tiny detail to fight with.
• Children, coloring alongside or on their own. A child who is happy coloring inside a line, roughly six and up, can manage every page with pencils, crayons or washable felt-tips on ordinary printer paper. Younger children can enjoy the simpler pages with chunky crayons, though eyes, cheeks and small stars will be fiddly for them.
• Families. One download can be printed for everyone in the house, so two people can color the same picture side by side.
• Nothing in the pictures is scary. The ghosts are round and smiling, and mostly busy with baking, buses and laundry.
• It is not a children's activity book. There are no puzzles, mazes, letters or numbers in it, only pictures to color.

How the pictures are drawn

• Bold and easy. Thick black outlines about 1.5 mm wide, big closed shapes, no shading, no grey and no tiny fiddly detail. A page can be finished in one sitting with whatever pens or pencils you have.
• One world, one hand. The same round little ghosts, the same line and the same town on every page, so it reads as a book and not a pile of unrelated pictures.
• Nothing filled in black. Apart from eyes and a few tiny details such as a letterbox slot, every area is left white for you to color.
• Sharp at any size. The pictures are stored as outlines, not photographs of drawings, so the lines print crisp.
• Room to print. Each picture is 183 x 244 mm (about 7.2 x 9.6 in) inside a rounded frame, the same size on both papers, with at least 11 mm of clear paper all round, so a home printer will not cut the edges off.

The 48 pictures

• Dusk, the town wakes up (1 to 6): rise and shine, choosing what to wear, pancakes for breakfast, the lamplighter, the number 13 bus, the corner shop opening.
• Evening, shops and errands (7 to 19): the bakery, the coffee shop, the laundrette, ghosts hung out to dry on the washing line, the tailor, the post office and its bats, the flower stall, the bookshop, the greengrocer, the plant shop, the record shop, knit night, the sweet shop.
• Midnight, out on the town (20 to 31): the ramen cart, a diner booth, the pizzeria, the cinema, the claw machine, the roller rink, the midnight market, the library, the house band, the cat cafe, an art class, the ice cream van.
• The small hours, quiet places (32 to 42): the allotment, the hot spring, a campfire, stargazing on the roof, night fishing, the lighthouse, the last train, doughnuts at three, the milk round, the paper round, the street sweeper.
• Dawn, home to bed (43 to 48): the last bus home, rain on the window, a bubble bath, a bedtime story, drawing the curtains, fast asleep.

Also in the book

• Contents: two pages showing all 48 pictures as lit windows, each with its page number. On a screen, click a window to go to its picture.
• How to use this book: how to print one picture, which file to open and which pages to print.
• Paper and pens: a table of which paper to print on for pencils, felt-tips, gel pens, alcohol markers and watercolor.
• Coloring the night: six short ideas for night skies, lamplight and ghosts, three color schemes to try, and one of the pictures shown colored.
• A test page: boxes for trying each pen on your paper, a check for whether your printer's black smears, and a check for whether your markers soak through.
• A bonus page: nine plain ghosts to dress in your own patterns.

Why a printable

In a bound coloring book the paper is thin and there is another picture on the back, so markers soak through and spoil it. Here every picture sits on its own sheet with nothing behind it, and you choose the paper. If a page goes wrong, or you want to try it in different colors, print it again.

What you download (4 PDF files)

• The whole book, 58 pages, for US Letter (8.5 x 11 in) and for A4 (210 x 297 mm): cover, guide, contents, all 48 pictures, the test page and the bonus page.
• Pictures only, 50 pages, for US Letter and for A4: just the 48 pictures, then the test page and the bonus page. In this file picture 12 is page 12, which makes printing one picture easy.

Open the pair that matches your paper. You do not have to choose when you buy.

Good to know

• This is a digital download. Nothing is posted to you, and you need a printer or a print shop.
• The pictures print in black only. The seven guide pages at the front are dark and are meant for reading on a screen.
• For personal use: print as many copies as you like for yourself and the people you live with. Please do not share or resell the files.
• The pictures were drawn with AI-assisted illustration tools, then cleaned, checked and chosen by hand, one page at a time.