1. Gingerbread cottage
A wide cottage with two windows, an arched door with a heart, a chimney capped in icing and a path of candies in the snow.
Free printable · Color online
Gingerbread house coloring pages
Six gingerbread houses to color: a cottage, a tall town house with a chimney, an A-frame that is all roof, a chapel with a steeple, a village of three, and a bold version of the cottage with bigger shapes. Every roof is tiled in icing shingles and edged with candy dots, with a peppermint at the peak.
There are candy canes at each door, gumdrops along the walls and lollipop trees in the snow. Print them on letter paper or color them on screen.
Each page prints on one sheet of US letter paper. Under every page are buttons to print just that one, to color it on screen, or to save it as a picture.
2. Gingerbread town house
Two stories under a steep roof, with four windows and a band of icing between the floors.
3. A-frame gingerbread house
A house that is all roof: shingles from the peak to the snow, with a round window over the door.
4. Gingerbread chapel
A small chapel with a steeple and a star on top. The tall roof gives the most shingles of any page here.
5. Gingerbread village
Three houses on a snowy hill with lollipop trees between them: two at the back, one in front.
6. Gingerbread cottage in bold lines
The cottage again with larger shingles and simpler icing, drawn with heavy outlines.
Why we build houses out of gingerbread
Gingerbread has been baked in Europe since the Middle Ages, and German cities such as Nuremberg became famous for it. Building it into small decorated houses took off in Germany in the early 1800s, around the time the Brothers Grimm published “Hansel and Gretel” in 1812, with its house in the woods made of bread, cake and sugar.
German immigrants brought the custom to America. A real gingerbread house is held together with royal icing, a stiff mix of powdered sugar and egg white that dries hard, and it is the piped icing that gives the houses their look: scalloped roof tiles, dotted eaves and wavy snow on the sills. Those piped lines are what you are coloring between on these pages.
Color ideas for these pages
Gingerbread itself is a warm mid brown: try a light brown pencil with a touch of orange over it. Leave the icing lines and drips white, and spend your bright colors on the candy: red and white for peppermints and canes, and any colors you like for the gumdrops and roof dots.
On the roofs, color the shingles in rows, two alternating colors, or run a rainbow down the slope. The windowpanes look lit from inside if you fill them with yellow and soften the edges with orange.
Which page to start with
This set has 6 pages: 1 bold and easy, 4 medium and 1 detailed. The quickest to finish is “Gingerbread cottage in bold lines,” with 244 areas to color, and the longest is “Gingerbread village,” with 871. Bold and easy pages have heavy lines and large shapes that suit markers and tired eyes; detailed pages have fine lines for sharp pencils or gel pens.
How printing, saving and coloring on screen work is explained on the coloring pages home. If you like filling shapes by number, Linseed Loft Color by Number is a free paint by number game with 74 pictures.