Which planet gets the wildest color in your house?
These free solar system coloring pages run from a chunky smiling planet a preschooler can finish in five minutes to a spiral galaxy that will keep an adult busy for an hour.
Every sheet below prints at home on any printer. Some show real subjects like Earth, a cratered moon and an orbiting space station, while others are pure imagination: alien landscapes, rocket frames and a ring of hexagons floating in space.
Scroll through, print whichever ones your kids point at, and use the activity ideas further down to turn a finished page into a science lesson.
Rocky Plain Under a Giant Planet
A boulder-strewn plain fills the bottom half of this sheet, with an enormous planet rising behind the ridge line. A small ringed planet sits at the left edge and a striped one hangs to the right, so you get three very different surfaces on one page. Rust orange on the ground with a pale wash on the big planet keeps the two apart. The scattered rocks are simple shapes, which makes this a good warm-up before the busier sheets.
Sweeping orbit lines curve across the whole page, and a big ringed planet sits at the center of them. Small moons and planets ride along those lines, several speckled with dots. Give the rings a few shades of gray and beige so each band stays visible. There are a lot of thin lines here, so colored pencils will behave better than thick markers.
The background on this one is all wavy motion, like currents flowing past the planet. The planet itself is banded and wears a wide set of rings tilted to one side. Use one color family for the swirls and a contrasting one for the planet so it does not disappear into the background. Small open circles are scattered through the swirls if you want extra spots of color.
Our own planet gets a full page here, with the Americas facing you and a second landmass along the right edge. Faint wavy lines run behind the continents for the oceans, and a few small circles float over the water. Blue for the seas and green or brown for the land is the classic choice. The shapes are large and clear, so younger kids can finish this one without much help.
Long ridges of dune-like ground stretch back to the horizon, with jagged peaks in the distance. A large striped planet hangs over the scene while a smaller one drifts nearby. The ground is drawn with fine parallel lines, so light shading with the side of a pencil looks better than solid fill. Save your boldest color for the big planet to give the page a focal point.
Cliffs and flat-topped mesas step back toward the horizon on this sheet. Above them a ringed planet and a plain round one share a sky full of small circles. Layer two or three browns on the rock walls to bring out the ledges. This is a busier page, so it suits an older colorer who likes filling in detail.
A single moon nearly fills the page, its surface pocked with round craters of several sizes. A large circle overlaps the upper right edge, and a band of stippled texture wraps the right side. Grays and silvers are the natural pick, and a soft pencil lets you shade that darker rim. Anyone who enjoys blending will get more out of this one than someone reaching for a marker.
This ringed planet has a face, with two big eyes and a small curved smile. Stars, little planets and a spiky sun fill the space around it. Bright, flat colors suit the cartoon style better than careful shading. It is one of the friendliest sheets in the set and an easy win for preschoolers.
Planets of all sizes float across this page with star shapes tucked between them. Several wear rings, others are simply striped or plain. Nothing overlaps, so kids can give every planet its own color without any planning. It also works as a pattern practice page, since each planet’s stripes can take a different treatment.
A large circle sits in the middle of this sheet, drawn with several rings around its edge. Planets and stars are spaced around it, including one with a wide ring of its own in the lower left. Warm yellows and oranges in the center with cooler colors outside gives the page an easy sense of depth. The shapes are big and open, so this one goes quickly.
One enormous circle takes up most of the page, and two ringed planets sit on its edge, one at the top right and one at the lower left. Inside the big circle there is nothing but scattered stars. That empty space is an invitation, and a gradient, a pattern or a night sky all work. It is the least detailed sheet here, which makes it a good one for a very young colorer or a chalk pastel experiment.
Spiral swirls sit in the corners of this page with striped planets and small circles filling the middle. There is no single subject, so it reads more like wrapping paper than a scene. Pick three or four colors and repeat them across the sheet to keep it from going muddy. Pages like this are handy for cutting into bookmarks or gift tags once they are done.
The sun here has a calm human face ringed by long, curling flames. Bubbles and swirls float around it and fill the corners. Oranges, reds and yellows on the flames with a lighter shade on the face keeps the features readable. If this style goes over well, our sun coloring pages have more of it.
This one is laid out like a diagram, with a cratered ball in the middle and planets spaced around a set of orbit rings. One of them carries rings of its own in the upper left. Because the layout is a circle, a color order works well: warm shades near the center, cool ones on the outside. It is also the easiest sheet to talk over when you explain what orbits what.
A tall rocket stands in the middle of a big circular frame with a ring wrapped around its body. Striped planets sit outside the frame and four-pointed stars fill the space between. Metallic gray on the rocket against a dark frame makes the shape jump out. Everything is drawn with thick lines, so markers are fine here.
Line after line spirals out from a stippled center on this page. Small planets ride the outer arms and star shapes are scattered across the whole sheet. Blending purples into blues along the spiral gives it depth, and a white gel pen adds sparkle at the end. The lines sit close together, so sharpen your pencils before you start.
A child stands at the bottom edge of this sheet with one hand raised, watching streaks fall across the sky. A striped planet sits in the top left and a lumpy ringed one in the top right. Leaving the streaks white against a colored sky is the trick that makes them look like falling light. There is a lot of open sky, so it is a good page for trying a wash of a single color.
A friendly rocket with a round window climbs inside a circular frame, flames trailing behind it. Small planets and star shapes ring the outside. Red and white stripes with a yellow flame is the classic look, though nothing stops you going neon. Big, forgiving shapes make this one an easy win for younger kids.
An astronaut drifts in the middle of this page with arms out and a clear round visor. Planets surround the figure, one with rings near the top and larger striped ones along the bottom. White suits look flat on paper, so try light gray or blue in the shadows and save the brightest color for the planets. The suit is drawn in segments, which gives you plenty of places to change color.
A small alien with pointed ears, a big curly head of hair and a star on its shirt stands in the middle of this sheet. Planets circle around it, several with rings, and a comet streaks in from the left. Green skin is the obvious answer, but this is a page where wild colors are half the fun. The face is simple and the planets are large, so it suits younger colorers.
Planets of every size drift across this page, with the largest ringed one anchoring the bottom middle. Some are striped, some speckled, and a few carry thin rings tipped at different angles. Working from the biggest planet outward keeps your color scheme under control. It also prints well at half size if you want small planets to cut out.
A banded planet with a long tilted ring sits inside a set of circular orbit lines, with striped planets floating outside them. A ring system like this is Saturn’s calling card, and the real Saturn had 274 confirmed moons as of March 2025 (1). Keep the orbit lines light so the planet stays the star of the page. The ring itself is drawn in narrow bands, which is a nice place to practice shading.
Planets are set like beads around a wide ring, with a starry circle held in the middle. Some are striped and others are covered in craters. Mandalas reward a repeating plan, so try alternating two colors the whole way around. This is the calmest sheet in the set and a good one for an adult who wants something quiet.
Jagged peaks ring a wide valley floor drawn with soft, flowing contour lines. In the sky a striped planet sits on the left, a ringed one in the middle and two plain spheres to the right. Cool grays and blues in the valley with warmer tones overhead keeps the two halves distinct. The contours take patience, which makes this a page for someone who likes to settle in.
A wheeled rover crosses a rocky plain here, its camera mast raised on a tall neck above a boxy instrument deck. Loose rocks are scattered through the foreground and a swirled sun hangs in the sky. Metallic grays on the body with a bright accent on the camera housing make the machine read clearly. Rust reds on the ground turn the whole thing into a Mars scene.
A modular space station floats inside a round frame, solar panels stretched out on both sides and cloud shapes drifting behind it. The panels are drawn as grids, which makes them satisfying to fill with a repeating color. The real International Space Station orbits about 250 miles up and travels at 17,500 miles per hour (2). Silver and white on the modules with deep blue behind them gives the page some contrast.
This rocket climbs through a set of loose swirls with thin exhaust lines trailing below it. Small ringed planets and star outlines fill the corners. The swirls sit behind everything, so one pale color across them keeps the rocket in front. The shapes are chunky and forgiving, which makes crayons a fine choice.
A mottled planet sits at the center of this page with a flat ring seen edge on, like a disc sliced through it. Ring after ring circles outward to the edges of the sheet, and three small open circles sit in the corners. Coloring each band a slightly different shade turns the page into a target of color. It is simple to plan and slow to finish, which some kids love.
Spiral arms sweep around a large stippled sphere at the center of this sheet. A ringed planet presses in from the left, lumpy asteroids drift near the top, and star shapes are scattered throughout. Blend two or three colors along the arms and leave the stars white for contrast. It is one of the busiest pages in the set, so plan on more than one sitting.
Banks of puffy clouds fill the lower half of this page while long curved lines sweep across the sky above them. A small striped planet sits on the left with open circles floating nearby. Soft blues and purples with white clouds is the easy route, though a sunset palette looks striking here. Almost everything is a large open shape, so it colors up fast.
A stocky astronaut stands facing you with a wide rectangular visor and a control box on the chest. Ringed planets sit to the left, a striped one in the upper right, and small dots fill the background. The visor is blank, which makes it the perfect spot to draw a reflection of your own. Keep the suit pale and let the planets carry the color.
Round, smooth spheres rest on a rolling plain while more of them float in the sky above the ridge. The ground is drawn with long flowing lines that suggest blown dust. Shading each sphere from one side gives them weight, where a flat fill makes them look like stickers. It is an unusual, dreamlike sheet that older kids tend to like more than younger ones.
This page is a loose grid of planets, some banded with stripes, others dotted like moons, and two of them carrying rings. Small stars and specks fill the gaps between. Since the planets are separate, it is a good sheet for testing color combinations before you commit them to a scene. Younger kids can also use it to practice staying inside a lot of circles.
A very large plain sphere fills most of this sheet, with a smaller ringed planet crossing in front of it at the lower right. Open circles of different sizes float around them both. The big sphere is nearly blank, so it is a good place to try a gradient or a texture of your own invention. Give the ring a contrasting color so the two planets separate cleanly.
Earth sits at the center of this page with a ring around it and layer after layer of orbit lines sweeping outward. Small planets are spaced around the outside of those lines. Blues and greens on the globe with light gray orbits keeps the continents readable. If the planet itself is the draw, our Earth coloring pages go further into land and ocean detail.
A huge sphere dotted with small circles rises behind a flat plain scattered with sharp, triangular rocks. Swirling lines in the ground pull your eye toward the middle. Pale gray on the big sphere with a darker ground makes the scene feel enormous. The sky is mostly empty, which leaves room to add stars of your own.
Thick, three-dimensional hexagons link together in a big loop across this page. Cratered moons and striped planets crowd the space around and behind them. Coloring each face of a hexagon a different shade brings out the 3D effect, so pick one light, one medium and one dark. Straight edges are easier to color neatly than curves, which makes this a good page for a marker.
A banded planet with wide rings sits inside a billowing cloud of gas that spreads across the page. Circles of many sizes drift outside it like distant moons. Clouds like this are made for blending, so lay down your lightest color first and build up. Leave a few gaps of white paper inside the cloud to keep it from going flat.
Planets dangle from long strings that run up to the top of the page, like a mobile over a crib. One is speckled with tiny stars, another carries a ring, and a lumpy cloud shape hangs among them. Coloring each planet differently makes the row read clearly. Cut them out afterward and you have an actual mobile for a bedroom ceiling.
A rocket cuts diagonally through a thick circular ring here, flame streaming out behind it. Four-pointed stars and small ringed planets fill the space around the frame. Coloring the ring one solid color and the rocket another makes the crossing point pop. The flame is the best place on the page for your brightest orange.
A full space suit stands alone on this page, drawn with padded segments, gloves, boots and a bubble helmet. The chest panel carries rows of dashes and a line of round buttons to fill in. With no background to worry about, this is the sheet for designing your own mission patch and suit colors. It is the most detailed figure in the set, so give it time.
This ringed planet is drawn with heavy cracked lines across its face and a broad, layered ring system. Moons of several sizes and textures scatter across the background. The surface detail rewards a sharp pencil rather than a marker. Pick one bold color for the planet and keep the moons muted so they stay behind it.
One moon fills the entire page, its face marked with craters of every size and a dense band of shading curving down the right side. Because the Moon’s atmosphere is too sparse to stop incoming rocks, a steady rain of asteroids, meteoroids and comets leaves craters exactly like these (3). Grays and soft blues give it a realistic finish. The shaded band is already drawn for you, so follow it with a darker pencil and the moon turns round.
Soft, cloud-shaped hills roll across the bottom of this sheet under a sky full of dots and starbursts. Two ringed planets hang above, one on the left and one on the right. The hills carry very few internal lines, so this is a good page for practicing smooth, even color. Make the two planets different colors and the sky stops looking repetitive.
An astronaut stands on a cratered surface looking out, with a large striped planet filling the sky behind. Open five-pointed stars are scattered across the space around the figure. Our own Moon sits an average of 238,855 miles from Earth, per NASA, which is worth mentioning while a kid colors a scene like this. Keep the suit light and the sky dark so the figure stands out.
A banded planet takes the center of this page with a long ring tipped across it and a halo of thin circles behind. Small starbursts sit out in the corners. The bands on the planet are wavy, which makes them easy to fill in alternating shades. It is a strong page to frame once it is finished.
Rolling hills covered in fine lines run back to a mountain range, dotted with strange puffy trees and tufts of grass. A large speckled moon sits in the upper left and two ringed planets hang in the sky. Nothing here exists, so the colors are entirely up to you and purple grass is a perfectly good answer. It is one of the most open-ended pages in the set. For more alien worlds like it, our outer space coloring pages have plenty of open-ended scenes to try.
A tall dome sits on a wide ringed platform, propped on pillars above a rocky chunk of asteroid. An antenna rises from the top and striped planets float in the background. Silver and white on the structure with warm colors on the planets makes the base look built rather than grown. The straight pillars and rings are a change of pace from all the circles elsewhere in this set.
A round base with stacked decks, a staircase and a tall antenna sits on a bare plain with low mountains behind it. An enormous moon rises behind the whole scene. Keep the base cool gray and the sky dark so the small windows can be the brightest thing on the page. It is a good sheet for a kid who likes adding extra vehicles and figures of their own.
This habitat is built in stacked levels inside a huge dome, with staircases, windows, planters and small buildings on every deck. Clouds bunch up underneath it and planets float in the space around. There is a lot to find here, so it doubles as a search-and-color page. Give each level its own color family and the structure reads clearly instead of turning into a jumble.
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Which Solar System Coloring Page Should You Start With?
Start with the cartoon sheets if your colorer is under five: “Smiling Ringed Planet” and “Cartoon Rocket Taking Off” use thick outlines and big open shapes that forgive a wobbly hand. “Giant Planet With Two Ringed Neighbors” is even simpler, with one huge circle and almost nothing inside it.
Grade-schoolers usually want something to learn from. “Planets on Their Orbit Rings” and “Earth Ringed by Orbits” are laid out like diagrams, so they give you something to talk about while you color. “Watching a Meteor Shower” and “Rover on a Rocky World” tell a small story, which tends to hold attention longer.
Older kids and adults should head for the dense pages. “Swirling Galaxy”, “Spiral Galaxy With Planets and Asteroids”, “Detailed Ringed Planet With Moons” and “Space Habitat” all have fine lines and layered detail that reward pencils, blending and a slow afternoon.
Activities to Do With Solar System Coloring Pages
Do not let those finished sheets gather dust on the fridge. Each of these turns coloring time into something a kid actually remembers.
Build a Real Planet Mobile
The “Hanging Planet Mobile” sheet is drawn for exactly this. Color it, cut out each planet, then tie the cutouts to a clothes hanger or two crossed sticks with fishing line. If you want the real order, hang them out from the sun as Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Different string lengths keep the planets from knocking into each other as they turn.
Glow-in-the-Dark Galaxy Wall
Turn a bedroom ceiling into a planetarium. After a page is colored, trace the outlines or fill a few craters with glow-in-the-dark puffy paint and let it dry flat overnight. Stick the sheets up with removable putty rather than tape so the paint does not peel the wall. “Swirling Galaxy” and “Craters Across a Moon” glow best because they have large areas to catch the light.
Planet Fact Flashcards
Print “Planets Big and Small” or “Planet Sampler Page” at a smaller scale, several to a sheet, then cut the planets out. Write one fact on the back of each: Mercury is the smallest planet and has no moons, Jupiter’s day is under ten hours long, Saturn’s rings are made of ice and rock. Quiz each other on car rides, or lay them face down and play a matching game.
Space Storyboarding
Lay the astronaut, rocket and alien sheets out on the floor in a row and ask your child to narrate what happens between them. “Cartoon Rocket Taking Off” to “Astronaut on a Cratered Moon” to “Friendly Alien Surrounded by Planets” is already a plot. Write a caption on the bottom of each page, staple them together, and you have a book.
The To Scale Challenge
Space is bigger than any drawing suggests. Take the colored planets outside to a park or a long hallway, put the sun at one end, and try pacing out the gaps between them. Kids quickly notice how tightly packed the inner planets are and how absurdly far out the last two sit. It is the fastest way to explain why a coloring page has to cheat on distance.
How Should You Print These Solar System Coloring Pages?
Print on the heaviest paper your printer will take. Standard copy paper buckles under markers and tears under an eraser, while cardstock or a heavier text-weight sheet handles both. Anything wet, like watercolor pencils, needs the thickest stock you have.
Set the print dialog to fit-to-page and turn off any scaling you did not choose yourself, or the outer ring of the mandala and orbit pages gets clipped. Grayscale or black-ink-only saves color cartridges, since every one of these sheets is line art.
For the flashcard and mobile activities, print several pages per sheet to get small planets you can cut out. Keep the detailed sheets at full size, though. Pages like “Space Habitat” and “Spiral Galaxy With Planets and Asteroids” have lines close enough together that shrinking them makes the gaps impossible to color.
FAQs
What Is the Correct Order of the Planets?
The planets orbit the sun in this order: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The mnemonic most kids learn is “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles.” Mercury sits closest in and laps the sun every 88 days, and it is the smallest planet and has no moons (4). The “Planets on Their Orbit Rings” sheet is the easiest one to point at while you run through the list.
Why Is Pluto No Longer Considered a Planet?
The International Astronomical Union reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet in 2006. It is still out there and still has five known moons: Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx, per NASA. Pluto is about two-thirds the diameter of Earth’s Moon, which is smaller than most kids picture. None of the sheets in this set is drawn as Pluto specifically, but any of the small plain spheres can stand in for it.
What Is the Best Way to Color Gas Giants?
Blend rather than fill, because a gas giant has no solid surface to outline. Jupiter’s composition is close to the sun’s, mostly hydrogen and helium, and it spins so fast that one Jupiter day lasts 9.9 hours, per NASA. The banded clouds are what you see on these sheets. Watercolor pencils, soft pastels or a blending stump over colored pencil all give you that stormy, streaked look. The banded planets on “Big Ringed Planet Close-Up” and “Ringed Planet in a Swirling Sky” are the best sheets to practice on.
Are These Coloring Pages Suitable for Preschoolers?
Yes, and a handful are drawn specifically for small hands. “Smiling Ringed Planet”, “Cartoon Rocket Taking Off” and “Giant Planet With Two Ringed Neighbors” all use thick outlines and large open areas, so staying inside the lines is realistic for a three or four year old. Skip the galaxy and habitat sheets at that age, since the lines sit too close together to color without frustration. Chunky crayons or triangular pencils help more than the choice of page does.
How Can I Make the Stars on the Page Look Real?
Color the sky first, then add the stars on top with a white gel pen, a paint pen or correction fluid. Working in that order lets the stars sit above a dark blue or black background instead of being swallowed by it. Glitter glue in small dots works too, though it needs an hour to dry flat. On “Watching a Meteor Shower”, leave the streaks as bare paper while you color around them and they read as light without any white pen at all.
