Unicorn Colouring Pages: Printables and the Real Unicorns

The easiest way to get a good unicorn colouring page is to print one straight from a publisher you trust: look for thick outlines, one picture per sheet and no app to install. Our free pages include a baby unicorn and a baby dragon that print on plain A4. Then, when your child asks "are unicorns real?", you'll have a better answer than yes or no: three real animals that helped start the legend, and they're all fun to colour too.

This guide is for parents, carers and teachers. Below you'll find how to pick the right unicorn page for your child, an honest answer to the big question, and a true fact for each friend that tends to show up in a unicorn picture.

Picking the right unicorn page

Unicorn pictures range from a single smiling face to busy castle scenes. Match the page to the child, not the other way round.

Age (roughly)	What to look for	Good first picture
2 to 3	One big unicorn, thick lines, almost no background	A baby unicorn standing on grass
4 to 5	A unicorn with a rainbow, stars or one friend	A unicorn and a baby dragon
6 to 8	Full scenes with small spaces and patterns	Castles, flower meadows, unicorns with long braided manes

A few tips that help at any age:

One picture per side. Markers soak through, so a blank back keeps the next picture safe.
Let the mane go wild. Manes and tails are the one place where every colour of the box belongs. Children who don't enjoy staying inside the lines often love filling a mane stripe by stripe.
Print two copies. A daytime unicorn and a night-time unicorn, side by side, makes a lovely pair for the fridge.
Skip the copycat sites. Searching for free unicorn pages turns up dozens of sites reposting the same pictures. Download from the artist or publisher, and skip any page that asks you to install something first.

Are unicorns real? An honest answer for curious kids

Unicorns are not real animals. They are characters from stories, and very old ones. You can say that kindly and still keep the magic, because the true story of where unicorns came from is a good one.

Where the unicorn story began

The earliest written description of a unicorn is credited to Ctesias, a Greek physician who wrote about India around 400 BCE, using travellers' tales rather than his own eyes. According to the World History Encyclopedia, the animal he described was most likely a fanciful version of the Indian rhinoceros.

Centuries later, the same article explains, narwhal tusks were passed off as unicorn horns and sold for large sums by traders. People believed the "horns" had healing powers, so nobody selling them was in a hurry to explain they came from a whale.

A gentle way to put it to a young child: "Unicorns live in stories. But long ago, people heard about some very real animals with one horn, and that's how the stories started. Want to meet them?"

Meet the real unicorns

These three animals make great companion pages. Draw one next to your unicorn and compare the horns.

Real animal	Why it's called a unicorn	Source
Greater one-horned rhino	Its scientific name is Rhinoceros unicornis. About 4,075 live in India and Nepal today.	Save the Rhino
Narwhal	The "horn" is really a tooth that grows forward out of the jaw, up to about 3 metres long. Narwhals live in the Arctic Ocean.	NOAA Fisheries
Siberian unicorn	A giant shaggy rhino that weighed up to 3.5 tonnes and lived until at least 39,000 years ago, at the same time as people.	Natural History Museum

One extra detail children enjoy: the Natural History Museum notes that no Siberian unicorn horn has ever been found. Scientists think the big bump on its skull held one, which is how it got the nickname. So nobody knows exactly what its horn looked like, which means your child gets to decide.

True facts for the unicorn's friends

Most unicorn pictures come with company. Share a fact as your child colours each one.

On the page	One true fact	Source
Rainbow	You can only see a rainbow when the sun is behind you, which is why they show up most in the morning or late afternoon.	Bureau of Meteorology
Double rainbow	In the second, fainter rainbow, the colours are in the opposite order.	Bureau of Meteorology
Baby dragon	Australia has real dragons. The Australian water dragon grows to 80 to 90 cm long and can stay underwater for around an hour.	Australian Museum
Castle	Scotland's castles and palaces are full of carved unicorns, and Stirling Castle has seven hand-woven unicorn tapestries that took 13 years to make.	Historic Environment Scotland

Turn the facts into colouring prompts

Rainbow check. Colour the rainbow, then draw a little sun on the opposite side of the page, because that's where the sun has to be.
Double trouble. Add a second rainbow outside the first and colour it in reverse order, violet on the outside this time.
Horn swap. Draw a narwhal tooth, a rhino horn and a unicorn horn side by side. Which is longest? Which is curliest?
Real dragon. Give the baby dragon a pond to swim in, with bubbles to show it's holding its breath.
Design the mystery horn. Colour a Siberian unicorn and invent its horn, since nobody has ever found one.

The country that chose a unicorn

Here's a fact that delights most children: Scotland's national animal is the unicorn. According to Scotland.org, unicorns have featured on the royal coat of arms of Scotland since around the 12th century, and in Celtic mythology they stood for purity and power. You can still spot them carved on buildings from the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh to the fountain at Linlithgow Palace.

It's a good talking point for an older child: why might a country pick an animal from a story, rather than a real one like a kangaroo or an emu?

Ways to use unicorn pages at home and in class

At home

Bedtime wind-down. A single simple unicorn page and a short story make a calm end to the day. Our bedtime stories Pip Can't Sleep and Luna Lights the Night both star baby unicorns, and each story comes with pictures to colour.
Rainy day rainbow. Wait for a sunny afternoon after rain, stand with your back to the sun and look for a real rainbow. Colour it in when you come inside.
Party table. Print a stack of pages for a birthday and let guests colour while everyone arrives.

In the classroom

Real or story? Sort cut-out pictures into two piles: unicorns, dragons and fairies in one, rhinos, narwhals and water dragons in the other.
Map it. Mark India and Nepal, the Arctic, Siberia and Scotland on a world map, then colour each place with its "unicorn".
Old stories. Use the World History Encyclopedia article above as a starting point for a talk about how stories change as they travel.

Unicorn books for when one page isn't enough

If your child wants more than one page, our Unicorn Coloring Book for ages 2 to 6 has fifty unicorns and their magical friends: fairies, baby dragons, mermaids, castles and rainbows, all drawn big and bold. For ages 4 to 8, the Unicorn Activity Book mixes 25 colouring pages with 25 puzzles, from mazes and dot-to-dots to matching pairs. You'll find both on our books page.

Enjoyed the true-fact-for-every-picture idea? Our Australian animals colouring pages do the same for koalas, wombats and friends.

Get your free unicorn page

Start with the baby unicorn and baby dragon in our free set of five pages. They arrive as a PDF straight away, print on plain A4, and you can print as many copies as you like. Get the free pages here, then pick a real unicorn from the table above to colour alongside.

Questions and answers

Where can I get free unicorn colouring pages?

SparkleBay Books has a free set of five printable pages, including a baby unicorn and a baby dragon, as a PDF you can print on A4 or letter paper as many times as you like.

Are unicorns real?

No. Unicorns are characters from stories. The legend probably grew from travellers' tales of real animals, especially the Indian rhinoceros, and from narwhal tusks that traders sold as unicorn horns.

What animal is the real unicorn?

There are three good answers: the greater one-horned rhino, whose scientific name is Rhinoceros unicornis; the narwhal, a whale with one long spiral tooth; and the extinct Siberian unicorn, a giant shaggy rhino.

What age are unicorn colouring pages good for?

A single unicorn with thick outlines suits children from about two, while castles, rainbows and fairy scenes with smaller spaces suit children of about four to eight.

Why is the unicorn Scotland's national animal?

Unicorns have appeared on Scotland's royal coat of arms since around the 12th century, and in Celtic stories they stood for purity and power. You can still see them on palaces, crosses and fountains across Scotland.

Sources

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