Holiday Gift Guide: Best Paint by Numbers Kits for Every Season
By Simon I., co-founder, Paint Kit Studio. Published 2026-05-06.
Peak gift-shopping weeks at the studio go like this. Two weeks in early-to-mid December for Christmas. Three weeks in late April through early May for Mother's Day. Two weeks in late May through mid-June for Father's Day. The other 47 weeks combined are smaller than any of those three windows. (We genuinely run a different shipping operation in those weeks. More boxes, more late nights, more pizza on the studio floor.)
The other thing the order data shows is how much of holiday shopping is still last-minute. NRF: "as of early December, consumers had completed just over half (51%) of their holiday shopping on average." (Winter Holidays Data and Trends, National Retail Federation, n.d., retrieved 6 May 2026.) Half the country still figuring out what to give the people they love with three weeks on the clock. We see that in our December order data and in the panic emails that arrive on December 22nd. (One every couple of hours, that week. I've started keeping a folder.)
So this guide breaks down the picks by holiday and season, with order-by deadlines so the kit actually arrives in time. Pour a coffee.
Key takeaways
- Christmas: order by December 10 for standard kits, December 1 for custom photo kits. Seascapes and mountain landscapes are the top December picks.
- Mother's Day: order by May 1 for standard, April 21 for custom. NRF projects Mother's Day spending at a record $38 billion this year, with shoppers budgeting $284 per person.
- Father's Day: order by June 7 for standard, May 28 for custom. Wildlife and mountain landscapes outsell everything else.
- Valentine's Day: sunset coastal scenes work better than literal hearts. Two kits to paint together is its own date-night gift.
- Custom photo kits need 10 to 14 days. Always pad your gift deadline by a week.
Bottom line: order earlier than you think you need to, especially for custom kits. The week of the holiday is too late.
Why does paint by numbers fit every holiday season?
Most gifts are tied to a moment. A bouquet wilts. Chocolates get eaten. A book gets read once. A paint by numbers kit gives the recipient something to do across the long quiet days that follow most holidays. The week between Christmas and New Year. The Sunday after Mother's Day. The fishing-trip evening after Father's Day. That extension of the holiday into the days after is part of why kits work consistently across the calendar. (One customer named Theresa told me her dad finished his Father's Day kit on the first day of football season and put it on the wall above his TV. Felt seasonal in two senses.)
Format also has weird staying power. Smithsonian Magazine on the original 1950s boom: "By 1954, the company had sold more than 12 million of the kits, according to a 2001 exhibition on the paint-by-number phenomenon by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History." (Dan Robbins, Who Launched the Paint-by-Number Craze in the 1950s, Has Died, Smithsonian Magazine, 2019, retrieved 6 May 2026.) Twelve million kits before our parents were born. Format works for the same reason it always has. Numbered guide handles the artistic decisions. Painter brings the time. The kit is the answer to "I'm not artistic" before the recipient ever opens it.
The other reason is that the format adapts. Wintry mountain scenes feel right for December but read as wall art year-round. Summery seascapes work for Mother's Day in May and for a beach-house housewarming in August. Wildlife works for Father's Day and for retirement gifts. The same kit format slides into a dozen different occasions without feeling generic in any of them.
What's the best Christmas paint by numbers gift?
Christmas is our largest gift season by a wide margin. The NRF puts the broader market in numbers. "Consumers are budgeting an average $890 for gifts and other seasonal items," with "91% of consumers plan to celebrate the winter holidays." (Winter Holidays Data and Trends, National Retail Federation, n.d., retrieved 6 May 2026.) The pressure on getting Christmas right is real, and the late-shopper rush is a reliable annual feature.
Order by December 10 for a standard pre-designed kit, December 1 for a custom photo kit (which has a 10 to 14 day production lead time), or November 25 if shipping internationally.
Top December design picks. Seascapes are our best-selling Christmas category, somewhat counterintuitively. Warm beach sunset on the wall is the opposite of dark December weather, and that contrast is exactly what makes them appealing in winter. Mountains and lakes are second. Snow-capped peaks, frozen lakes, winter forest scenes feel seasonally on-brand without being a literal Christmas tree. Animal portraits third, and within that, dogs are the runaway favourite. Custom photo kits of family pets land especially well at Christmas. We see a spike in custom-kit orders the second week of December, which is a few days too late for the standard custom production window. (Last year we had a customer named Priya who emailed at 2pm on December 11th asking if we could rush a custom of her daughter's golden retriever. We said no, then ended up doing it on a weekend. Cried slightly.) Order earlier.
The whole Christmas collection is curated for December gifting if you want to browse only seasonally appropriate designs.
What works for Valentine's Day?
Valentine's Day is our smallest of the four major gift seasons, but it has its own pattern. NRF projects Valentine's Day consumer spending will reach a record $29.1 billion. (Valentine's Day Data and Trends, National Retail Federation, n.d., retrieved 6 May 2026.) Most of that goes to flowers and candy and dinner. A small but growing share goes to gifts that last past the dinner.
Order by February 8 for a standard kit (February 14 delivery), or January 28 for a custom kit.
The trick with Valentine's design picks is to skip the obvious. Literal hearts and rose-and-cupid scenes read as cheesy more often than they read as romantic. What works better. Sunset coastal scenes are romantic without being saccharine and make beautiful bedroom art year-round. Floral compositions of peonies or wildflowers from our flowers collection outlast the actual bouquet you got the same day. (One kit roughly equals 50 bouquets in lifespan, give or take.) But the universal-best-gift category is the custom photo kit of a meaningful place: the view from your first holiday together, the neighbourhood you met in, the corner you got engaged at. We get more "this was the best Valentine's Day gift she'd ever received" mail off custom kits than off everything else combined.
Paint date night. Increasingly popular among our customers, and increasingly worth a section of its own. Order two smaller kits (or one larger one to share). Set up at the dining table with candles, music, a bottle of wine. Paint together for two or three hours. It's more engaged than dinner-and-a-movie, and you end with two pieces of wall art instead of leftover takeout. Some couples make it a recurring monthly thing. Ours is the third Sunday of every month, which started as a joke between Kerry and me about needing to do "couple things" and turned into the only standing calendar event we both actually look forward to.
What works for Mother's Day?
Mother's Day is the largest non-Christmas gift occasion in the calendar by spend. NRF's annual survey projects Mother's Day consumer spending will reach a record $38 billion this year, with shoppers budgeting around $284 per person. (Mother's Day Data and Trends, National Retail Federation, n.d., retrieved 6 May 2026.) The category is large, the average spend is high, and a paint by numbers kit at $30 to $65 fits comfortably inside what people are already willing to spend.
Order by May 1 for a standard kit (Mother's Day falls on the second Sunday of May), or by April 21 for a custom kit.
What works as a Mother's Day pick. The relaxation framing matters. Most mums get fewer hours-to-themselves than they want, and the format gives them permission to sit down with a brush and a podcast for a few evenings.
Top picks, in roughly the order I suggest them when customers email. Floral kits work as a paint-by-numbers version of the Mother's Day bouquet, except they provide hours of creative time and end up on the wall instead of in the compost bin a week later. Peonies, sunflowers, mixed-bouquet compositions all from the flowers collection. Custom family-photo kits are the heaviest hitters. A photo of the grandkids, a multi-generation portrait, a wedding photo. The most emotionally impactful Mother's Day gift we ship, by a wide margin. (Order from our custom kit page with at least 14 days of lead time.) Coastal scenes also work for mums who don't get enough downtime; a beach painting on the wall functions as a small daily holiday. And for mums who garden, botanical and English-cottage-garden landscapes bring that world indoors when the weather isn't cooperating.
If your recipient is older or has hand or eye fatigue, consider our adults-specific selection. Larger sections, easier on the eyes, kinder pacing. Roughly 30 percent of our gift orders go to recipients over 60, and a non-trivial fraction of those are gifts to mothers from adult children. The "for adults" line was built around exactly that recipient.
What works for Father's Day?
Paint by numbers as a Father's Day gift is one of our fastest-growing categories. Five years ago it was an afterthought; now it is comparable in volume to Mother's Day. Father's Day spending tracks behind Mother's Day in absolute terms but the audience is loyal. NRF projects Father's Day spending will reach a record $24 billion this year, with nearly half of consumers (48 percent) planning to purchase a gift for a father or stepfather. (Father's Day Data and Trends, National Retail Federation, n.d., retrieved 6 May 2026.)
Order by June 7 for a standard kit (Father's Day falls on the third Sunday of June), or by May 28 for a custom kit.
The best Father's Day designs are not the obvious ones. Many dads who receive a kit as a "let's see if he tries it" gift end up becoming dedicated painters. We have a small but vocal contingent of "dad customers" who started after a Father's Day kit and now order their own kits two or three times a year. The trick is picking a subject he will actually display.
Mountain and wilderness landscapes are the workhorse pick. Epic mountain panoramas, forest trails, lake reflections. They appeal to outdoorsy dads who would not call themselves "artistic" but are perfectly happy to put a finished mountain scene on a den wall. Mountains and Lakes is our top Father's Day collection by volume, every year. Wildlife portraits are second; deer, elk, eagles, bears, wolves, all read as "office wall art" rather than "craft project." Cities and architecture work for dads with metropolitan taste. Iconic skylines, classic cars, architectural studies, all in Cities & Villages. And the heaviest hitter is the custom kit. A portrait of his dog. His boat. His truck. A landscape from his favourite fishing spot. The house he grew up in. The custom-from-photo route punches well above its weight for dads, who are notoriously hard to shop for and who tend to underreact to physical gifts but visibly soften when handed something with personal meaning. (One of my favourite customer-mail moments of all time was a son who ordered a custom kit of his late father's pickup truck for his stepfather. Stepfather called the son, in tears, before opening the rest of the box.)
What about birthdays and other occasions?
Birthdays don't have a single rule because the right kit depends entirely on the recipient. Match to their interests, lean toward beginner difficulty unless you know they paint, add a frame if budget allows. The basic gift logic from our main gift guide covers it.
A few other occasions worth flagging quickly. Anniversaries call for custom kits. Wedding photo, honeymoon view, the city where you met. Easter is a smaller gifting season but bunny, garden, and floral themes work; our Easter collection handles it. Halloween is emerging as a gift season for craft-loving kids and adults; our Halloween paint by numbers selection runs October through mid-November. Sympathy and get-well gifts want the "give them a quiet evening" framing, with soft floral or garden subjects; avoid anything intensely cheerful. Retirement gifts work best with a larger 36 or 48-colour kit since the recipient suddenly has the painting hours they didn't have before; big landscapes are the most-requested category for retirees.
When do I need to order?
The single biggest reason a gift kit doesn't arrive in time is custom-kit lead time being underestimated. The order-by deadlines in one place, padded with a small buffer (these are conservative; real shipping is usually faster).
| Holiday | Date | Standard kit | Custom kit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valentine's Day | February 14 | February 8 | January 28 |
| Mother's Day | 2nd Sun of May | May 1 | April 21 |
| Father's Day | 3rd Sun of June | June 7 | May 28 |
| Christmas | December 25 | December 10 | December 1 |
| International orders | any holiday | add 5 to 7 days | add 5 to 7 days |
If the deadline has passed and you still want to give a kit, the workaround is the printout hand-off. Print your own order confirmation, slip it into a card with a photo of the design, and the recipient opens that on the day. The kit arrives a few days later. (We don't issue gift cards as a separate product; the printout is something you do yourself.) Erin's Christmas-Eve panic from the opening of this post resolved that way; her father-in-law painted the kit through January and emailed her a photo of the finished piece in February.
Frequently asked questions
Can I add a gift message?
Not from us, but the workaround is easy. We don't currently print or include gift messages with the kit. The simplest path is to buy a small blank card, write your own message, and tuck it inside the box when the kit arrives, or fold it into your own gift-wrapping.
What if the holiday deadline has passed?
If the kit won't arrive in time, the printout hand-off works. Print your own order confirmation and a photo of the chosen design, slip them into a card, and the recipient opens that on the holiday. The kit arrives a few days later. The surprise still works. (We don't issue gift cards as a separate product, so the printout is something you do yourself.)
Should I include a frame with a holiday gift?
Optional. A $20 to $30 stock floating frame from a craft store is a small spend that visibly upgrades the gift. Or include a printed copy of our framing guide and let the recipient pick their own. Both approaches work.
What's the most-given holiday occasion?
Christmas, by a wide margin. Roughly 35 percent of our annual gift-kit volume ships in December. Mother's Day and Father's Day each contribute about 12 to 15 percent of annual gift volume. Valentine's Day is around 5 percent. The rest is spread across birthdays, anniversaries, and other occasions year-round.
Can I gift-wrap the kit myself?
Yes. The standard kit ships in a flat brown box that is plain enough to gift-wrap directly. The box itself is unobtrusive, so wrapping on arrival is the simplest path.
Do you ship internationally?
Yes. Standard international shipping currently runs 10 to 14 days; custom-kit international orders run 14 to 21 days end-to-end. Pad your holiday deadline accordingly.
Ready to start shopping?
Browse the full paint by numbers collection for the broadest range, the Christmas collection for December gifting, or the Easter collection for spring. For the most personal gift in any season, turn a meaningful photo into a custom kit.
Once your recipient finishes painting, our framing guide covers the four options for getting the finished canvas on the wall. For first-time painters in your gift list, our Complete Beginner's Guide walks through every step from unboxing to hanging.
Last updated: 2026-05-06.
