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Miami artist Josefina Fernandez created the Confidante’s coloring book, inspired by sites and spaces around the Miami Beach hotel. (All images courtesy The Confidante Miami Beach)
Just because you’re attending an important business event while staying at the Confidante Miami Beach doesn’t mean you can’t relax and unwind. But along with its swimming pool, outdoor lounge, and proximity to the beach, the Confidante now offers groups a more hands-on way to destress: a coloring book and custom colored pencil set.
Designed by Miami illustrator Josefina Fernandez, the coloring book features whimsical scenes from the property, including guest suites and its 4,639-square foot Carmen Miranda Ballroom, which opened in January.
Fernandez explained she was inspired by her visit to the hotel. “Having a staycation at the Confidante was like living a pastel dream, where every detail is curated to perfection,” she wrote in the coloring book’s intro.
Located in Miami Beach’s popular mid-beach neighborhood, the Confidante offers the coloring book as an amenity to corporate guests, bridal parties, and planners booking events or organizing room blocks for special occasions at the hotel. It was designed, the hotel wrote in its press materials, to keep “group guests relaxed, productive, and inspired during their stay.”
The Confidante isn’t the first hotel to offer coloring books as an amenity. The practice began early in the decade when adult coloring books, what until then had been a niche hobby, turned into a buzzy fad.
The first commercially successful adult coloring books were published in 2012-13, and by 2015, folks at the National Day Calendar had declared August 2 to be National Coloring Book Day after a submission by Dover Publications, which released its first adult coloring book in 1970.
The trend hit its apex about 2017 when everyone from researchers at Johns Hopkins University to yoga instructors touted coloring books as an alternative to meditation. About the same time, hotels started creating their own coloring books for grown-ups and children staying at their properties.
The buzz has faded, but many tense adults still find mindfulness in coloring inside the lines in pages inspired by gardens, oceans, literature, animals, and even sayings such as “Home is where the vodka is” and, um, more adult messages.
Although designed for adults, the Confidante’s first coloring book is much more family friendly despite a bikini-clad “Confidante Girl” at the pool. Take a look at the coloring book’s pages and the hotel scenes that inspired them in the gallery below.
Curt Wagner is an associate editor at Convene.
Coloring Book Pages and the Scenes that Inspired Them
Flip through the images to see the coloring book pages followed by photos of various scenes in and around the Confidante Miami Beach.
You can see how this scene looking at the Confidante Miami Beach inspired the coloring book's cover at the top of the page.
The coloring book's first two pages show one of the hotel's rooms (left) and the 1930s House event space on the property. The next two photos show these spaces.
This suite in the Confidante inspired the coloring book's artist. Notice the similar chairs, bar and lighting fixture.
The 1930s House, a historic Spanish-style bungalow and private event space, was moved twice before ending where it currently resides on the property.
One of the property's swimming pools (left) and the Crown Room event space (right) grace these two pages.
Fun in the sun is the mission at the Confidante, which inspired the coloring book's depiction of one of the pools.
The Crown Room event space is a library bar with an adjoining terrace.
The Carmen Miranda Ballroom gets a visit from its namesake (left) while the Confidante Girl and a friend enjoy their time at the Confidante.
The Confidante Miami Beach offers 15,000 square feet of indoor meeting space, including its recently renovated Carmen Miranda Ballroom, and 15,000 square feet of outdoor meeting space to accommodate events for 10-1,000 people.
The Confidante's view of the ocean.