What Makes a Great Jigsaw Puzzle: The Ultimate Guide

Jigsaw puzzles have been a beloved pastime for generations, offering a perfect blend of relaxation, challenge, and satisfaction. At The Puzzle Center, we understand the joy that comes from completing a beautiful puzzle, and we aim to provide the best selection for enthusiasts of all ages and skill levels. In this guide, we'll explore what makes a great jigsaw puzzle, popular images, the benefits of various sizes, top brands, and how to choose the perfect puzzle for different age groups and abilities.

The Allure of Jigsaw Puzzles

What People Love About Doing Jigsaw Puzzles

1. Mental Stimulation: Puzzles engage the brain, improving memory, problem-solving skills, and cognitive functions.
2. Relaxation and Stress Relief: The focused, meditative nature of puzzling helps reduce stress and promotes mindfulness.
3. Sense of Achievement: Completing a puzzle provides a satisfying sense of accomplishment and boosts mood.
4. Social Interaction: Puzzles can be a great way to spend time with family and friends, fostering cooperation and communication.
5. Creative Exploration: Puzzles often feature beautiful artwork, allowing puzzlers to appreciate and engage with different artistic styles.

What Images Are Great for Jigsaw Puzzles?

The image on a jigsaw puzzle can greatly influence its appeal. Popular choices include:

• Scenic Landscapes: Pictures of mountains, forests, beaches, and cities.
• Wildlife and Animals: Detailed images of birds, mammals, marine life, and insects.
• Artwork and Paintings: Famous artworks, modern art, and illustrations. Small artist puzzles and upcoming artistic puzzles are always fun to put together. These puzzles are often scenic or bright and vibrant puzzles with a beautiful artists touch. 
• Fantasy and Sci-Fi: Imaginative dragon puzzles, fairy puzzles, and ethereal landscape puzzles from different worlds and universes.
• Nostalgic and Retro Themes: Vintage posters puzzles, classic advertisements, and classic car puzzles, nostalgic puzzles, that take you back. 80's puzzles and 90's puzzles as well as Route 66 puzzles, diners and drive ins and puzzles with memories to take you back.
• Cat puzzles and dog puzzles: Cute cat puzzles and cuddly dog puzzles are always a hit because we love our furry friends. Who does love to work on an adorable cat puzzle or a cuddly dog puzzle?

You can view all of puzzle themes we have on our website...and check back often. We are always thinking of better ways to break out themes. 

The Benefits of Various Sizes and Piece Counts

Small Puzzles (100-500 pieces)

• Beginner Friendly: Perfect for new puzzlers and young children. Under 100 piece puzzles are great puzzles for kids looking to grow their puzzle skills.
• Quick Satisfaction: Can be completed in a shorter time frame, providing a quick sense of achievement. 100 piece puzzles to 300 piece puzzles are great for a quick puzzle fix and are great kids puzzles, great senior puzzles or great for those wanting to get a quick puzzle in on the weekend or evening in.
• Portable: Easier to transport and store. Smaller puzzles like 100 piece puzzles are easy puzzles to take with you on the go. 

Medium Puzzles (500-1000 pieces)

• Balanced Challenge: Suitable for casual puzzlers looking for a moderate challenge. Want to get puzzle in on the weekend, these 500 piece puzzles make great weekend or rainy day works of art. 
• Variety: A wide range of themes and images available. The themes for these puzzles range from cat puzzles, dog puzzles, unicorn puzzles, gradient color puzzles, landscape puzzles and more. There are fantasy and educational puzzles too. EZ Grip and EZ Grasp larger piece puzzles are also fund to do.
• Group Activity: Great for small group activities or family bonding. Looking for a way to create a break at work? take a puzzle to work and put it together with your team? Maybe you each only have 10 minutes to work a puzzle, bring one to keep going in the office lunch room or in a central location to work together. Are you looking for team bonding or ice breaker activities? Do a speed puzzle competition or create space to work puzzles together. Or, for remote teams, do a puzzle exchange where you each pick a puzzle and then exchange and pass it on to another coworker.

Large Puzzles (1000-2000 pieces)

• For Enthusiasts: Ideal for experienced puzzlers who enjoy a substantial challenge.
• Detail and Complexity: Allows for intricate designs and detailed images.
• Extended Enjoyment: Provides a longer-term project for sustained engagement.

Extra Large Puzzles (2000+ pieces)

• Ultimate Challenge: For dedicated puzzlers seeking the highest level of difficulty.
• Showpiece Potential: Completed puzzles can be framed and displayed as art.
• Collaborative Fun: Perfect for team-building exercises and large group activities.

Top Brands in the Puzzle World

1. Ravensburger: Known for high-quality pieces and a vast range of images and difficulty levels.
2. Buffalo Games: Popular for vibrant, detailed images and innovative piece shapes.
3. White Mountain Puzzles: Offers a variety of nostalgic and themed puzzles.
4. Clementoni: Combines beautiful artwork with eco-friendly production.
5. Cobble Hill: Features unique and artistic images with high-quality craftsmanship.
6. Springbok Puzzles: Features bright colors and artsitic colors and is a long time brand of puzzles
7. Eurographics Puzzles: Colorful art and creative tins with puzzles from Europe
8. New York Puzzle Company Artistic covers of New Yorker magazine and other creative images.
9. MasterPieces: Great artistic puzzles for kids and adults
10. Brain Tree Games: Colorful and bright images that are busy with detail 

Great Puzzles for Different Ages

For Children & Teens

• Eurographics: Great lunch pail puzzles for kids as well as maps
• National Geographic Kids: Creative tin puzzles and great quality puzzles for the whole family.
• Clementoni - Provides great variety and bright color puzzles - quality kids puzzles and puzzles for adults.
• eeBoo - Creative puzzles and colorful puzzles - great puzzles for kids and adult puzzles. 
• Melissa & Doug: Offers colorful, educational puzzles with large pieces.
• Ravensburger: Provides age-specific puzzles with themes like animals, vehicles, and fairy tales.

For Adults

• Springbok: Known for visually engaging puzzles with thick, durable pieces. These puzzles are great kids puzzles and puzzles for adults. With lots of holiday puzzles for every holiday as well as great color puzzles and puzzles with lots of details. These are often random cut puzzles with great puzzle piece shapes.
• Eurographics: Features a wide range of artistic puzzles and photographic puzzles - Many puzzles with colors and puzzles with lots of details. Eurographics is known for great puzzle images, puzzles for kids and puzzles for adults.

For Seniors and Those with Limited Dexterity

• Larger Pieces: Also known as EZ Grip, EZ Gasp or easy grasp, brands like Springbok and Masterpieces offer puzzles with larger pieces, making them easier to handle.
• Simpler Designs: Puzzles with clear, distinct sections and less intricate details.

Comprehensive List of Puzzle Manufacturers

Minority-Owned and Unique Brands

We will be spotlighting articles on women owned and minority owned Puzzle companies in the future as well as making significant space in our inventory and on our site to showcase the amazing talents from these brands.

• Puzzle Culture:A Latina owned business that feature artwork from independent artists to help bring a diverse and inclusive voice to the puzzle market
• Puzzle Weekend: Black woman owned puzzle company born from the desire to do less, together. We work with talented artists to create beautiful, intricate puzzles that can be done solo, or even better - with loved ones. 
• Puzzle Huddle: Offers culturally diverse puzzles celebrating various ethnic backgrounds.
• Nora Murphy Designs: Known for their artistic and unique puzzle themes.

Smaller and Artistic Brands

• Pomegranate: Features puzzles with artwork from renowned artists.
• Puzzlefolk:A woman owned business that provides a collection full of cute, vibrant, fun and refreshing designs
• JaCaRou Puzzles - Includes sub brands like Magnolia , Yazz, and Delfy - Beautiful vibrant colors and artistic images. Great quality pieces.
• Puzzle Culture:A latina owned business that feature artwork from independent artists to help bring a diverse and inclusive voice to the puzzle market
• eeBoo: Focuses on beautifully illustrated, eco-friendly puzzles.
• Cloudberries: Fun, design-led jigsaw puzzles especially for adults
• ​​Puzzle Weekend: Black woman owned puzzle company born from the desire to do less, together. We work with talented artists to create beautiful, intricate puzzles that can be done solo, or even better - with loved ones.

You can view all of the brands we carry on our website. Check back often since we are always adding new puzzle brands!

At The Puzzle Center, we pride ourselves on offering a diverse range of puzzles to suit every preference and ability. Many of these brands are coming your way in the next several months and we couldn't be more excited. Whether you're looking for a quick challenge or a long-term project, we have the perfect puzzle for you. Explore our collection today and discover the joy of puzzling!