Game play in Coloretto is simple: Either draw a card to play to a row, or take a row of cards to add them to your collection. A row can have at most three cards, so at some point everyone is forced to take a row. Once all the rows have been claimed, players start a new round, drawing or taking once again.

A two-player variant is included with some versions of Coloretto, with the only change being that rows can have only 1-3 cards placed in them, depending on the icons on the row cards.