my son is 4. he didn't pick his paint color but we let him pick some of the accents. I'm sure its different when they are older. (you can see some pictures of it here: http://www.lifeonchurchill.com/search/label/his%20room )

I just bought my first little house, and I let both of my boys pick their paint colors. It's just the 2 rooms upstairs, so I was ok with that, but I've been pondering this exact thought for weeks now. I don't want their rooms to look too messy or thrown together, I want them to have some sense of style and organization, but with 2 opinionated little boys (ages 6 and 9) who are already struggling with NOT sharing a room (what!?) I wanted them to truly feel like their rooms were their little havens.
Help!! :)

@ANGELINAWI - since you let them pick their colors, why don't you let them pick the colors for toy bins or other organization tools? If they've chosen these items, maybe they'll be more inclined to use them without too much hair pulling from you.

As kids we had complete control of our rooms, paint colors included. It was important that we had "our" space. Now that I'm a mom I will do the same when mine get old enough (a 2 year old and a baby don't care much for decorating yet =) ).

I just posted about this yesterday! My four year olds room is probably my favorite in the house, and yes, he picked almost everything. My other son's nursery was designed for me, by me with the knowledge that as he grows it will absolutely change to his desire. I feel like our little people have such little say about the world they live in, the lest we can do is let them express their own individuality in the space that they grow in every day! You can his room here... the color, concept everything was by his desire, with a little help from mom!

http://www.diaryyummymummy.blogspot.com/2012/04/little-man-big-room.html

My kids & I will be redecorating bedrooms this summer. They are tweenagers. I am planning to let them pick their room colors, give them a $100 budget for any special bedding/accessories they want, and letting them choose items from elsewhere in the house. It will be interesting to see how this turns out...

I do get kind of tired of seeing all these kids rooms that are clearly designed more for the parents than the children. I think kids themselves are so interesting, and their rooms should tell us more about them than us (the parents.) The older my daughter gets, the more her room reflects her tastes and passions. I will say, however, that I do encourage my daughter to explore colors other than pink. Pink is certainly allowed, but not the only color that exists!

Oh, and here is her room, which I think is a sweet reflection of her five year old self: http://and-here-we-are.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/into-mouse-hole.html

When my kids were little, we lived in a apartments that didn't allow painting. We finally bought a house two years ago and my now-teenagers were give carte blanche to decorate their rooms. I made suggestions but they had the final say in everything. My son opted for gray walls with oversize art and pop culture posters, and my daughter has BRIGHT raspberry walls covered in teeny bopper posters. Neither is perfectly in line with the aesthetic of the rest of the house, but they are teenagers, so their doors are closed 95% of the time anyway! :)

My philosophy has been that I can decorate my infant's space as I like -- there is no foretelling what the future inhabitant will prefer and the parent spends lots of hours in that nursery, many of them with a sleeping or fussy infant so a pleasing environment helps make that time easier.

Once the nursery is outgrown I don't do much "decor" in my kids' rooms at all so the rooms can easily change with their tastes. When I was a kid my room was always done up beautifully and I found those beautiful rooms stifling.

I always shudder when AT features rooms that look like they were done without input from the child (or even worse, involved limited input from the family and were "done" by an interior decorator). We let our 6 year old make color choices and we also let him choose his bed - he loves green and so it is featured prominently in his bedroom. However, we chose a white and black bed and had the room painted white before moving in a year ago and didn't consult him on that all that extensively because his favorite green paint is way too dark for a room overlooking an alley in the Pacific Northwest, where we get many rainy days. So he gets to choose blankets, sheets and other decor in "Kermit the frog green" but we prevailed with choosing a "neutral" back drop. He loves the things he got to choose and feels it is his own space and doesn't mind the white backdrop at all. I can't imagine having a room decorated without his input. It also makes the process more enjoyable to turn it into a joint project based on mutual give and take.

This is such a great post...and perfect timing for me :)
I agree...there are so many rooms that look too "adult" if you will, and I've always wondered if the kids actually enjoy having a mini Eames chair and adult artwork, or if they would rather have a beanbag and a messy art table!!
I'm all for framing things, having a sense of uniformity, but ultimately I think the kids need to have something they can really call their own. I get every other room in the house after all :)

@PI - Thank you! I did buy them fun new laundry baskets that are easier for them to carry downstairs...which they are suddenly more than happy to do...who knew!?

When they're old enough to start verbally articulating about the design of their room, they're old enough to help you design it. HELP you design it.

When they're old enough to start buying their own stuff to design their room, they're old enough to design their own room.

When they're old enough and tidy enough to design their own room, they're old enough to design their own room without your help.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think you can be sensitive to the child's desires and needs (as in, is the room functional) without bending over backwards to let them have their say. I would be reasonable. "If you want to be involved in the decision-making process, you have to take responsibility for your space and keep it neat." If the child is old enough to hear and understand those terms, there's no problem letting them help you pick out colors, etc. Until then, I won't feel bad making the decisions.

PS- I've got a baby on the way and the last thing anyone will say about the baby's room is, "Oh, this is so precious!" Or, "How darling!" or "How cute!" :)

@robinanderson09 -- Your four-year old chose to hang a laminated world map on which to pin his travels? And a nautical-themed bed frame, to match your love for nautical stripes? He's a precocious one!

He did actually, he chose the stripes because he said they looked like my shirts that are my favorites. Also, a year ago I asked him if he wanted to keep the map in his room or if I should put it in the nursery and he said he "love it" and at school when they learn about a new place he always comes home and we try to find it. The pins are for me!

Some kids probably don't even care. I know a lot of kids who would be happy with, say, pink walls and flowers, or whatever, and then the parents could do anything else. I am sure that a lot of the really decorated rooms we see on here don't actually look like that all the time. I'd even argue that some of those rooms are more a reflection of the kids sleeping in them than a themey room based on whichever Disney or Pixar movie is popular that month (not that we see any of those on AT).

My kids have a say, within reason. I'd let them choose "blue" or "pink" or whatever for walls, but not the specific shade (except from a limited palette). I really don't think kids have the skills to visualize how a tiny swatch of color will translate to four walls, and I do think colors influence our state of mind.

I think that how a room feels is at least as important as how it looks. A primary colored room full of characters and plastic toys is maybe not going to be the most restful place for a child. My daughters' rooms are a lot more flowery and animaly than the rest of our house, but as far as style, our house is pretty eclectic overall, and I think the rooms reflect that. It's nothing intentional, but rather out of economic necessity, where a lot of items in their rooms have been repurposed from other areas of the house, or handed down from older siblings.

This is my two year old's room. http://twinklesandtwigs.blogspot.com/2011_11_01_archive.html I didn't buy anything specifically for it, and there are more toys in it now that she is a little older and spends more time in there playing. Despite having zero say in it, she loves it (and she's opinionated. She was upset when we painted our enclosed porch green instead of pink--and pink was never an option!). It's very much her style though, and full of elements (animals, princesses, flowers) that she loves. I think it's kid friendly, but aside from the pictures and two lamps that aren't shown, just about anything in there could be used in another area of the house without looking juvenile.

That was the wrong link: http://twinklesandtwigs.blogspot.com/2011/11/maxine-takes-over-guest-room.html

My youngest nephew, who has a flair for all things arty, was allowed to "decorate" his furniture when he was 5. He loved doing it. It's not about "interior design," it's about getting on your knees and saying "sweetie, what colors do you really, really like?" "Why?"

They're children, and they have imaginations. Why not?

My parents never asked me what furniture or color I wanted. I didn't much care, but I wasn't given an opportunity to care, so.....

yes, i did notice that many of the AT rooms for kids don't seem to be realistic. reminds me of the laura ashley clothing that kids wore, but could never play in.

When I was a little it was really, really important to me to have my own space and have some control over it. I had kind of a chaotic childhood, though, so the same may not be true for others.

I think all of the rooms I've seen in the comments so far are just lovely, and they look so inviting--for kids AND grownups! Kudos to you guys for finding the right balance.

I don't have kids yet (at 19, thank god!) but I was always allowed to design my rooms. Until I was 9 I had an aquarium room, with sand painted 4 feet up the walls and waves up the rest and the roof. Then I had purple walls with an 8 foot smiley face on the roof, an 8 foot peace sign on the south wall, and an 8 foot ying-yang on the north wall, and a waterbed and purple bar fridge. Had it that way until I was 13 and the waterbed started to damage the floorboards. Then it was painted dark red with all black trim and moulding, and all leopard print fabric and a wrought iron bed. When I turned 17 I painted everything in it white (11 coats over the black/red!), paid to have my own laminate installed instead of carpet, and went minimalist. Designing my own rooms has always been such a part of my life - feeling like I had a safe place of my own to retreat to after a tough day at high school, or even in kindergarten (they happen!) made a big difference in my life. I've always been a little worker (paper routes, babysitting, first job at 13) and everything after the aquaroom was paid for out of my own little pocket... with painting help from mom...

Another thing that I benefitted from was having a static environment. My house was always changing - my mum redecorates every few months with new paint, new second-hand furniture, etc. and having my rooms my way meant that I could always close my door and have a cohesive decorative landscape. I can't imagine the resentment I would have felt if my mum had ever barged into my room with a roller and started splashing up colours I didn't want or hadn't chosen.

Also, I'd like to note to point out that there appear to be a lot of people claiming they let their children decorate their room, but I'd like to ask them - did you REALLY? Asking them if they want yellow walls is not letting them decorate. Bringing home things they like and putting them up where you think they look good is not letting them decorate. Hearing that they like soccer and building them a soccer themed room - NOT letting them decorate. When I was a kid my mum would literally walk around the room wherever I pointed with thumbtacks when I brought home a new poster from the bookfair at school. Sometimes they ended up on the roof, or at my 4' 5" eye level, and my ceiling lamps were often hung with 4 feet of cord because that's the head clearance I needed... I remember a while when the door would hit the dresser everytime someone came in because I wanted more space for car roadmaps. Be careful when claiming that your kids did their own decorating, because many cases that no more their own than an adult telling the decorator "I was thinking blue." and then leaving the country.

When they're old enough to start buying their own stuff to design their room, they're old enough to design their own room.

Uh, right. And where do they get the money? Furniture adds up to thousands. I really hope you do have a baby on the way because you have ultra sharp corners that need to be softened if you want to be a caring and respectful parent instead of a dictator.

If my toddler son is anything like his father, I'll be decorating his living spaces until he's got a SO to take over the task. My husband is fairly apathetic toward design as long as I don't go too crazy and generally will agree to most things I present to him.

@a-chacun-son-gout--I laughed at that comment, too.

When we moved to our current house, my older son was 11. I vetoed his first choice of paint color for the walls, because I thought it was too dark for his northeast facing bedroom. Then we moved in his old loft bed, dresser, desk, and bookcase and put them where he wanted them. We put the rug from his old room on the floor. He picked out a comforter cover at Ikea. I selected a new ceiling fan and some lights. And that was the end of my involvement. He's covered the walls with maps, posters, New Yorker covers, flags, arranged his tchtokes, and built a large, apparently permanent, Lego installment covering about a quarter of the floor--a city lay-out that he works on periodically. It's a mess, but it's his mess.

I decorated my younger son's room, and it has stayed pretty much the same for the past few years. But just the other day, he chose a random blank spot on the wall and tacked up a drawing. :-)

Very funny! Our kids had very little say in how their room was decorated, that said, it's nothing like the kinds of rooms you show here. They do however have a big say in the way it looks now, which is generally upside down:)

The desk is Awesome! I want it for myself

My kids are still really little...and as such, my philosophy is, "It's my home, and I have to LOOK at it." If my boys take after my husband, they may never care very much about what their room looks like. And if they ever start asking to change the decor, I'll give them age-appropriate decisions to make, plus a budget.

I never have a problem with "adult-decorated" kid rooms here on AT. But sometimes the thought does cross my mind, "Hmm, they're going to HATE the cleaning and upkeep on that white upholstery when their baby is older!" or, "I wonder if they actually let their kids play in there." :)

When my parents moved into their house I was probably around 10, and my new room was an awful salmon pink with greasy kiss marks on the walls from the six year old who used it. I desperately wanted to redecorate and my mom agreed. However, I wanted black and white stripes with No Doubt posters and JTT pictures from Teen Beat. Instead my mom overruled everything and put white carpet, dark maroon walls, antique wood furniture, and gold/maroon/hunter green accents on everything. I hated it. I still hate it and I moved out about ten years ago. I wasn't allowed to put up any pictures, I got into trouble for spilling things (like blue nail polish) on the carpet, and the one poster I taped to the back of my door was ripped down and thrown out. So, basically I hated it and had to live in it for 7 years. I agree with the previous commenter, I had one of those grown-up "beautiful rooms" and it was stifling.
I can't believe how long it's been, and I'm still bitter about it. Recently she's tried to get me to take some of the furniture and I don't care for any of the antique wood or cherub figurines. By contrast, my brother was obsessed with NASA and he got to pick out custom space fabrics, paint his room dark blue, and stick planet maps and glow in the dark stars on everything.

Wow MiddleIsGold really is still bitter. I was allowed to decorate my own room from Teenage years onwards and trust me it got a bit mental (there was a funny patch on my ceiling so I stuffed an old pair of jeans and attatched them up so it looked like someone was had fallen through my ceiling to cover it up - I can still remember the cleaning ladies' screams) However while I had the privilage to decorate my own room my parents had the right to veto anything that they didn't think was wise/safe! A healthy balance can be achieved.

It is so fascinating for me to read these comments! My parents don't really care about design and so while our house was always clean it was never really beautiful or well thought out. I never even started to think about design until I was in my 20's, so my room was never an issue for me. Bed, dresser, white walls- no problem.

I hope that when I have kids I can find a nice balance. I'm still not overly obsessed with my living environment (my boyfriend designed my place for me while I was out of town), but I would like to give me kids more of a sense for design than I ever had growing up.

@middleisgold: I share your pain: when I was 10 my mother redecorated our house. I was allowed to choose my decor: I opted for white walls with wallpaper on the wall behind the bed, a white background with black & silver scrollwork bird cages. I came home from school the day the painters were there to discover that my mother had painted my entire room pastel pink because she decided she didn't like the wallpaper. I lived in that room for 8 years. To this day (I'm now in my 60s!) I cannot stand the colour pink anywhere but in fresh flowers.

My parents bought their first house when I was 12. I was allowed to pick everything - it was the 80s and I went with red and white - white walls and red trim with very 80s red curtains.

Then we moved countries when I was 16 (1990) and this time they gave me a budget and let me choose whatever I wanted. I went for black and white - white walls and black furniture. I bought a black leather couch instead of a bed and it was all very modern. My room was my sanctuary and I loved it so much.

When my girls are older, I hope to be as trusting, excepting and supportive as my folks were. (right now my girls are 5 and got to choose their wall color and bed sheets.)

Growing up, my parents rented, so we just dealt with white walls. For the most part, most of my furniture was hand-me-downs, but stuff I got to choose to have. My room was just that, my space - I just had to keep it picked up and no destroy anything. I picked out bed sets when we had the money to get new ones, the curtains, etc. Then - as much as now - there isn't really a style. I go with functionality and things I like/love over style any day....who cares if I bought designer stuff when I have to live here and wouldn't want to go near a $500 dollar chair.

I have to agree with several commentors above that allowing your kid to choose a paint color for the walls (in which you pick the shade), two or three accessories, a chair, etc is not letting your kid do the decorating or really even help. That's you basically picking for the child and pretty much forcing it on them since you likely already picked out what you are offering to them. Unless it's something drastic (like astro-turf floors, black walls, etc), why in the hell does it matter to you so much? Don't like it, fine.....you aren't forced to live in the room.

My kids are 3 and 1, so they haven't picked too much yet, but I imagine I'll let them make some more choices as they get older and show an interest in it. I would retain veto power (sorry, no dora the explorer or disney princess themed rooms here), but if my daughter wanted to paint her room pink in a year or two (she has mentioned this a few times already--actually, she has suggested painting the entire house pink), I'd definitely consider it, and help her choose a shade that would satisfy her and not offend us too much. And going forward, I will definitely let the kids have some say in their bedding, art, etc. as we add new things to the room--I think the key is to keep the choices acceptable--e.g. we will have better results letting them pick from Ikea or the Land of Nod catalog than Walmart shelves, and young(ish) kids likely will be just as happy either way.

As she has gotten older, we let her pick everything within limits. I like for everything to look cohesive. As long as that aspect is there, I'm good.

Humph. Design for your family and ignore the opinions of others. I just redesigned our kids room and they adore it. And no, they didn't provide a ton of input and it didn't matter. My son picked out some "beautiful" curtains with my daughter wanted pink sheets and that was the extent of it. We framed some of their art work, I made a few pieces, and bought a few pieces of etsy. It is lovely and natural and colorful and works with the rest of our house.

The only mistake I made was placement of one of the art pieces I made. Too high for a two year old to enjoy, as she made very clear. We moved it.

I have seen both sides of this. When I was 6, my parents got me a desk. An antique desk. And, yes, it was a lovely desk, but no six year old wants to use a giant antique desk. Some of the drawers were so sticky and heavy, it took most of my weight to open them. Something cheap, made of particle board, from IKEA would have been a much better choice for the accidental crayon scribble. But at the same time, my sister tried to "have a say" in her room and her "say" changed like every six months. About the same time a new Disney movie would come out. So, my parents kept her room fairly neutral and just placated her with a new Disney comforter.

Parents should just keep things basic and functional and realize no matter how they try to "decorate" their kids hobbies and interests will no doubt set the tone. And given how frequently those change, unless you are made of money, DON'T decorate kids rooms. You or them. It's not worth it.

I've been thinking about this question a lot lately. My son just turned 4, and he's really into decorating (taping his artwork or other crafts up all over his walls). I find myself trying to talk him out of it at times because the visual clutter that he wants everywhere makes me really crazy. But, I've also been trying to tell myself that it's his room, and on a more rational level, I know it's important for him to have space to be able to do what he wants. (I certainly did as a kid! I loved moving furniture around, decorating, painting stuff, you name it.) It's just interesting and a bit surprising to me how much of an internal struggle it is for me, though perhaps it shouldn't be -- the conflict between my own controlling (design, and otherwise) side, and my recognition of him as an independent person, is a pretty basic parenting challenge. (It's also possible that my kid just has an unhealthy obsession with tape...)

And, as with most parenting decisions, I find asking myself "is this a big deal or a little deal?" before I answer, leads to far far better decisionmaking on my part, and fewer arbitrary "no"s!

But I'm curious about how other people respond when it's not a question of "permanent" decorations like purchasing big ticket furniture or painting, but the more transient stuff, that can still "ruin" a well designed room and destroy any sense of cohesion (from an adult's perspective).

roseisred, I'm sorry I didn't see this nine months ago. My 5-year-old daughter is doing the same thing. She probably puts out 10 drawings a day, and is constantly tacking up her work on her walls with washi tape I bought her. It seems really important to her, and she even wants to invite her friends over for a "gallery show." I say it's their space, and more importantly, their confidence and development that is the most important. It's critical to encourage them, even if it may intrude on our desires for a more calming space. This is something they need to do!