Let's see. I hated pink and red as a child (Mom's favorite colors frequently thrust upon me) and I still do, although red is more ok now than it used to be, depending on the context. Blue-green was my favorite crayola color and teal still is. Used to hate purple, now it's ok, although not a favorite. (Still hate lavender.) Fond of neutrals, including most shades of green... (and even beige, if not overdone.)

So I guess my tastes have stayed pretty constant. My style has changes a lot, from country to contemporary "ethnic fusion" or something... but colors? Not so much.

As a kid, I painted my room "ming green" - a medium green with a touch of gray. In my 20s, I bought an old wreck of a house, fixed it up, and painted all the walls "parchment" - a yellowish white.
My 30's were in rentals.
My 40s in an owned house but with kids and no time to paint.
Now, in my early 50's, kids are teenagers, and I'm trying to get my house into an order that I like. I'm big into painting now. And I'm close to my childhood's favorites, but - gray mixed with blue, and a lot of gray. A little dancing around colors, but not straying too far!

Hah! this is a great topic. When I was a kid, everyone told me how pretty I looked in blue. I felt that blue was such an average color and so I gravitated towards mustards, pumpkins, olives, hunter green, and brick-red for my wardrobe.

On reflection, when I had the opportunity to decorate my first home, I gravitated towards the palest yellows, periwinkle, sage green, and ocean blue, just a little bit of cranberry and watermelon.

Years later, I was looking at two photos of myself: one in a mustard blouse, and one in a coral/watermelon blouse. I looked downright ill in the autumn color and stopped wearing every shade of yellow except the very palest lemon chiffon.

Eventually I had my personal palette done and saw plain as day (or plain as a photo!) that the best colors on me are those mid-tones between pastels and jewel tones. Guess what? periwinkle and amethyst, as opposed to baby plue, navy, royal blue, or violet. Coral and tomato red and not pastel pink, ruby, magenta or burgundy. In other words, all the colors I surrounded myself with, but didn't wear.

After I did a closet makeover and started working on my fourth home (and first purchased home), I expermented with my newly realized palette... and made a lot of mistakes. I painted the living room walls tomato red rather than using red as an accent.

Now that I've become more comfortable working with my palette in my wardrobe, I've acquired a much more sophisticated sensibility for using the colors I love in my home.

Reading apartment therapy has helped a lot, too. I would never in a million years have considered a black lampshade before AT. My neutral wall color is grey. I look for contrast now, instead of trying to make things match.

What a difference it all makes!!

First Apartment: Red. It was a studio, and the walls were white, but the furniture, bedding, everything was in different shades of red. It wasn't a mistake, per se, but I got tired of it. I was 19 when I decorated it.

Second Apartment: Cream-colored sofa, pale blue chair, soft green chair, lots of blue/green pastel things. Got tired of it. Fast. And very traditional.

Third Apartment: Cream colored sofa (still) and neutral furniture, with color coming from the custom bookshelves I had built and the artwork and the Oriental rug in the living room. My bedroom was in straw and soft brown.

Fourth Apartment: Bedroom: same as third apartment. This is a color combo (straw/brown) that I like, that comforts me. My living room now has a subdued orange sofa, the oriental rug, and the cream sofa, but now it has an orange and blue African textile thrown over it (it's shabby compared to the new sofa). If I could, I'd move the oriental rug into the bedroom and get a more neutral rug for the living room, but that's not an option right now (and I'm required to have rugs under all the furniture). I'd also replace the cream-colored sofa with two chairs in either peacock-blue or light-purple (not lavender, not dark purple - but an expensive to find purple).

When I was a kid, we painted my bedroom pink. And it was very, very pink. And so it stayed until I was in my teens, when it got painted white (my father hates painting so once you pick a color, you're stuck with it for a LONG TIME).

When I realized we were not leaving our college apartment until graduation, I painted one wall moss green and left the others "landlord white". I still favor greens and blues in my decorating and, while I've experimented with bright colors, I still prefer muted colors. I'm thinking that the dark green bedroom will get painted back to a lighter color one of these days, probably soon. Maybe even white.

THe kitchen is bright teal (my doing) and ice white (why the landlord picked that white, I do not know, it's positively fridgid).The rest of the apartment is beige with a hint of peach, courtesy of my landlord.

It's funny because I don't wear a lot of green or muted colors. Mostly I wear reds, blues and all very saturated. I'd wear green if I could find it, but it's been out of fashion or something lately.

My taste in color has evolved from beige and gray (not at the same time), to greens, yellows and red (as my present bedroom)....dark woods and animal prints in between!

When I was 11 I got to redecorate my room and the color I chose was "Proud Peach" and it was a yellow-y version of the inside of a peach. My bedspread was blue, green and yellow. At 14 I painted my room periwinkle. In college I found the motivation to paint one apartment hot pink... that was a misstep. The past few years I've been living in landlord white and don't mind it horribly. I'm moving tomorrow and hoping to paint my studio apartment a light warm gray and my bathroom a dark warm gray. I prefer a neutral pallet these days. I like a bit of color... just as an accent.

I used to insist on Almodovar-inspired wall colors. Now the walls are much lighter, and the real punches come in rugs, ceramics and artwork.

As a child my first favorite color was a bright aquamarine, I find that this past year with all of the accessories available in that color confirms that it is still my favorite. As for wall colors I had blue walls (not my choice) as a kid, wanted (did not get) black walls as a teen, rentals in my early twenties and a warm yellow in my late twenties to present.

When I was fourteen I painted my room purple with glittery white clouds. I also had purple bedspread, pillows, curtains lamps and everything else to match.
Needless to say, purple is *not* so much welcome in my home these days.

my first apartment was called The Pink Palace - i painted the walls a pale pink to set off my HUGE collection of Impressionist prints. the sofa was slip-covered in cream and i had a pastel blue rug. the bedroom was light turquoise with a big brass bed and lots of white bedding.

now i live in colour-land; the colours are Edwardian Pink (really a brick red shade), African Tulip (vermillion), Sundown (the perfect orange of a sunset) and Moulin Rouge (ruby red and just in the dressing room).

in the basement, the finished area has pale olive walls that i've kept and i have darker olive curtains and a friend is giving me two over-sized green leather armchairs for the space.

the bathroom downstairs is deep wedgewood blue.

i LOVE my house! :-)

At 13 I painted my bedroom 'abortion bucket red'.

At 16 (thanks to my first f/t job), I bought a load of polystyrene tiles and painted half of them black and did checkerboard black and white walls.

At 18 it was deep red with a gold fleck and heavy paisley fabric.

At 21 in a new place, it was sunflower yellow with royal blue accents (never do yellow for a bedroom - it encourages insomnia).

At 23 in my first own place, it was a pumkpin lounge and a mustard bedroom.

At 26 in my second place it was minty green everywhere.

At 30 in Hong Kong it was a beige rental.

At 38 in the first place I have ever owned it is brilliant white - on every wall in every room and on the ceiling. And I love it! No bold colours ever again.

I never had any say in house colours until this year when I bought my own house. So I've had a while to think about it ! (I'm 26)

However, in a more general sense, it wasn't until the last few years that I worked out what I actually liked. When I was a kid, it seemed like everyone just picked their favourite colours - I picked yellow. I don't mind yellow, it's ok. But I live in the blues and the greens. When I started crafting I started thinking about colours and what I like, and what I want around me. The supplies I bought when I first started are all muddy colours - kahki greens and maroons. I just got rid of them all. I like the colours but they are not ME. Now everything is jewel tones and saturated, 'clean' colours. My crafting friends kid me for being so predicatable. If it's sea green or peacock blue, I will like it.

Given that I had that long to think about it (and many years living in white or beige apartments) I spent months while we settled on the house looking at AT and finding the colours that sang to me.
My living room is aqua (red and white accents), and happy and light.
The kitchen is bright yellow with poo brown cupboards that soon (please, soon) will be white outside and blue inside.
My bedroom is peacock blue (I'm CONSISTENT not predictable) and cozy and inviting.
My craft room is apple green - soothing and inspiring at the same time!

I love it a lot, and it's perfect for my first house. But if I had a different sort of house I would want charcoal walls and dramatic dusky ochre. One day.

My bedroom was first painted pale yellow. When I turned three my parents redid it in the ugliest wallpaper ever - white with huge primary coloured balloons and blue clouds. I outgrew this by the time I was six, but it stayed until I was thirteen, because my parents never had time to do it, and at that point I was old enough to fix it myself.

I painted it half turquoise and half sky blue, separated by a dolphin border. I was thirteen, okay?

It stayed that way until I moved out at 20, my first apartment's bedroom was mint green with pepto bismol pink furniture (inherited from my grandmother). When I moved again I painted the furniture white and the walls deep turquoise.

I think as a kid I tended to like more pure and primary colors, I remember my favorite color was sky blue. I appreciate color more than ever now, but I tend to like more complexity. Things like deep red-oranges, terracottas and sunshiny yellow-oranges, teals and stormy aqua colors, many greens, raspberrys & saturated pinks, jewel tones are very appealing to me... Pastels tend to be hard for me to deal with. Also, I have a problem with a lot of blues.