I'd let my boys pick any color they want - and would do the same for a girl. Even if I was asked to paint a hot-pink room (which makes me PUKE) - I'd do it!

Then again, I love to paint rooms!!!

I would take the chance like you did and explain how some colors look good, how some overwhelm and go look for photos online of rooms they like to get ideas. I ended up painting one wall a rich blue, and the other three a much lighter, so my son could have the color he wanted, but it didn't overwhelm the room. My son is too young to understand accent colors and so on, but hopefully, each time I redo his room, he'll see how he can use the same things/colors in new ways - and by the time he starts telling ME how to do it - I bet he'll go all white-walled and NO art etc - just to rebel. I'll cringe as I paint the walls white... but I'll do it. haha

My parents let me pick my paint color from a few swatches they chose. It was "April Sky", a nice soft blue.

My sister was not interested in choosing, so my parents picked grey for her room. She didn't love it, so she became very involved in picking her window shade colors.

Even if you don't have a room that proves the point about paint you can always buy testers in the color that he/she wants (that you think is too intense) and the slightly lighter/less intense one you prefer. A good 4x4 foot swatch on the wall is generally big enough to get your point across and still fairly fast to paint.

When my sister was allowed to pick her paint color she picked a super vivid purple out of nowhere and hated it so much my mom and I were painting over it within the year. When I was allowed to pick a paint color a few years later we bought my new bedding first and then chose a coordinating color. I'm not the sort to pick a super intense color anyway but having the bedding to play off of really helped.

When I was about 10, my parents let me pick my wall color, and I went with something that was intended to be robin's egg blue, but ended up looking more like what I called at the time "boy's bathroom blue"--still, once it was up, I had to live with it because they weren't repainting, and it stayed that color for probably a good 15 years until I was long gone from the house and my mom covered it in beige. My solution in high school was to wallpaper it (literally, no-gap coverage) with images from my favorite magazines, concert ticket stubs, posters, printed out song lyrics, etc. In retrospect, I should probably also give my parents a lot of credit for letting me do that, too.

I say go for! I let both my kids pick their paint. I was pretty shocked that they picked such livable colors! You can also learn alot about your kids by letting them express themselves this way. Mine are now 13 & 15 and still love their choices.

When we moved into the new house when I was 8, my 17 year old sister got to choose her room. She picked the pink one I coveted, of course, though she was heading to college in less than two years. I got a room covered with hideous blue floral wallpaper, which I hated every day I lived there, over ten years. My parents finally replaced it when I had moved out.

It's easy for adults to underestimate how powerless kids are over their environment and how much their room means to them. Paint can be easily changed; it's not that big a deal. I can't understand why anyone wouldn't be able to let go of a little control and let the kid choose what s/he likes. Painting swatches and looking at paint of actual walls is a good idea, because kids (and adults) often need to be educated about the effects of large scale versus small, bright spaces versus dark, etc. But pushing your agenda, even in under-the-radar ways, seems silly. Just let the kid choose a color.

Growing up I tried to get my parents to let me pick mine but we ended up settling in the middle. I picked the color I wanted and they adjusted it so my eyeball didn't burn by the time I hit 18.

With my kids, when they're old enough, I'm sure I'll want to let them pick and probably do similar to how my parents did. On the one hand, its just paint but still, I've seen too many parents who every year are repainting a son's bedroom because "Well, he really likes red now" so he has a cherry red room then a year later "now hes big into lime green" So yes, let them pick (within reason) but make it clear they are picking something they'll see for a while. It is just paint, but its not as easy or cheap to change out as a tshirt when the mood strikes them.

Yea my parents MADE me pick wallpaper that went with my horrible green shag carpet - and then changed the carpet a year later. I hated the wallpaper SO much and they refused to change it. Sadly, I started peeling it off on my own and they FINALLY let me pick a different color - I had to paint it myself but I didn't care!

I think we should all be allowed at a certain point - and if old enough, share in the cost/effort to do it. Under a certain age and they can 'help' but can't totally pick the color.

I had friends that picked their own colors and would help get rid of them if they didn't like it a year or so later, and had other friends where they had NO control over ANYTHING in their room. The houses where they allowed to at least help tended to be much happier homes - as it seemed that the control issue wasn't just over decor. My dad REFUSED to let me make any holes in the walls with pins, I couldn't even paste up photos or anything - it sucked. Only after I fought was I allowed ANY freedom of choice, and it carried over into many aspects of my life. I had to FIGHT to get any freedom - wall colors and more!

What about a mural? You could suggest a calm base color for the room, but then design a mural that involves all the kid's favorite colors. I don't have this problem yet, since mine is only 16 months old and doesn't show much preference. :)

Unless you live in a model home that has to be magazine-perfect all the time (like for real, not just in your head), there is no reason not to let your kid pick the paint. So what if your eyeballs melt? You don't have to sleep in there... It's a great lesson in making thoughtful decisions too - if their eyeballs melt, they'll be more careful next time. And so long as you just do the walls, not the trim, it's really not that big a deal to repaint in a couple years...

Maybe when they're a bit older they can pick the colors. Right now though, they're tastes change so often. If I did it now I'd probably wind up like one of those parents who are repainting every year because their kid is into something new. Not that there's anything wrong with it, if you've got the money and the time, do what you want with it. I don't.

My 4 year old niece is living with us now. She's all about some princesses. However when we went to pick her room color, she wanted brown. Dark brown. WTH? Just to get her away from the brown, I had to take her shopping else where to pick bedding. Then I told her we had to match the wall color to the bedding. It's a nice seafoam green type color now. If she's still living here she can pick something new when she's a tween or so.

i think with very young children, it would make sense to just ask them what color they would like (blue, green, whatever) and the adult would pick the actual color - or pull a few acceptable swatches and have the child choose one. i'm thinking about my 4- and 6-year-old boys and it just doesn't seem necessary at all to take them to the paint store and have them choose from the zillions of swatches.

that would be fun with an older child, and at that point it makes sense to try out a sample of the paint, or perhaps to compromise with an accent wall if they get their heart set on a really overwhelming color.

i still remember painting my bedroom pale pink with my mother and grandmother when i was 9 or 10. i have no idea whether i chose the color, but helping with the work is what gave me a sense of ownership.

Maybe I'm lucky that my 4-yr-old is really thoughtful about his room color. We're considering options now, and he loves to look at photos and think about how his choices would look in his room and with his things. We have fun with testers, too. We currently have about 8 shades of green and yellow on his wall - still searching for "the one."

I was impressed with how smoothly color choices went for a friend's new house recently. She asked her girls what colors they wanted, then came home with paint in a shade of that color that she found acceptable and with a name that would be meaningful to each girl. Everyone was happy, and I wished it would work for my child, which it absolutely wouldn't have.

I went a different direction when my 7yo wanted to paint her lovely lavender room black recently, and until she wanted that, I thought I was a cool mom. We've compromised by painting her furniture black and going with a soft gray on the walls and the bright green pops of color she picked after looking at a collection of gray bedrooms with black furniture that I put together for her on pinterest. She's happy; I'm happy, and we had an honest discussion of why black wasn't going to work for *our* house, even if it is *her* room.

I'd let her do it but how about a little trick I use with my toddler (and my husband) that I call "the illusion of choices". Pick out a dozen or so colors you can live with, bring them home and let her "pick" her color.

When I was 7, my mum and I moved into our new-to-us house. I got to pick my room but my mum decorated it with my grandmother's help. Sadly, they chose girly girly decorations like soft pink walls and ruffly bed linens.

I HATED it but that's what they thought a girl would like. In highschool, I wallpapered my walls in goth posters and pictures and I hated those soft pink walls until I moved out.

My son's room is green (he's only 2 so he doesn't care) and I would love it if he picked the colour of his room one day.

I think it would be fair to do an accent wall in the childs choice of color and then all the other walls either a softer shade or something more neutral if the original color is eyeball melting. I had a room growing up that would have given me a headache today. It was turquoise and hot pink rag rolled with purple, hot pink, and turquoise bedding. And my step-dad helped me string up colored Christmas lights around the entire room. It looked like an airport landing strip, but I was proud of my room.

Thinking more on this,...I think I like the idea of treating it as a right of passage type thing. Like, "You're whatever years old. You'll be an adult soon. You have your own opinions. You want what you want. For your birthday lets redo your room just the way you like"

Maybe since they'll be older, they'll understand more the money and time that will be put into it. They'll think about their choices more.

I think I would have liked something like that growing up.

Like some others have said, I don't like the idea of a child having absolutely no say in their room. I hate it when kids rooms look all show roomy and you can tell they were designed just for the parents. Some limits aren't bad though..

Why not let the kid pick the color? As long as they're not sharing their room and it's not used, say, as a living room half the time or something like that.

For the faint of heart, or those with a fickle child, you could always just paint an accent wall.

My parents let me paint my entire room, which I painted with sky blue covered in clouds, stars, and purple mountains. And one wall was a brown map of Middle Earth. And the other wall had a giant sun based off of Egyptian art. Probably an eyesore to grown up interior decorators, but I loved it. My parents were pretty much the coolest parents on earth.

We tried to get our four year interested in finally painting her room. (We bought a new house that has all beige walls throughout). She said she wanted to keep the beige. I guess in our case it's us pushing for some more color. Maybe we'll just paint some animal outlines on the wall to go with her African savanna theme...

Last year, I let our then a-bit-less-than-three-year old pick out his room color out of 5 or 6 bigger sized swatches (Martha Stewart's). i asked him once or twice a week for about a month. 90% of the time, he pointed to the same one (a school-bus yellow), so that's the color on one wall and the ceiling of his bedroom, with the rest of the walls being beige. He's still super happy with it all, and so are we!

I let my then 3-year old choose when we moved houses, but I let her pick from a few curated shades after she said she wanted blue. She picked my favorite. :-)

meh, it's just paint - so far I've let my 2 and 4 year old pick paint colors and it's turned out OK (good thing I like BRIGHT) and I was pretty sly about it too I suppose with giving them choices OR coming back th

I have tried to let my 5-year-old pick her room colors, but when I pick out some choices for her and ask more than 1.5 times which she likes the best, she'd rather eat worms than deal with it anymore, so we just haven't updated the wall color. Apparently I care WAY more than she does.

Ohh my. My opinion on this one stems from my dislike of the old saw, 'The easiest change to make is a fresh coat of paint'. I don't ever want to repaint a room again in our house after five years of color switching here; it is WORK.

I either present my three-year-old with three paint chips and let her pick from those, or I give her the Yolo colors and let her pick from them since they are ALL muted. Now we can get VOC-free from Kelly Moore, the edited-set-of-three happens more often. One trick that works really well lately is I show her several photos from my inspiration images on my computer and let her pick from a room or object vs. a paint chip - we did that for choosing an armoire color, and it was a quicker more certain decision for her. And no, she didn't pick the mushroom color I liked...sigh.

It's not a control freak thing, it is a reflection of how much I dislike prepping and painting rooms. I do it when I have to, and I don't want to do it again any time soon. She's the boss with colors on clothes and shoes, I'm the boss if it's a ton of work or super expensive because of the suffering involved.

Don't even ask me my thoughts on wallpaper, obviously!

A kid may be 4 but he/she alredy knows what she/he likes/dislikes , take that into account.
If you kid is over 10 LET THEM choose the color and the theme and bedding, its their room¡ (and to a teen their room means a lot¡)

When I was 4, we moved into a new house. I desperately wanted a pink bedroom. My parents would only let me choose between light blue and light yellow. I hated both so I went with the lesser of what I considered the two evils: the yellow. I hated it for 8 long years. I still hate that color. Ironically, at that point, my parents moved me out of that room and into a different room and then painted it pink for my little sisters. What color did they paint my new room? Gray. Uhh...thanks? Gray may be cool now but it really wasn't in 1991. Maybe I was ahead of my time.
I hate painting as much as the next person, but I will always let my kids pick out their room's paint color - just maybe not the exact shade. Kids need to feel like they have power of some aspects of their lives - it gives them confidence - and paint color, in my opinion, is a much better way of expressing individualism than, say, dying hair hot pink or something (no, I never did that - maybe I should have...).

I will always let my son choose his environment. I think it gives children confidence and helps them learn how to make some decisions for themselves. We had a house once where my dad refused to paint. It was grey. The entire house looked like a prison. I hate grey and I am not afraid of bright colors like so many people seem to be - in fact my whole house is very cheerfully colorful and that is just how we like it. Now if my child picked beige then I might just cry.

It's just paint. Let the kids have what they want!