I was watching some home shows yesterday and thinking about how they all have pink princess rooms for little girls, or boy’s rooms with airplane-shaped ceiling fans or cartoon murals or whatever.
I can see the adults imagining that the kids would be thrilled by this, and maybe they are. Or maybe the kids are secretly thinking, “I never liked Pooh Bear that much.”
Did you have some sort of interesting decor in your room when you were a kid, and if so how did you feel about it?
According to my parents, my bedroom theme was “tornado victim.”
Kind of interesting… my childhood bedroom had a slanted ceiling and a loft. My mother painted the bedroom walls blue and papered the loft’s walls with clouds, with a border of rainbows in between. The light fixture was a large frosted glass globe that looked like the sun. Cute but not overbearing.
When I was was young, I think around 5 or 6, my mom decorated my room with Holly Hobbie stuff. Pictures, bedspread, sheets, etc. I liked it. It was the 70’s and very popular at the time, along with Little House on the Prarie.
Only things that I put in there myself, such as model cars that I built. My mother was not one for knickknacks or other dust collectors; I think she would have laughed at the idea of a themed room for a child.
I had a Peanuts-themed room when I was a kid, simply because Peanuts was my favorite comic strip. It was built-up organically, through slow acquisition of little knick knacks; it wasn’t like my mom went out and bought everything all at once, from bedcovers or wallpaper.
We didn’t, but when we moved into our house in 1970 we dealt with the remnants of the previous owner’s kid-theme - cowboys. The walls were apparently covered with large stencils or stickers or something of various western scenes - bucking bronco, group around a camp-fire, rider with lasso overheard. Rather than remove them, they’d painted over them before selling, so we had the outlines on the walls for decades.
My childhood bedroom (shared with my sister) had no theme beyond a mostly-matching color scheme. No wall decals, stencils, fancy lampshades… just comforters that didn’t clash with the walls, and a pile of stuffed animals on each bed.
I didn’t have a themed room (except for the aforementioned tornado aftermath,) and I’m sort of struggling with this issue now. We’re remodeling our new house now, and my very talented niece wants to paint a mural in the little girls’ bedroom or playroom. I’m not totally against the idea, but I don’t want something that they’ll see as too juvenile in the near future. Sure they’re only one and three now, but they grow up so fast, and I don’t love painting! So wwe’re trying to find a compromise, which will be suitable for at least the littlest for several years. I just can’t see being stuck with a theme that the girls love now, and which they will grow tired of in six months or a year!
When I was young, I loved Raggedy Ann and Andy. My room was painted sunshine yellow. My bedspread, sheets, curtains were all this fabric. The lampshades on my table lamps were the same pattern, too. I had the alarm clock, transistor radio, and dolls, of course.
I never themed TheKid’s room - we lived in apartments so really couldn’t do much. She did briefly have an “underwater” theme when we moved in here. Sea blue walls, area rug, bedding that looked like a fish tank. That lasted about a year.
I had those sheets too. 
I didn’t have a themed room as a kid. It was tiny and doubled as guest room.
Kids these days have so much stuff, and all of it is so colored (including bedlinnens), that I’m keeping my sons room and furnuture as neutral as possible, so it won’t clash with all the stuff.
No, I didn’t have a themed room and can’t really imagine wanting one as a kid. The idea of murals on the wall and all that… no! Hell no! It would be even worse if it was something painted by a relative where I would now have to find a polite way to say “This is childish and stupid, and I want it gone.”
I did have some decorations of my own choosing - during my elementary school years, Star Wars stuff especially. But these were posters and comforters and I could have changed “themes” in half an hour if I’d wanted to. The walls were always white in my bedrooms and it never occurred to me to want something else. Honestly, my room during my Junior High years looked as adult as most bachelors in their 20’s and I preferred it that way.
I shared a room with my sister till I left home at 19. We never had a theme room. As I recall, we weren’t even allowed to choose our wall color. Control freak? My mom? naaaaaaaah…
Not for me when I was a kid, but our daughter’s room is currently Hobbit themed - she has all sorts of LOTR stuff around, including a big old Fathead of Bilbo’s door in Hobbiton on her wall.
My baby bedroom was sunshine freaking yellow with one wall papered in a design my mother assures me “was all the rage” in 1974. They were these weird cartoon “Wabbits” with half moons for mouths that reminded me of monkeys eating orange slices. They scared me.
Somewhere near 4th grade, Mom let me pick my wallpaper and paint, and I was reading The Secret Garden at the time, so…roses. Roses everywhere, and two colors of pink paint.
In Junior High or early High School, I somehow talked my mother into letting me paint the walls stark matte white, the trim glossy black, and then invite my friends over for a splatter paint party. (Shut up, it was the 80’s!) Except that when I got to the black and white stage, I loved it so much that I didn’t want to splatter it. So I put bulletin board edging like piano keys up around the top of the walls and hung a Phantom of the Opera poster, the ceramic mask and a red silk rose on one wall. Cheesy as hell, but it made me rather happy. 