We moved a few times when I was young, I do remember getting to pick out the color of my room on at least one of those occasions.
My furniture was all-hand-me downs, most of it was my father’s when he was a kid. I may have had some input in the color of my bedsheets.
My parents decorated my first bedroom in our old condo when my mom was pregnant with me. Not knowing my sex (and being the progressive sort who didn’t want to box me in anyway), they chose a gender-neutral mostly-yellow theme, with a rainbow on one wall.
We moved to the house they still live in when I was 5. My new room also had yellow wallpaper from the previous owners. But when I was 13, we redecorated the whole house, and I got to pick out the decor for my room and the adjoining bathroom. I went with everything in the Laura Ashley “Bramble” pattern–bedding, curtains, wallpaper, towels, soap dish, lampshade. My parents ran a small manufacturing company that employed a seamstress, and I think they actually paid her to make some things from fabric in that pattern, like a window seat cushion. I loved it and never got tired of it, though I have to admit it seemed dated a while before they redecorated again about 15 years later.
As it happened, when they did redecorate again when I was in my late 20s, I had just broken up with my live-in boyfriend and was about to start law school near their house, so I moved back in for a year. They offered me some say in how “my” room would be done. I skipped the wallpaper this time in favor of paint, but I went back to yellow. It just seemed right somehow.
Room? I slept on a roll-away bed in the living room until we moved when I was 10. When we moved, I got a room, but all it meant for me was a bed that didn’t have to be folded up when I got up. Life was pretty basic in those days.
For as long as I have a memory of my room, it was always shared with me younger brother. And we took what we got in terms of decoration and furniture. And we talked and talked, until one of us (usually him) fell asleep. As grownups whenever we got together, we talked and talked and his wife resented that deeply (mine didn’t). When he died of glioblastoma at age 57, I was devastated and I still, 23 years later, miss him more than I miss my parents.
My bedroom got two major redesigns in my lifetime. First, when I was a small child (about when I was old enough to express a preference), at my request it was decorated in an underwater theme. The wall paint was some shade of tealish blue, there were fish stickers all over the walls, and the built-out closet that my mom built at the same time got a curtain hanging in front of it on which I drew all sorts of underwater… things… with fabric markers.
Then, when I was older, and outgrew the underwater theme, it was re-done in a beigeish color, and the new decoration theme was elephants. There were no stickers this time, but there was a new closet curtain that I drew, and most of the shelf space was taken up by elephant knickknacks of every sort and size. We did leave one little corner, a few inches square, with the old color and one last fish sticker, for the sake of the history of the room.
Around the time that I was in high school, the closet curtain was replaced with folding doors, but most of the elephant knickknacks remained. And that’s how it is to this day, even long after I moved out.
I got to pick the paint color when I was 11 or 12.
Hell, it wasn’t even designed to be a bedroom; my brother and I had bunk beds in what was supposed to be the den.
Hell, no. I had a square room with two beds because I shared it with my little sister.
But in high school, my dad wanted to build me a desk, and let me have input. I ended up with a salvaged white formica counter with a light table and space for a turntable.
Then I said “I wish the walls could be huge bulletin boards”, and he found dozens of dark brown cork squares. Each one a different thickness, so it looked creative (but it was tough to pushpin something up on two adjacent panels if one stuck out two inches farther).
I taught art students, and a lot of them as middle schoolers got to move down to the basement… and they always, whether it was a spare workshop or an igloo they paper-maché-ed, they always seemed to paint the walls black.
No. I just had a bed and a desk in there.
Fortunately, because my parents were avid readers and couldn’t fit all their books in the bookcases in the lounge room, the room was ringed by bookcases full of adult books. So, even before I was in high school, I would just grab one to read. To disprove the old saw, I remember reading To Kill A Mockingbird and the Jonathan Cape editions of the early James Bond books, taken in by their covers.
Funny you should ask. Yes, I got to choose the color of my room I lived in as a teen, in my parent’s house. And the decor.
I painted my son’s room before he was born, and built him a nice loft bed with room to play underneath (a play area) and otherwise filled the room with dressers and bookshelves, and storage for toys. Since we moved out to the midwest about 6 years ago, he lived in 2 or 3 different rooms in our current house. Mostly the same furniture as we had before, but nothing “specially designed” for him, until very recently.
We just, as of last weekend, finished painting his room, fixing the ceiling, putting in new lights, etc. He picked the color and the decor, and it looks great. He’s a teenager now. He built the desk from a kit (probably we got it at a Walmart or Target). I think I’ve come full circle on this.
Didn’t have a theme, but when I was a teenager my parents let me redesign my room (within reason) the way I wanted it. I was a weird kid, so I had them put in dark paneling on three walls, covered the fourth completely with various posters, and put in heavy curtains and a brown bean-bag chair. It was like I lived in a cave, but I loved it. I was an only child and a nerd, so I spent a lot of time in there reading, writing, and listening to music.
Funny that I found this post just now, because this just popped up on something I read: Pleasant Hill mom turns kids' bedroom into Harry Potter magic (might be a paywall, but only if you’ve already looked at too many articles from the Mercury News). This is pretty cool! I would have loved a bedroom like that if I was a kid when Potter was a thing.
Well sorta. After I was older, my across the street neighbor had a bunch of wood paneling from somewhere , and he and my Dad paneled my room and converted half my closet to drawers and shelves.
Of course I had posters and such, signs on my door, etc.
Until I was 13, I shared a bedroom with my brother. It was just a room. The only decoration I remember was a horrible poster my brother put up of Custer’s Last Stand.
Then we moved, and I was allowed to choose a bedspread and drapes.
Then, when my brother went to college, I got his room, and went hog wild decorating it, even painting my own abstract mural on the wall.
Same here. We moved into a new house when I was 12. There was a wood paneled room that was supposed to be a home office for my parents. Their disk couldn’t turn the corner to fit into the room, so on moving day “my” bedroom because their office and the office became my bedroom. I didn’t mind the wood paneling, and soon covered a lot of it with black light posters.
When my sister was born in 1959, I was sharing a 9 X 9 BR with four brothers. Bunk beds and a crib (my memory might be lying to me and the 1-year old could have been in a crib in Mom and Dad’s room). Then we moved to Santa Paula and a somewhat larger house, but doubling up in bedrooms was still a thing.
By the time it would have been practical, I didn’t even “get” the concept of decorating a room. At age 65, I still don’t, if I’m being candid.
My bedroom was designed around my mother’s taste, or what my mother felt a 14 year old girl should like. One wall was papered (this was the 70s). Blue stripes on a white background with outlines of daisies. Rest of the walls white. White shutters. Blue carpet. Curtains to match the wallpaper. I didn’t like or dislike it but it was the envy of my friends. I was allowed to put up whatever I wanted on the walls. A poster of bobby Sherman (HEY! I WAS IN LOVE!) on the closet door. A bulletin board over my desk. My high school pennant on the wall.
No, my mother was a practical woman and not exactly gaga over children like today’s mothers seem to be. I was left to put my own stuff on walls or the dresser top (mostly car and airplane models). When I was a bit older I had my own record player in there and my two rifles on a rack on the wall. The sheets were white and the blankets utilitarian. I didn’t feel deprived, as every other kid I knew had the same sort of setup.
No, but my sister’s was for her. My parents, my sister and I lived in a 2-bedroom bungalow with a fairly large attic. When we were little my sister and I shared a room, but she is 2-1/2 years older so that needed to be remedied. In the late 50’s some time, my father DIY’d a room in the attic. He wired the electricity and did all the carpentry. There was a built-in fold-down desk, and a vanity area, built-in drawers, a large built-in cupboard and closet. It wasn’t particularly feminine really, all the woodwork was white, and there was some neutral paint color on the walls. The bed slid under a space made for it where the ceiling came down too low for a person. The only real free-standing piece was a rocking chair (which I think they bought). I was left with the room next to my parents’ room, lucky me. I did get to use that room later, and I sure liked being up there on my own. Oh yeah, the best part was that because it was in the attic and very hot in the summer, there was a window air conditioner. The rest of the house had to make do with natural breezes through windows.
Not to the level of a “theme” but the bedroom I had for most of my childhood, I picked out the linens - so the color choices were mine. And my posters/pictures on the walls.
My senior year, they decided that I had to switch bedrooms, but promised I could paint the new room however I wanted. I went away for a week during the summer. When I came back, they had already painted - not my color choice (or style. Stenciled the whole thing. It was awful) But I was going to be out of the house in 8 months so… I sucked it up.
Nothing compared to the things you see on design shows where the room is a racetrack or something.
This is me. Two sisters and for a number of years all three of us were in one room. I also had a burning desire for a Princess phone. I just bought a Princess phone key chain that I also wanted.
I had a friend in high school whose bedroom was all purple. She even put food coloring in her perfume, so they’d be purple, too. She was a child of divorce, though, and I think her dad catered to her a bit because of that.