Quiz: How Controlling Are You When It Comes to Your Kids’ Bedroom Decor?

A LOT of us expend considerable effort cultivating a cohesive interior design aesthetic, whether that’s traditional New England style or luxurious minimalism. Then along comes a child whose understandably childish design wishes are the riotous Froot Loops to your calming Quaker Oats.

Perhaps you double down on your vision: Your house, your palette. Or you shrug, thinking that in a few short years they’ll be off disfiguring a dorm room. Or maybe you’ve found a happy halfway?

Take the following quiz (keeping track of your responses until you reach the answer key, below) and let’s find out.

1. Your child wants to paint her bedroom walls and ceiling shocking pink. You:

A. Claim the Barbie craze has created a shortage of pink pigment and offer a color choice of Clotted Cream or Fresh Cream.

B. Exhort her to complete the look with fuchsia shag carpet.

C. Suggest a rose-pink accent wall.

2. On an astronomy kick, your child wants to cover her room’s walls in tinfoil so it resembles a space station. You:

A. Point out that with a tight palette of whites, her room could be made to loosely resemble the surface of the moon.

B. Offer to spray-paint your child’s furniture silver as well. 

C. Get a pack of removable glow-in-the-dark stars that you can put up around the room together.

3. Walls beat a sketch pad, your son has decided. You:

A. Confiscate pens, pencils—any threats to your virgin walls.

B. Get him scaffolding so he can continue his work on the ceiling, Sistine Chapel-style.

C. Install a chalkboard, so your fledgling Cy Twombly can scribble with artistic abandon.

4. Your daughter wants to cover her room in a dusting of glitter. You:

A. Enact a household-wide glitter ban. If you don’t act now, you’ll be unearthing specs of the stuff for the rest of your life.

B. Endorse the glitter-as-confetti plan. Then contribute a disco ball you saw on eBay! 

C. Make a shimmery garland together and string it across your child’s bedroom ceiling.

5. Aspiring to become a Formula One driver, your kid requests a race-car bed. You:

A. Buy a traditional turned-wood bed, hinting that British driver Lewis Hamilton probably has one like it.

B. Add checkered-flag curtains and Grand Prix posters.

C. Propose a rug with a racetrack graphic as a compromise. 

6. Your child has developed a deep emotional connection with every pebble found on your last beach holiday You:

A. Release all the rocks into the wild at your local park.

B. Replace your kid’s room’s bookshelves with display cases for the collection.

C. Institute a rotation. A selection of rocks can be exhibited while the rest are housed in a shoebox.

7. Obsessed with building, your kid has asked for a 6,000-piece Lego set. You:

A. Offer your child a selection of plain oak artisanal wood blocks instead. 

B. Get all the Lego expansion packs, as well, to encourage your emerging engineer.

C. Get the Lego set and some handsome storage bins, which will be valuable long after your kid grows out of the Lego phase.

8. The living room sofa has become a pillow fort, and your little architect won’t leave it, much less dismantle it. You:

A. Break it down immediately and direct the child to the artisanal blocks you bought.  

B. Ask if the pillow fort can take an extension, so you can live inside it too.

C. Suggest trading the pillow fort for a canopy over the kid’s bed.

9. After watching ‘The Little Mermaid,’ your son is requesting a swimming pool in the back garden so he can live out his King Triton fantasies. You:

A. Veto immediately. Chlorine could prove life-threatening to your prize tree peonies.

B. Call up your contractor to start working on a pool stat—and look into getting ‘Little Mermaid’ pool inflatables.

C. Sign him up for swimming lessons at the YMCA and suggest he set up a fish tank in his room.

ANSWER KEY

Mostly As: Landlord Parent.

You view your kids as boarders, imposing your version of décor even as their tastes inevitably swing. But Elizabeth Miller, an assistant professor and child-development researcher at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, says it’s important that kids can express their autonomy at home. “There’s research about the correlation between overly restrictive parenting and kids overindulging once they have their freedom,” she said. Ironically, neutral-mad parents may be cultivating maximalism.

Mostly Bs: Pushover Parent.

Your backbone is as pliable as upholstery foam. Keep in mind that being firm doesn’t make you an ogre. Said Miller, “Kids thrive on routine and structure. It allows them a safe environment to explore and develop.”

Mostly Cs: Décor Diplomat Parent.

You include your children in design decisions but guide them away from harebrained impulses. “I’m into neutrals at home, so I get it,” said Miller. In her children’s bedrooms, she insists on white furniture and let her kids choose fixings like rugs. “There are a lot of retailers making really nice things that aren’t too expensive—you can shop for staples that are very simple and then completely dress them up and have fun with it,” said Susana Simonpietri, founder and creative director of Brooklyn interior design and architecture firm Chango & Co. “IKEA is great because they make wood furniture which is paintable. The most important thing is the care you put in and quality time you spend together.”