Has anyone here tried this? Any success?
I fancy having a go but the flower are so damn tiny I have no idea if I can do it successfully.
Just curious to see if it can be done on a small scale by a novice or whether this is something left to the experts!

I have not done this either. I think the average gardener could do it. Maybe using small paint brush to transfer pollen?
Or what if the two plants were planted in the same container, or in close proximity---and let insects do the cross pollination?
Or could they cross pollinate in the wind ?
Will need to look up how the experts make all those hybrids?

There is a book: "Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener" by Joseph Tychonievich. (Timber Press 2013). It only has a few pages 140 to 143 on Coleus. Some people use fine tweezers to remove the anthers, but it looks like many just allow cross pollination to occur, and then grow out the seeds,--- and then select for their chosen characteristic.
You can do this ! Let us know how it turns out !

That book does have a whole chapter on How to make a Cross !
The chapter is called " The Birds, the Bees and the Tweezers".

Thanks for this Caroline! I was wondering whether to try a haphazard approach of just rubbing flower stalks together!
It does seem very fiddly with the flowers being so tiny!

Ya, I have hundreds of seedlings coming up everywhere because I let the flowers bloom and let the bees pollinate. Sometimes I'll keep two close to each other that I think might be neat to cross, but no guarantees. I do get some pretty cool seedlings - it's fun to see them growing and changing so quickly.

Yes you can cut the little horn from one and walk around rubbing the others inside the cup , ,also you can use a very very small brush to move pollen onto other plants , And the way I do it is with Australian native stingless bee hive set up amongst 250 different coleus , as there only 2mm long they are perfect cross pollinators ,