05
Sep
Dorm Room Decor
My niece just moved into her college dorm…. and it looks pretty much something like this:
Uber Depressing. And unlike Gossip Girl fantasy land, she cant wallpaper, paint, or even hang things on the walls with anything more than painters tape. UGH.
Blair’s dorm room in NYU on Gossip Girl.

She is lucky she doesnt have cinder block walls, because I’ve had that, and its like living in a very expensive cell.
Here are two dorm room redo’s that I found on the web….
Both cute… For this room, we need to rely heavily on textiles, and art (that we have to hang with painters tape?!?)
Im thinking we should line the wall with pillows to make the bed feel more like a daybed, add a colorful rug, a huge piece of art and a few colorful lamps. We are going to hit up Home Goods and maybe Urban later today.
How depressing was your dorm?
Mine was a hell hole, but I eventually covered every single corner of wall space with drawings…
13 Responses to “Dorm Room Decor”
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I never had a dorm room as we don’t have them in Australia, our parents are still stuck with us at home through uni!
All I can say is she is lucky to have you as an aunt because she will have the most stylish dorm room! Put Blair to shame Nicole x
I never had a dorm room, and with all the dorm room blog posts, and all the cutesy colorful crap sold in every big box store this time of year, I wondered what a dorm room looks like.
You nailed it on the head – and expensive cell!
Think about leaning a huge piece of art against the wall, or even one of those large leaning mirrors. Also use a folding screen behind the bed as kind of cool headboard, or pad and cover (with pretty fabric) a large piece of foam core board as a headboard. It might be light enough to secure to the wall with double sided pieces of tape. You could also do panels of this on the walls?
Use the painters tape as decor!!! It comes in green and blue, and maybe in other colors – use it to stripe the walls? You could use thick and thin tape…
Wish I was there to play with you!
xo xo
PS The fantasy dorm room photos are amazing.
PPS Do college kids really like all those neon pre-teen tween colors that all that plastic dorm room crap comes in?
I love all of your ideas! Hmmmm…. I have to think what will be the most practical.
And I dont think college kids like those pre tween colors they just dont know what else to do.
my dorm room was totally boring, cell-like, and cinderblock!
I remember making collages out of magazine pictures and hanging those up. Did you do that too?
oh, p.s.
i love all of visual vamp’s ideas!!
Nate Berkus says to use lightweight fabric (cotton or even flat sheets) and “mount” them on the wall with spray starch sizing. Evidently it’ll stick for ages — until you manually pull it down. I’m sure if you google, you can learn more about his how-to.
LOVE this idea! I need to look into that!
When we were in college, we bought Monet prints at the big poster sale at the student union, put them up with Fun-Tak and patted ourselves on the back. The point, after all, was to go to school. When I see what kids do today and then what they don’t take with them when they go home, it’s a bit sad. Most universities have organized efforts to collect all the extra crap people put into their dorm rooms, but don’t take home at the end of the year.
I never left anything in school… I had a HUGE poster of jim Morrison that i loved over my bed. I still love that photo.
It’s been a while, but not so long that I don’t remember the pure beauty of having a SINGLE!!!
I recently found a whole bunch of French Open posters online that are truly gorgeous. Especially from 1990. A fab rug and a cool book shelf and she’s good to go!
too funny, my sister just sent me pictures of her newly decorated dorm room, they are adorable. i am posting tomorrow, you can check it out for some ideas!
We call theme colleges here in Australia
The rules at the college I live in were very similar – and the rooms just as depressing. By the end I had blue-tac’ed so many things to the wall I actually got charged because when I moved out I had left too much of it on the walls (apparently)!
Best thing I did though was getting a huuuuge ornate old frame, painting it, and filling it with a covered pinboard, was a pretty sweet inspiration board and leant against a bare wall in my room it was the source of many conversations. There was always so much happening and my tastes changed with the semester and what I was studying at the time, so I wanted to be able to update the decorations in my room to go with it. Good luck!
You can use gift wrap as wallpaper!