In the past, preparing for dorm life meant purchasing a set of extra-long twin sheets, a shower caddy, and several posters designed to convey your personality to anyone who entered the cinder block house. But on a recent morning, college shoppers at a Target store in upstate New York were filling their carts with a much longer list of school supplies.
At the customer service desk, people lined up to pick up online orders: small dressers, rolls of temporary wallpaper, stacks of pretty storage baskets. One father, looking slightly pained, confessed that a lot of dorm stuff had been accumulating at his house since last spring, when his child and his roommate started a shared Pinterest board for their suite at nearby SUNY.
A few aisles away, a young woman consulted with her mother about a dark green faux velvet curtain ($40) that she planned to install with double-sided tape (renter-friendly) and eventually pair with a tasteful cream rug ($70), a brass-colored bedside lamp ($20), and a few patterned pillows. Nearby, another student wearing a Cornell T-shirt sported a slightly more eclectic mix with a pink tie-dye bedspread ($179), string lights ($10), and a glittery inflatable chair ($30). Both plans were fodder for envious social media content—which is, of course, part of the theme.
In an era where aesthetic culture has permeated pretty much everything, even the once-humble realm of the college dorm has seen a massive resurgence, fueled by a never-ending supply of inspirational content and product recommendations. Prime Day has become the Black Friday of college move-in prep, while major department stores and online retailers like Dormify offer a universe of products that can transform a blank, sometimes dreary canvas into #interiordesigngoals. This spring, Pinterest saw a 775 percent increase in searches for the “baddie” trend; brat summer and “coquette” style have also surged since then.
Dorm Decor’s TikTok verification
The most stunning examples go viral on TikTok and could easily be used as submissions for a college version of MTV Cribs, which in turn increases the stakes for what is theoretically possible. Parents – okay, Mothers– sometimes become the de facto design planners and spend the summer strategizing how to get a perfect 10. Some even hire a Dormitory-specific interior designera growing subspecialty within the small-space design category. And while complete remodeling is the exception rather than the rule, the competitive pressures are real – especially at schools in the South with deeply rooted Greek culture.
TikTok is full of such extreme examples, highlighting rooms that look more like boutique hotel suites – with custom headboards, closets, high-quality upholstery, built-in seating areas, sconces – than a place to study for an exam. The rooms are sometimes reminiscent of the grandiose design of student dormitories on a smaller scale, although even the suites themselves tend to have more square footage than those not heavily featured on #RushTok rotation.
When Kerry Davis moved her daughter into a shared room at the University of Tennessee earlier this month, she was surprised by the high quality of the production.
“They bring their own desks, they have their own dressing tables, wallpaper on the walls, beautiful carpets – everything you can imagine,” says Davis. In the hallway, she noticed some grandparents. They stayed for hours and helped assemble the furniture.
Her daughter Courtney’s decor — cute Roller Rabbit bedding and framed pictures — was comparatively plain. Davis wondered if she had failed as a mother of a girl. The pressure, she felt, was on the mothers rather than the college kids.
“Someone said to me: She has everything she needs and you have given her better gifts than a nice room,” she says. “I needed to hear that because I definitely woke up on Monday morning feeling Should I have done more?”
Kim Robinson, whose daughter Meghan is moving into the dorms at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, in the fall, didn’t feel the same pressure to keep up with the dorm decor Olympics – but she Was overwhelmed by how different it was preparing her daughter for college compared to her son, who goes to the same school. (She is not alone. In a recent stand-up performance, comedian Felicia Madison the long list ticked off of items that her own daughter considered indispensable. The punch line? “My son brought his iPhone. And forgot his charger.”)
“She’s an athlete. She’s not extravagant,” Robinson explains of Meghan. Still, “It’s crazy.” Her roommate is from Madrid, and the two young women decided to match everything: duvets, pillows, ottomans, headboards, throw pillows, pillowcases, bed skirts, nightstands and lamps from Pottery Barn. They even have special neon lights spelling out their names above their beds. “I said, you better use that stuff for four years because it costs a fortune.”
Fantastic dormitories for little money
However, you don’t always have to spend a fortune to achieve a high-end look or garner millions of views on social media. In 2022, aspiring designer Alethea Jay went viral after posting a TikTok of the dorm room she designed for her little sister, complete with “diamond-encrusted” wall frames, fancy lighting, and chic temporary wallpaper. In the years since, she’s carved out a niche for herself by offering advice on how to pull off a dramatic transformation that’s still budget-conscious. “I’ve seen dorm headboards that cost $500,” she says. “You can get an entire room for that $500.”
She also thinks that the hype about students who go all out in decorating their dorms is exaggerated. “I was on a much of dorms, and the five rooms that are most viral are not the representation of what most students experience in the dorm,” says Jay. Are there certain students, and probably parents, that take it to a new level? Of course.
But ultimately, it’s all about the basics: comfortable bedding, shower essentials, wall art. Choices that reflect how you want to be seen and who you really are.
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