August 24th, I move into an oh-so-lovely freshman residence hall (apparently, they aren’t called “dorms” anymore, or something.) Anyway, I’ve pretty much got all of the practical stuff I need, but the decorating part seems to be a bit more difficult. I can’t paint, so I don’t know what to do with the walls. If it helps, I have this on the bed.
Any suggestions? Pretty please? Help!
You can hang tapestries or cloth from the walls and ceiling. If your dorm room is anything like mine was, we had bare cinderblock walls, linoleum floors and large pipes (four or five pipes each about a foot in diameter) on the ceiling.
Get lots of posters and photos. You won’t notice the white walls. Also, get used to not painting… I’ve been out of college for four years and I still don’t live someplace I can paint.
No cinderblock, no pipes. We do, however, get lovely ugly linoleum flooring.
I did this in one apartment since I couldn’t paint - I actually only did one full wall in the living room, then accent places where there were small sections. It made a big difference to the room.
[ul]
[li]Lava lamp.[/li][li]Good chair[/li][li]coffee/tea maker[/li][li]Extra blankets, nice & warm.[/li][li]Extra pillows, big & thick.[/li][li]Folding tray, for next to the bed (trust me)[/li][li]Throw rug for the floor[/li][li]Extra lamps, for light.[/li][li]Ashtray (if you don’t smoke, somebody else will[/li][li]Comfort is the rule, at all times.[/li][/ul]
And this just came off; no messing up the wall or anything?
I can’t have a coffee maker. Which sucks, by the way. I already have a throw rug. I don’t want to people to smoke in my room, either.
Can you have an electric kettle? Easy boiling water makes many things possible.
Plants are a good, cheap decorating method that are often overlooked. Get a couple of philodendrens and put them on top of your bookcases. It makes the place seem less sterile. If you kill them, buy more and water either much more or much less, depending on what you were doing before.
Terrariums and a charming touch to any room.
I’ll second the electric kettle, if they’re allowed, and suggest a french-press coffee maker. I believe they were out of the purview of my school’s coffee-machine rule and make damn good coffee besides. Plus, you get to choose your brand, which I guarantee is better than what tey have in the cafeteria.
Yep - there were a couple of spots I had to spray with water because it was stuck a little more, but for the most part there were no problems. If I had just been taking it down, I would have washed the wall (there were spots where a bit of fabric-colored lint were stuck with starch), but since there was nothing major, and time was short, I left it.
Oooh, monica, your bedspread rocks.
I second the advice to cover your wall in posters and photos and things. We used sticky tack/poster putty and clear packing tape last year, and the only things that fell off consistently were the little 8x10 canvases I had up. They were probably too heavy for sticky tack anyway. The electric kettle is good advice too, if you don’t have a microwave. Are you allowed to have those?
If you have a loft, and the money, a futon is fantastic. You stick it under the loft and it doesn’t take up any more floorspace than your bed does. Toss a bunch of throw pillows on it and you have insta-living room. Or, if you and your roommate (Do you have a roommate? If you do, you should talk to her about your decorating plans, so you know beforehand if purple makes her nauseous or something.) bunk your beds and you have the bottom, you can hang fabric from the bottom of the loft frame, and make yourself a nook to block out light and the like. Or privacy, should you have an overnight gentleman caller.
Another thing you can do is paperclip or binder clip fabric over your drapes, if you’re not allowed to take them down. Or, if it’s allowed, you could use one of those tension shower rods if the window is recessed, and hang a curtain from that.
Drapes are a “fire hazard,” so I can’t have them. We have a pull-down thing, but it’s ugly.
When one of our daughters lived in a dorm, Mr. Adoptamom (carpenter) suspended her bed from the ceiling, essentially doubling her living area by creating a nice seating/desk area underneath. If you’re interested, I’ll ask him to tell me again how he went about suspending the bed. It was way cool and she had the neatest room in the dorm that year.
That was the year that sunflowers were so big in decorating. We found some sunflower covered contact paper and made a nice border for her dorm room, and a cute sunflower rug and lampshade. Perhaps you can find some coordinating contact paper and do something similar? I love your bedspread - it’s so bright and cheerful!
I’d like to hear about what your husband did, Adoptamom_II. I move in August 26th 
French press coffeemakers are great. I just got out of a dorm and I still use the french press in my apartment (even though I could have a regular drip coffeemaker now if I wanted). Even if you can’t have an electric kettle, you can still heat the water sufficiently in a microwave. Most dorms that I’m aware of will let you have a microwave, at least.
These are press pots. I also recommend buying a small cheap (<$10) grinder and grinding your own beans, because they keep longer (in bean form) and taste better.
Measure how long and tall your wall is, and cover it with one of these.
The Rasterbator will let you make any picture big. Check out the gallery and you’ll understand. Plus it’s free, which is the college student’s best friend (though if you do print it, I recommend doing it at a print shop… They can use a lot of ink, and it’ll probably cost less than $10 to cover an entire wall at a print shop, or you’ll end up going through a couple ink cartridges, which aren’t cheap.) Not to mention how damn cool it looks.
I suggest collaging on one of the walls. It’s more interesting than posters because you’re always adding and changing it, your roommate or friends might want to contribute, sort of a year-long art project. You can put up butcher paper on the wall and work on that, and when it comes time to move the whole thing can come down with no damage.
If you’re not as art-inclined, you might just want to stock up on tasteful accessories, and try to hide clutter as best you can. Keep books, papers, laundry stuff, all that under the bed or in the closet, and lamps or vases or fishbowls out. Nothing makes a dorm room look nicer than treating it like a “real” living room.
Mr. Adoptamom said to get permission from the dorm before you do anything and if they give permission, to have someone knowlegable to do this for you (also insert any other disclaimers I should have thought about here).
That said, he bolted (with many bolts) one side and the head of the bed to the walls, about 3’ below the ceiling, then used chains (which I covered with a fabric sleeve) to suspend the other side of the bed from beams in the ceiling. This left a little over 5’ in height of usable space under the bed.
He also reminded me that the next year the officials outlawed his design because a couple of dads didn’t secure their daughters beds well enough when they tried to copy his idea and the school was worried about a kid getting hurt. Memory is kind and I’d forgotten that part until he reminded me It was cool though!
Also seconded. I made one of these about five feet by four feet for one of my walls, and I liked the way it looked so much I made another one that’s about seven feet long and a couple feet tall. The big one’s of a ferris wheel, and the panorama is the Chicago skyline and lake from Navy Pier. Both of these came out of one color print cartridge, but I had to replace it after that.
They’re pretty cool and I like them a lot. A word of caution though: if you do a big one yourself, they can take quite a while to put together…like a day.
If the linoleum is truly awful and your throw rug isn’t cutting it, an inexpensive carpet remnant can be put down and your rugs layered. The starch method to put up fabric is something I’ve done as well. Don’t forget to test for color-fastness. You don’t want to find out the fabric dye leached onto the wall. Washing a couple of times will help.
For the window, I once made ‘curtains’ out of plywood for a friend’s daughter whose allergies made fabric curtains a no-no. I just cut out a tied-back curtain shape and painted them. Then they were screwed into the walls in a couple of places.
Attractive baskets or storage boxes will help keep clutter out of sight.