Do I get a free pass since I actually do live in a dorm room? I have 3 decorations. They are:
This XKCD comic on the outside of the door
My “counterfeit” dollar bill that I made at work
My self portrait (The top image.)
and a picture of my Mom.
I used to have a poster with all of U2’s album covers on it, but it has disappeared.
Sunspace, if you don’t want to spend too much money but are a bit handy (and I think you are 
) you might do what I did for my living room.
I went to the DIY store and bougth a large rectangle of soft plywood, softboard, I don’t know the word, but the kind of board used to tack announcements to. I painted it white, but any other color would have been nice too.
Then I bought a lenght of picture frame. Well, actually, it was a wall frame . It was cheap, made out of pressed wood, and in profile looked something like this. I painted the frame black, sawed it off at an 45 degree angle, and glued/nailed the list to the soft plywood. Then I painted the whole thing and nailed it to the wall.
It now resembles one of those old inner-city announcement boards that has all sorts of advertisements and announcements on it. On it I have a rotating “exhibition” of pictures and posters large and small. The board and the frame frames the whole thing and gives it body and unity, so individual pictures don’t need their own frames anymore. Plus, it is much easier to rotate what you want to look at.
Quite a few possibilities:
The women you date (as opposed to myself) have superior taste in black light art.
You are such a neat guy that they are willing to overlook decorating - there are two subsets here.
2a. “If this goes anywhere, he can have a den - the rest of his place looks fine.”
2b. “If this goes anywhere, I will change him and give him fine taste in couches that are covered in cabbage roses” (Women are big on the “marry the man today, rather than sigh and sorrow, marry the man today and change his ways tomorrow.” Men often seem shocked after marriage that their former girlfriends turn out to not like posters of beer girls)
Hmmm . . .while all the doper wimin are hanging around, could I get some advice too?
::Insert pleading demeanor here::
I’m probably worse off than Shakes as I’m even older (52) and much more out of practice at dating. OK, here’s the story: I lost my wife of 22 years last December and am just now getting my act sufficiently together to think about sharing a bed with somebody.
I live in a large-ish 2 BR apt. and my bedroom has a large Ikea bed made from birch with a handmade quilt, a wardrobe (also birch) with a big mirrored segment in the center, a dirty-clothes hamper and an air cleaner. The floor is a white-mottled tile and I have a small, hand-made carpet on the floor. The walls and ceiling are white. There’s a brown cabinet kind of thing that looks awful and I would dump immediately if I knew what to put in its place. That’s it.
Any suggestions? Aside from “Resign yourself to celibacy!” 
Thanks.
Testy
Testy, that bedroom looks just fine to me. A bit more European/Swedish, perhaps, then the “traditional” American look with a lot of solid oak. If I’d were to visit it, I’d think that it was probably your late wife who had decorated it, and that you hadn’t changed anything since then. And that’s perfectly okay.
Don’t be surprised though, that if things get serious, the lady will hesitantly suggest that if you move in together, she might redecorate the room. The right answer then would be something like: “Would you? That would be very nice, I like the way you have decorated your own home. Jill picked most of what I have now in the bedroom, and it was fine, but yes, it is getting a bit old now, and I don’t really need to keep the furniture to remember her by. Just tell me when you want me to go with you to pick out new furniture.”
If, in the meantime, that brown cabinet really bugs you, just find a friend to take you to IKEA and replace it.
Maastricht
Thank you. We lived in quite a large house but it was furnished so I had to go get my own furnishings after I moved out. I’ve got lots of decorations boxed-up though. As far as some lady wanting to redecorate, that would be perfectly OK as I am generally oblivious to such things. Fortunately, I know I’m bad at this so I tried to be as neutral as possible.
All the best
Testy
The parenthetical disclaimer seems to apply, despite your intentions. Your room sounds like the set for a college-themed porn flick. I’d recommend boxing most of it up and putting it in the attic. If you like things which fluoresce in black light, get a saltwater aquarium and a jellyfish or a cool rock or stamp collection. In the article referenced earlier(re: bodily fluids) these are all mentioned as fluorescent.
Extra bonus points if you get the Hope Diamond(a known chick magnet) as part of your collection. Failing that, jellyfish in UV(youtube link) look pretty cool.
Enjoy,
Steven
First of all, I think I need to hear more descriptions of bedrooms. I’m upset that someone can have a room like the OP’s and this detail completely slipped by us for so long. I feel like I’ve been duped.
Secondly, I turn 24 this month and if I walked into this bedroom of a potential lover (my age or older) I would probably freeze, slowly back up til I hit a wall, slide down the floor mouth open, eyes glazed over then pull my knees to my chest and rock back and forth on the floor quietly weeping. I’m offended at anyone associating this style with my generation. WE did not come up with black light posters or lava lamps thankyouverymuch.
Lobstermobster
Hey! Nothing wrong with lava lights! Very cool devices and I’d put one in my living room if I had it!
Testy
Sorry, stray quotation marks. Try this link for UV jellyfish.
Enjoy,
Steven
Thanks – that’s seriously cool!
Just to get meta, one of the reasons a teenager or college student’s bedroom looks like it does is because that’s the only personal space that person has. Most of the time I was awake and in the house as a teen, I was in my bedroom, so it was set up as such with all of my stuff, some sitting-type furniture
Now, as an adult, the bedroom is for sleeping, sex, getting dressed, and late-night reading. That’s it. I spend most of my waking time in other parts of the house, and my personality extends to those parts, too. I don’t have to cram it all into one tiny space.
In short, it would strike me as weird if it looked like a 37-year-old lived entirely in his bedroom.
Yea, cuddling on the bed watching the jellyfish glow could be an attractive feature of a bedroom.
Enjoy,
Steven
When you get errors like that, you can often hover the cursor over the link and by looking at the status bar to see where the url is going you can see what is wrong with it. It’s often a punctuation mark at the end that just needs to be removed for the link to work (in this case a quotation mark).
Yes, yes she did. I have to agree with the rest. You lost me at “beer girl poster.”
http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/lights/9a8c/ Woohoo! Fake glowing jellyfish!
Clearly the OP needs to take a long hard look at himself, possibly while lying on his race-car bed and facing the ceiling mirror.
