Once upon a time, gearing up for dorm life meant buying a set of extra-long twin sheets, a shower caddy, and several posters curated to convey your personality to whomever entered your cinder block abode. But on a recent morning at a Target in Upstate New York, college-bound shoppers were filling their carts with a decidedly expanded school supply list.
At customer service, folks queued to collect online orders: small dressers, rolls of temporary wallpaper, stacks of pretty storage baskets. A dad, looking slightly pained, confessed a dorm haul had been accumulating at his house since last spring, when his kid and their roommate started a shared Pinterest board for their suite at a nearby SUNY.
A few aisles away, a young woman consulted with her mother about a dark green faux-velvet curtain panel ($40), which she planned to tack up with renter-friendly double-sided tape, ultimately pairing it with a tasteful cream rug ($70), brass-tone bedside lamp ($20), and a smattering of patterned throw pillows. Nearby, another co-ed, clad in a Cornell tee, channeled a more eclectic mix with a pink tie-dye comforter ($179), fairy lights ($10), and a glittery blow-up chair ($30). Both schemes were the stuff of envy-inspiring social media content—which, of course, is part of the point.
In an era where aesthetic culture has permeated pretty much everything, even the once-humble realm of student housing has gotten a massive glow-up, fueled by a never-ending supply of aspirational content and product recommendations. Prime Day has become the the Black Friday of college move-in prep, while big-box stores and online retailers like Dormify provide a universe of products capable of transforming a blank, sometimes bleak canvas into #interiordesigngoals. This spring, Pinterest saw searches for the “baddie” trend soar 775 percent; brat summer and “coquette” style have also surged since then.
The TikTok-ification of Dorm Decor
The most jaw-dropping examples go viral on TikTok and could easily function as submissions for a collegiate version of MTV Cribs, which, in turn, ups the ante for what’s theoretically achievable. Parents—okay, moms—sometimes become the de facto design planners, spending the summer lead-up strategizing about how to pull off a perfect 10. Some might even hire a dorm-specific interior designer, a growing subspecialty within the small space design category. And while total transformation is the exception, not the rule, the pressure to compete is real—especially at Southern schools with entrenched Greek culture.
TikTok is full of these extreme examples, spotlighting rooms that look more like boutique hotel suites—with custom headboards, cabinetry, high-end upholstery, built-in seating areas, sconces—than a place where you cram for an exam. The spaces sometimes echo the grandiose stylings of sorority houses in miniature, though even the suites themselves tend to boast more square footage than those not on heavy #RushTok rotation.
Earlier this month, when Kerry Davis moved her daughter into a shared room at the University of Tennessee, she was taken aback by the high-level production of it all.
“They bring their own desks, they have their own makeup tables, wallpaper on the walls, beautiful rugs—everything you could think of,” Davis says. She noticed some grandparents in the hallway. They stuck around for hours, helping to assemble furniture.
Her daughter Courtney’s setup—with its cute Roller Rabbit bedding and framed art—seemed comparatively low key. It made Davis wonder if she had somehow failed as a girl mom. The pressure, she felt, was more among the moms than the college kids.
“Someone said to me: She has everything she needs, and you’ve given her better gifts than a beautiful room,” she says. “I needed to hear that, because I definitely woke up Monday morning feeling like, Should I have done more?”
Kim Robinson, whose daughter Meghan moves into the dorms at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania this fall, didn’t feel the same pressure to rank in the dorm decor olympics—but she was blown away by how different it was to gear up her daughter for college versus her son, who goes to the same school. (She’s hardly alone. In a recent stand-up bit, comedian Felicia Madison ticked off the long list of items her own daughter deemed essential. The punch line? “My son brought his iPhone. And forgot his charger.”)
“She’s an athlete. She’s not extravagant,” explains Robinson of Meghan. Even so, “It’s insane.” Her roommate is from Madrid, and the two young women decided to coordinate everything: Pottery Barn dorm comforters, pillows, ottomans, headboards, decorative pillows, shams, bedskirts, bedside tables, and lamps. They even have custom neon lights that spell out their names for over their beds. “I said: You better use this stuff for four years, because it costs a fortune.”
Dream Dorms on a Budget
Breaking the bank isn’t always a requirement for pulling off a high-end look or racking up millions of views on social media, though. In 2022, budding 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, slick lighting, and chic temporary wallpaper. In the years since, she’s carved out a niche advising on how to pull together a dramatic transformation that’s still price conscious. “I’ve seen dorm headboards that cost $500,” she says. “For that $500, you can get a whole room.”
She also thinks the hype about students going all-out with their dorm decor is overblown. “I’ve been to a lot of dorms, and the five rooms that are most viral are not the representation of what most dorming students have as their experience,” Jay says. Are there certain students, and probably parents, who take it to a new level? Of course.
But at the end of the day, it’s about the basics: comfortable bedding, shower supplies, wall art. Selections that reflect how you want to be seen, as much as who you actually are.
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