Moving to college is challenging, especially if you have never lived in a dorm. You are surrounded by new people, new responsibilities, and new environments. Here are some tips and tricks I have gathered over my two years here at UConn to make your dorm feel more like home.
- Cover up the walls
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One of the worst parts of living in a dorm is the gross, peeling, and ugly colored walls. Although this next step may seem tedious, you can thank me later because your room will feel more like home. I recommend printing pictures out and covering a wall, or bringing tapestries and posters. The more, the better. It may take up some of your time, but it is an easy and cheap way of covering up the wall and transforming the atmosphere in your tiny room.
- Bring alternate lighting options
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Every dorm room has what I would consider the “big light,” or the yucky white light on the ceiling. Bringing something as small as a pack of fairy lights allows you to change the atmosphere from icy and cold to warm and homey. I would also highly recommend getting a lamp that you could clip onto the frame of your bed, making turning off your light at night a simple and quick process. But my biggest piece of advice would be to make all the lighting in your dorm warm lighting, which has more of a yellow or golden hue. With more small lights, it is easier to control the amount of light in the room rather than having one large and harsh light.
- miscellaneous Baskets
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Baskets and cute containers are my best friends. As much as you tell yourself that you won’t let clutter build up in your dorm, it will happen. But when it happens, it might as well be confined to a space that can look cute. Baskets by your bedside table, under your bed, or on your desk allow you to have clutter, but more organized clutter. For example, I have a set of things that I always take with me when I leave my room such as my keys, wallet, AirPods, etc. But there is no way to make that look pretty all the time. Instead, I just set a pretty container on my desk that serves the purpose of holding my stuff and eliminating any clutter that may build up.
- Bedding
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I often see two types of people: one with extravagant bedding and a million pillows, and one who couldn’t care less about what their bed looks like. After doing a little bit of research, aka looking at people’s rooms, having a minima but neat bed seems to never go wrong. Something that matches with the theme of your dorm always makes for a good base in the case that you do want to switch up your room decor.
- ADDITIONAL SHELVING
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Now, I am sure that you are wondering where all your decorations are going to go in your tiny dorm room. Get additional shelving or storage that takes up minimal surface area and can be added to vertically. For example, if you wanted to be able to add more items onto your bedside table or dresser top, I would recommend investing in some kind of stackable shelf that allows you to not only keep things under the stand, but also things on top of the stand. This makes for an easy and aesthetic way to optimize the limited space that you have.
COnclusion
I have realized that less is more in terms of decoration for your dorm. The less space decor takes away from your already small dorm, the better it will be. I have also seen many people bring unnecessary and useless decorations that simply take up space. I have made it my personal rule of thumb that if a piece of decoration takes up surface area horizontally and can’t be used for something else, it is a waste of space. Obviously, everyone’s living situations vary from one another, so finding playing with what works best for you is sometimes the only way to perfect your decorating method.