These are great. But in all fairness (not to mention realism) these are shared housing for students. These are not dorm rooms. At least the majority of them. When I think of a dorm room, it's associated with the school, owned by the school even, on campus, it's small and you can't just walk in and paint it any ol' color you want. Some schools may have cooler dorms than others, but the vast majority of kids moving into a dorm this autumn aren't going to be able to do this sort of thing unless they are in a real apartment or shared housing unit.

Wow that first one is pretty amazing!

These are beautiful places to live. After reading Surfjack's comment, I think it would be nice as well to see some ways that students have made livable those cinder block walled rooms more typical of dorms.

In the dorms that I lived in as a university student painting walls or hammering nails into walls was never allowed.

These?

Are NOT dorm rooms. They might be inhabited by college students, but they are NOT dorm rooms. Beautiful? Stylish? Yes.

Dorm room? No.

I agree! I'd like to see actual on-campus college dorm room rooms. My dorms (at the University of Texas at Austin) always had standard desks and bunks, or the worst - the twin bed built into the wall with the built-in desk at the foot of the built-in bed. And we weren't allowed to nail or paint the walls.

I'd love to see what students (nearly a decade later !! sheesh) are doing to overcome the truly drab on-campus college dorms.

C'mon, AT - the myth of "Marcella's Simple, Chic Dorm Room" was debunked the first time around, wasn't it? The Spanish word "dormitorio" does NOT translate to "dormitory", it just means "bedroom"!

im so tired of these dorm posts!!! these are not dorms! except for the first one, i believe, which is also the best

These posts are outrageously snobby, for the most part. Please repost with some reasonable ideas for mainstream college students (who actually live in dorms). Sure, we all want a nice place to live, but most college kids are more worried about paying for books than luxury living. This post gives little hope for kids with actual budgets (ie, almost every college student)

I was relieved to see that most of these are not actually dorm rooms at all. I don't think there's anything wrong with dorm room decor consisting of Bob Marley posters stuck to the wall with that blue stuff. If you had a full-blown, grown-up apartment in college, what would you have to strive for later (decor-wise)?

I have to agree with all the others.

I don't know what schools have this kind of on-campus living. Perhaps some do, and I'm just not aware of it, but the dorms I saw in my day were two people in a cinder-block walled room and industrial beds reminiscent of hospitals with low budgets. Forget painting or hanging pictures with nails. Even tacky goop was sometimes not allowed.

That being said, these are all obviously inventive college students with a good eye for design, but good grief! "Sara and Rogan's Delightful Dorm Oasis" has a nicer KITCHEN than my current home, 10 years AFTER college! That is not a dorm room.

I guess I'm jaded and a little miffed because I had to work part-time jobs just to eat in college, let alone decorate. Sorry.

I've been to many dorm rooms when I was in college, and I must say, none of them had any decorating beyond a poster or two on the walls...usually beer or bikini related.

My dorm room in college was very typical - cinderblock walls, basic carpeting, standard-issue furniture. However, when I showed up, my roommate had already moved in and had wallpapered her side of the room with Marilyn Manson posters. Her bedspread was metallic (like tinfoil), and she had handcuffs and other scary paraphernalia for accents. I was horrified then, but looking back, it was probably pretty cool in its own way. Wish I had taken a photo...

Well, we can get all grumpy about it or borrow the good ideas. I'm well past college -- have two kids already out of college -- and am not above "borrowing" from these guys. Myself, I had my own apartment in NYC and went to a commuter school so, no dorm for me -- just cheapo apartment and lots of creativity (and some unusual jobs).

Really, AT? This again? Do we need to bring up the "dormitorio" fiasco that arose the first time you posted Marcella's apartment? She's a 30-year-old interior designer from Buenos Aires who was showing a dormitorio she designed for a client.

Yup, dormitorio is spanish for bedroom. This is seriously starting to remind me of the hermano episode of Arrested Development.

Fantastic post, but it frustrates me that every time an article claims to feature amazing dorm rooms, like surfjack pointed out, they're very rarely realistic dorm rooms.

Understandably, ApartmentTherapy features more kinds of dwellings than just dorm rooms, but I feel like they should adjust the title to reflect what kinds of rooms they're ACTUALLY showing.

I manage a site called NottaDorm, http://nottadorm.com, and try to feature only true, real-life dorm rooms, along with realistic tips and tricks to making the most of a dorm. If you're willing, check it out.

Agree with all of the above comments. What I'd like to see? Dorm room decorating on a budget. What can you find that REAL college students can re-create? Most people I know have to get their decor from Target, BB&B, Wal Mart, etc. Of course these photos are inspiring, but it would be a lot more useful to see someone put together a dorm decor guide that anyone can use. Come to think of it, I think I'll do that....

To echo everyone else, these are not dorm rooms. When I lived in the dorms, I was in a brand new building which was very pretty (for a dorm) but not nearly as nice as these. I would much prefer to see real dorm rooms that real college students could actually attempt. Cool pics, but I'd rather the title be something like "Best Student Living" or something like that. Don't mislead your readers into thinking these are dorms by calling them "Best Dorm Rooms" when they are so obviously not.

... What they said.

My dorm room had pale green cinderblock walls, was only as wide as a twin bed plus the built-in desk/closet array, plus maybe two feet; was only as long as two twin beds end to end; and had dark brown tile floors. I don't know about students today, but back then nobody had the money to jazz up their rooms much. We stuck with the college-issue beds, desk- and side-chairs, ceiling and desk lights, and usually only brought posters (which could be hung with tacky putty without damaging the walls), throw rugs, bedspreads, and (in my case) a hand sewn slipcover for the single side chair. There wasn't room for much more, and we were in class or the library or our jobs much more than in the room, anyhow.

I have NEVER seen a real dorm with wainscotting or walls that could hold the art array shown above. I wouldn't want to haul that much stuff to a temporary one or two-semester residence, anyhow. A college APARTMENT, maybe, if I were going to stay there for all four years and summers... Very unrealistic thread...

^ what they said. You can do better than this.

The dorms at my school were designed by a firm whose prize winning architecture was building prisons.

These are amazingly decorated spaces. Tragically, however, this latest collection seems to further exemplify how this site is outgrowing the loyal fanbase that helped create it: the Architectural Digest backlash. Anybody know where to find the weblog that will be filling that void?

@SherryBinNH --

There are dorm rooms with wainscoting and real walls, believe it or not. I lived in a very small dorm on Boston University campus that was actually 3 brownstones attached to each other, and our room had wainscoting, actually. That being said, obviously these "dorm rooms" are certainly not any such thing. Despite having floor to ceiling windows and wainscoting, we weren't allowed to paint or hang anything on the walls, and we still had the same ugly institutional furniture.

@CrazyLady -- this post would be a lot funnier if it were more like the "hermano" episode. I love AD!

@churumbela:

"You’re a good guy, mon frère. That means “brother” in French. I don’t know why I know that--I took four years of Spanish!"

Yeah, what Emily the Cat and CrazyLady said. AT, it's the Internet, not print -- you can make corrections after you post, you know!

Agree that those are absolutely not dorm rooms.

As a current student (Dartmouth senior), I've lived in dorms with wainscoting and beautiful windows. But they also have white walls we aren't allowed to paint, and ugly furniture we aren't allowed to remove.

Not helpful.

Another voice of skepticism. It would be wat more awesome to see creativity from students in real dorm situations working around normal dorm constraints; e.g, bad furniture, white walls, small shared space, limited funds, etc. I know things like this exist - I knew some people with super rooms in college 10 years ago!

What I was hoping for was a realistic post about decorating with posters, batiks, and 3M command strips. I would have killed for those strips back in college.

http://www.dailydanny.com/?tag=dorm-room-detox

here's a real dorm room makeover :)

As others have said, these aren't really dorm rooms and I speak as a former residence hall director. Our students were allowed to paint, but only with approved colors (all pastels) that the university supplied. The cheap, ugly furniture had to stay and no nails, screws, or sticky stuff could be used on the walls.

I agree with the first comment by 'surfjack'. I'm a uni student living in a dorm-style studio. But, I cannot related any features in those pictures to my place. It's a shame to have to see cool, but not-so common ideas at AT.

These look like apartments that happen to be rented by students. While I've lived in dorms that were more than just walls and had some nice detailing and molding, they were all painted bright white and we would have been practically hanged in a public square if we dared hang artwork or paint the walls, and I went to art school!

This was my college dorm room from a year ago: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10215747@N03/sets/72157624667411230/
Much more of that cinderblock-wall variety, but I still found it to be bright and happy.

these rooms are adorable, chic, sophisticated, and totally unrealistic. these arent really dorm rooms, at least not standard dorm rooms. I would love to see a post about sharing and decorating a 14 x 14 room on a student's budget. while i can maybe draw inspiration from this, its not very helpful otherwise.

Here's a real challenge for you, AT.

In a couple of weeks colleges all over the U.S will be filled with students entering cinderblock dorm rooms (ok, some may have wainscoting). They'll be attempting to turn them into suitable living spaces. Why not call up a challenge to show true college dorm rooms? Students are very creative. Leave the professional design rooms out of it!

What Mikolo13 said. I seldom visit but for the contest now...

The massive amounts of spam don't help either.

I lived in a different dorm each year of college. We found ways to be creative... Here are some of my favorite ideas from my dorms:

My freshman year, I had cinderblock walls, but there was a thin metal rim around the top edge of the walls that was big enough to hold S-hooks. My dad and I went to a hardware store and bought metal strips which we mounted with S-hooks and stabilized along the wall with super-strong adhesive, to put bracketed shelving over my desk. It was really inexpensive and easy. Same idea would allow you to hang proper framed artwork...

Another year I had walls that could hold pushpins. I had a big green printed cloth over the entire wall (with tiny green Christmas lights artfully arranged behind it). It was an easy solution to being unable to paint the walls. I also hung a lantern from the ceiling and used a table lamp suspended upside down as a pendant light that did not require ceiling wiring.

Many of my friends hung blankets, quilts, or printed fabric on the walls as an alternative to paint.

Buying small furniture (shelves/nightstands, cute chairs, and lamps) breaks up the mandatory dorm furniture.

One friend put her bed on really high bed risers, installed pull-out shelves (like drawers, basically) under her bed, and she kept extra clothes and even her printer under there. Her mom sewed a long dust ruffle to cover the whole thing. It was a great way to decrease clutter while also hiding tacky bed risers.

It's not that hard to make a dorm room into a pleasant, livable space! I think lamps are key, because nothing ruins a space like fluorescent lighting.

Pics 5, 6(the same room) & 7 are Dorm rooms of the cinderblock variety I belive (I've seen these posts before).

Pic 2&3 was accomadation for a married teacher if memory serves me well.

Hey!! Why not have a serperate 'small space' competition for Dorm rooms, and get a real taste?!!

one of the dorms i lived in was built in the 20's and had beautiful architectural features. But as most other people are pointing out, we weren't allowed to paint the white walls, or change the furniture. If these are actual dorms (buildings built by a university to house students in), can you please let us know which schools they are?

Yay rich kid's dorms... this literally translates to like 5% of the population who are willing to buy their kids whatever they want. The rest of us were dumpster diving outside these kid's dorms on move-out day...

Some of these dorm rooms are outlandishly posh, which is why they offer little inspiration to college students like myself who have far more limitations with what we can do to decorate our home sweet homes for the year. I'm a rising sophomore at Stanford, and there is absolutely no way we'd get away with some of the dramatic room makeovers depicted here. I'm fairly certain we're not permitted to paint our rooms, even if we are willing to repaint them at the end of the academic year. Plus, why would we want to spend that much of our time and energy painting when there's so much else to do? We cannot remove any of the furniture from our rooms, and with precious little space we're limited with what we can bring in. The dorm I'll be living in this year won't even let us put holes in the wall. I think the limitations actually feed our creativity instead of inhibiting it! My roommates and I will also have to work with time restraints since we all have really demanding schedules this year.

It would have been nice to see more realistic rooms decorated by current college students.

http://nyuhousing.livejournal.com/4373.html This was my dorm room freshman year of college. (God, was that really that long ago? I'm amazed the photos are still hosted somewhere on the web.) Not only were you not allowed to paint, you were not allowed to have any sort of furniture that was not school-issued, not even a TV stand (hence the TV on blue plastic tubs). The only time we broke the rules on was curtain rods -- having curtains made SUCH a difference. One very clever thing some girls down the hall did was take bedsheets with fun patterns and tuck them around the school-issued sofa and chair cushions as ersatz slipcovers.

@CrazyLady HERMANO!!!

To help out real college students in real dorms, some ideas that we used in our dorm room (which was a real live cinder block "no doing anything" room about 7-8 years ago) were. No, not high design (I'm not great at design!) but hopefully helpful since they are things people can actually do:

- We had a double loft built (the university was willing to store bedframes but nothing else, but I've heard lofts are less common more recently) and painted it black for our second year, really helped it be more like furniture
- We took down the gross old curtains and sewed our own
- We covered the fabric parts of our university issued chairs - very easy to do with the simple design of most dorm chairs, just take a screw driver, a tiny bit of fabric, and a needle and thread
- Indoor/outdoor type carpets for over the (again, gross) linoleum. We bought two of them for really cheap ($10-20 I think) and positioned them in the room to cover all the floor except a patch for where our food bookcase/fridge/micro was. We used some carpet tape to keep the corners down, and it ended up not leaving any residue. Our carpet held up much better than the "real" remnants they sell on campus.
- The futon we brought in was the best thing ever.

I went to school in the South (I'm a Southern California girl) and totally experienced the height of dorm room decor. Families brought in trucks to have anything not nailed down removed so their belles could have the most glamourous curtains, beds, end tables, etc. grace their dorms. I have to admit, I found it super cool and being a bit spoiled myself, I stepped it up a notch the next year. It was great fun and the "yes" there were still the cinderblock walls and built in cubicles just with a major dose of glam.

I second the challenge posed by mjs7640.

Plus, how many times do we AT readers have to see the ubiquitous dorm post and then get bent out of shape?

These spaces are inspiring but yes, not actual dorm rooms. Now its been forever since I was in a dorm room but here's some of the things you can do to spruce the joint up...
-big artistic posters
-photos (Ross dress for less is a good source for cool frames on the cheap), apps like hipstamatic can help you get some edgy shots even if you're photography challenged
-get a big corkboard from an office supply store, cover it in cool wrapping or washi paper or even fabric. Pin up inspirational images.
-a cool lamp and throw rug
-graphic linens, a bunch of throw pillows (stack em on your desk when sleeping, during the day you can make your bed a seating area)
-on your desk, stay away from office supply desk sets, use vintage bowls, vases & wine bottle holders for your supplies
-a cool little shelf, chest of drawers to hold extras
-wallpaper your mini fridge
-hang some chinese paper lanterns in a cluster in the corner (pier one has em on sale now due to end of summer)
-plastic or melamine plates with cool colorful designs and plastic goblets that you won't mind leaving out on display
-removable wall decals

Things we did were: -
-made our own curtains to over up the horrible Venetian blinds
-lined the windowsill with different-coloured glass vases
-cut the handle off a paper Chinese parasol and hung it upside down over the flickery florescent light in the centre of the room. We then used plug-in incandescent lights to provide lighting that didn't give us a headache
-my roommate hung one of those mosquito nets on a hoop you can get at Pier. At the time they were new and not a horrible cliche.
-hid a mini fridge and a microwave in our closets
-brought in a folding screen so if one of us had to stay up studying the light didn't bother the other one
-added a massive area rug made of a big carpet remnant which I taped to the lino with double-sided tape
-I found you can hot glue any lightweight objects to the cinderblock wall, and remove said hot glue without a trace using a hair dryer. It was hot melt, as cool melt had not been invented. Test this, but it worked for me and I put up all sorts of stuff in a collage and changed it from time to time. You could do an upholstered wall effect with squares of foam core covered with fabric.

Oh yes and TENSION RODS. Anywhere that walls and built ins are close together you can add curtains, beads or what have you hanging down from a tension rod. We used this to make a sort of foyer to our room by putting a curtain in the narrow area near the door, so people couldn't stare in if the door was open. It was also quite pretty.

Oh, I forgot one - we took plain (cheap) black fabric and tacked it up on the underside of the lofted beds (over our desks on one side and over our dressers on the other) to create a "ceiling" to cover up the ugly bottom of the bed.

I third that challenge! Getting tired of these misleading posts.

My little sister is in a cool, new dorm and it still doesn't come close to these. I want to see kids getting creative with Target and thrift store finds.

wildwildrice...I love your ideas! Great ideas for a rental to.

These are not dorm rooms. They are just rooms in nice houses that students live in...from what I can tell. At my college we had white painted cinderblock walls that you could only tape posters up onto. You definitely couldn't paint or hammer in any nails to hang pictures. Very misleading title.

Add my voice to the list of people complaining that this post is NOT about dorm rooms at all. I would LOVE to see real-world, practical stylish solutions to dorm living.

Frankly, this has already been hashed out in the original thread from August 5th and earlier discussions (re: 'dormitorio'), that it's sort of shocking to see that this was reposted (again).