For a blog that celebrates small space living, we really don't feature enough dorm rooms, do we? If you think about it (and trust us, we don't want to either), dorms are probably the most difficult homes to decorate: Shoestring budget, generic furniture, lots of rules, little storage, linoleum floors...oh, and there's at least two people sharing the space. Taking all that into consideration, we're impressed by Oslamb's Dorm Sweet Dorm entry over at HGTV's Rate My Space. She and her roommate really made an effort to make their dorm room a (hot pink) home.
Oslamb roomed with her best friend from high school which probably made a big difference when it came to picking a color scheme and buying matching bedding and other accessories. Armed with their hot pink, black and white motif, they hit up Target for major purchases like the futon and the bookshelf centered between the two loft beds. Like most dorms, painting the walls was not an option, so they covered a large bulletin board with black and white fabric to give their space a more interesting backdrop than cement blocks. Another fun detail: They hung a silver chandelier in the center of the "living area."
The girls put the books and cards on display and stowed cleaning supplies in the hot pink drawers.
They routinely bought fresh flowers to freshen up their space, and the mirror was salvaged from the residence hall and repainted black to match the rest of the color scheme.
The throw pillows on this Target futon is a nice mix of different patterns that complement the wall fabric.
Even their closet storage matches!
A nice touch from home: Oslamb's mother made matching towel hangers for the girls.
Check out the rest of this sweet dorm over at Rate My Space.
Oh, and P.S.:
(Images: Oslamb from Rate My Space and IMDB)
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Seriously. All the money I had in college that could have gone towards decorating went towards books and beer. All the time I could have spent decorating also went towards books and beer.
I'm with willson. It never even occurred to me to spend money on decorating.
in all fairness, you have tried. the dorm decorating contest didn't work, i think, because it was back to school and students were too busy for all that. mid-year might be better. lots of dorms get posted on hgtv forums and flickr.
decorating dorms is much more of a thing now, as is interior design as a major and career choice. i find the late adolescent color sensibility to be pretty interesting. look at this room. it's firmly btw a childish preference for bright primaries and a sophisticated, nuanced color scheme. as a devotee of hot pink, i'm sure walking in there, your eyes go BAM!
I definitely decorated my dorm room. I had a plaid flannel duvet that was navy, hunter green and fuschia that I rocked to the preppiest designer look I could muster. With Walmart fabric for my accents. I had the lower bunk in freshman year and I made "bed curtains" to hide the ugly bunk bed post. Even as a poli-sci major, I was a designer deep down.
i dont find a hot pink explosion to be an improvement on dorm life.
Decorating dorm rooms is difficult. You pretty much have to find a roommate that is also interested in decorating and you have to agree that you're not going to buy anything until you move in freshman year so that it coordinates. Then, if it doesn't work out with that roommate the whole scheme falls apart when someone new moves in. They've already bought everything they're probably not going to want to purchase all new items the next semester/ year.
Is this supposed to make up for the last "dormitorio does not equal dorm room" fiasco?
This is great! Kudos to them for putting some effort into their space.
Opinionated, don't you know clever girls find out who their roommate will be and coordinate over the summer?
personally, my roommate and I broke into an old house that was going to be torn down and found many treasures, such as the mirror we hung at crotch height
ec05 - you were lucky! My college roommate was assigned to me & we didn't see eye-to-eye on decorating. We also literally only had enough room for our beds & desks...no room for a futon or anything like that!
My dorm was built in 1925 in the Tudor style, so we had high ceilings and dark wood trim with built-in wardrobes, and the rooms were enormous. We had linoleum, but the walls were plaster instead of drywall, we had roller shades instead of those metal blinds, and the furniture wasn't bad-looking. Everybody decorated, especially after freshman year when we all got single rooms. My bedroom decor at home was pretty set in stone, so I first started experimenting in my dorm room. With decorating, I mean.
I'm a sophomore in college right now and EVERYONE decorates their dorm - sorority girls, lax bros, slackers, everyone. It's fun.
Aren't they too young for that "live love laugh" thing?
FABULOUS job girls! Love the colors. I say, enjoy something fun and cute while you are young! One day you'll be married and say, "Honey, I'd really like a hot pink bedroom" and he'll threaten divorce. So I wish I would have pinked, purpled, flowered and laced it up while I was a youngin.
Just so you know, most people here (myself included, if I'm honest) are kind of decor snobs. We pride ourselves on it. So ignore any snooty comments. You did an amazing job!
I am always so impressed when people pull off a fabulous dorm like this. It looks fantastic and I wish I would have had a space like that in college.
Looks fab. When I was a student all we did was try and fence off our half of the room and everyone had a big collage of photos and magazine cuttings above their desks to personalize the space. Other than that it was generic green carpet tiles and nasty pine furniture. Oh and shared bathrooms, two pay phones in the lobby and a communal TV room. I feel old!
My college was residential, meaning we had to live in dorms all four years. We got on-campus apartments, at least, for our senior year. We were so grossed out by the sage green and maroon upholstery that we got that we bought slipcovers for everything and covered the formica cube we got for a coffee table with a patterned linen shower curtain that was just the right size to work as a table cloth. We got pillows from Target, curtains from Pottery Barn, and rugs on clearance from Pier 1. It was so preppy, lots of light pink and green, but it was still pretty cute, and I had fun decorating with my best friends. I miss college!
jilly37, I think we went to the same school at the same time, except in purple (I know). We stuck up a bunch of posters and pix, and that was it.