That final picture is not a dorm room. That is Sherry and John's place from YoungHouseLove.com

I like them all, but I especially love the first one.

I don't think any of the rooms are dorm rooms. I clicked on the link to the blog when I recognized John and Sherry's room. The post was about finding inspiration to decorate a dorm room...like using a daybed as John and Sherry have done. I don't believe the blogger was trying to pass any of the photos off as dorm rooms.

I was going to say, this really can't be dorm furniture. In my experience colleges tend to have ugly standard oak pieces. Nothing quite this nice to work with in my experience.

The second and fourth almost look like they could be dorms, but wow that's a lot of space to have! And singles, I was in a triple- there was about 8 sq feet of floor space!

Somehow, I don't remember any dorm I've been in having had nice furniture (and I moved into a brand new dorm one year. The furniture matched and was suitable, but not at all nice).

room size can vary. i lived in a lot of places on my campus. a standard double, a teeny tiny single, a two-room suite with french doors and two closets (it was a converted mansion and one of the rooms was a solarium), a little bitty room in an old sorority house where the rooms varied quite a bit and the furniture was hodgepodged from various decades. size just depends on the place.

OK, my dorm (which since has been converted into faculty offices) had cinder block walls painted light green, no painting allowed. There was enough space for two twin beds end to end on one wall, and a desk and closet and built-in dresser covering the opposite wall. There was maybe six feet in between the beds and the closet/desk. Since the beds provided were actually bunk beds, you could use them stacked, as separate twins, or with the lower bunk, which had taller ends to support the other one, flipped over, allowing the foot of the lower bed to slide under the now taller bed in an L-shaped "trundle bed" effect. (Which is what a lot of us chose as slightly cozier.) We got one standard issue upholstered chair which I usually made a slipcover for. We might rent a mini fridge, but nobody I knew back then bothered to bring other furniture. There was no room for it or to store whatever it replaced.

These rooms shown, at least the walls, are all a bit too cluttered for me. And much nicer and roomier than any dorm I ever stayed in.

I can see how these pics could be great inspiration for dorm decor.

Back in my college days, we had ugly furnitures as well. The space was a narrow rectangle, which makes rearranging VERY difficult.
My roommate managed to decorate her ENTIRE room with pink. She used Victoria Secret gift boxes and shopping bags that she took from her mom and pasted every surface with that pink. It was definitely nauseating, but I still think that was quite clever.

I couldn't do anything about the ugly furniture in my freshman and sophomore dorm rooms - you weren't allowed to store it anywhere else for the year. We had to make do with slipcovers. Also, we had painted cinderblock walls, so unless it was lightweight enough to be hung with that gummy stuff, it wasn't going on the wall (even scotch tape would remove the paint in big chips).

However, I lived in the college's co-housing by junior year. Those were old Victorians converted to group houses. It was still definitely college life - couldn't paint, couldn't change any of the industrial light fixtures, etc. I and my roommate shared a room that had once been a maid's quarters. It was actually similar to the first room, including the fact that my bed bumped up against a back door. The closet was so tiny and shallow that we had to get a clothing rack (we ran it down the center of the room to do double-duty as a privacy screen). But I had a little more flexibility to put thumbtacks into the walls, and except for the beds, we could do what we wanted with the furniture that had been left behind by previous students, or bring in our own. The stairs were very narrow so we just had to make sure anything we got could fit up the stairs.

So I think that pics these are nice inspiration, but most useful for upper-year students in group houses who can actually hang things on walls.

I agree with Sherry that these rooms are a bit cluttered visually. However, it is VERY difficult anyhow to avoid visual clutter when you have to fit all your belongings into a tiny dorm room or a room in a group house. So, you might as well make the best of it - try to make that clutter a "design element" as much as possible.

In particular, rooms 1, 3, & 4 have such a riot of little colorful things that it would distract from necessary clutter. Having your black coffee maker on your dresser, or a big stack of multihued textbooks next to your bed, wouldn't stand out in those rooms as much as it would in a room that was all calm neutrals, or serene pastels, or some other monochromatic color scheme. I think that is the biggest thing that college students could take away from this post.

AT...this is getting obnoxious. These ARE NOT dorm rooms. Sure, the ideas can be applied to a dorm room, but these are not dorm rooms.

If you want to really give students inspiration for the challenges in decorating a dorm room, set up a challenge this August at different schools around the country, showing before, during, and after shots...then give the winner a scholarship for school.

The first two pictures remind me of my bedroom in high school: pictures apon pictures apon pictures apon art apon posters apon pictures.

I guess that would be considered freshmen dorm decor?

I just graduated. I was fortunate enough to have decent size dorm rooms, but that was because the rooms with split with two and 3 people. My nephew is in college and so some of my college friends. While we have very nice rooms, and decorate to the max, I can hardly believe that all of these are dorm rooms. Hardly. Everyone in every school I've ever seen get a twin size bed. That already knocks out a 3 of these.

The fourth image is my bedroom actually. Not a dorm room(I just graduated high school), but practically.

Does anyone know where I can get a raffia cube like the one shown in picture #4?? I'm looking for one that size or a larger one to use as a coffee table. Thanks!

I don't understand why people are upset. WHERE does the author of this post say that these are images of actual dorm rooms? To me, the author communicated clearly that the featured blog (and images) provides inspiration FOR dorm rooms.

Dorm rooms? Seriously?

Yes, Ms Melly, seriously.

An interest in home and design doesn't spontaneously hit someone upon completion of college/university. Why can't AT be a place for students to garner design inspiration?
Why can't students want a homely place for the duration of their studies?
And why shouldn't AT provide information, tips and links to students?

When I was at uni, I was living in a share house and would have loved a site like AT for inspiration. As it was, I delighted in making my room perfect for me and sourcing cheap, thrift finds and long-lasting quality items, and still have many of the beautiful furnishings that I had to save so hard and long for back then.

As for the link to Lovely Undergrad, while it's a beautiful site, I think AT could've spent a few minutes more doing their research.

My daughters always had cute dorm rooms, partly because Dad's and engineer and Mom sews!
C:\Documents and Settings\Longworth\Desktop\IMG_1017.JPG

lizzieS - I'm fairly certain it's from Ikea. Not sure if it's still in their current range though ...