This is adorable - totally takes me back to my college days.

Wow! A world apart from how my college dorm looked. Amazing. I especially like those round Ikea hanging flower vases. Well done, ladies!

wow, not bad at all for a college dorm room, wish you ladies could have come and done my room back in the day :-).

If this is what they've done to a dorm, imagine what they'll do with other spaces. Kudos, Ladies.

Very smart. The ladder solution was quite ingenious. Eye-pleasing and pleasant color scheme too.

funny, i can't imagine spending my money on fresh flowers as an undergrad. i got mine from birthdays and sorority functions.

This will have to wait till next year. My daughter's roommate is Goth. All black - comforter, everything very sterile. My daughter has pictures and rugs and pillows - she's a nester. Nice job!

We need more posts like this! "What to do when you can't paint, buy new furniture, or add space."

Yes! This is what a dorm room actually looks like! When I was in college, we had the same problem (how to get onto a top bunk) but we had a full bunk bed so we couldn't put anything below it and we couldn't disconnect the beds. We put a desk next to the bunk bed and used the desk to climb onto the top bunk.

Yay! It looks good and it's realistic for a college student's budget. (Unlike the dorm room "style ideas" post with $300 chairs.)

aww dorm living at its finest. Brings me back as well. Although we had no ladder- lol we used the chair and then desk to hop in.

nicely done!

Wow, that is super impressive. I too had a shoebox room to share with a roommate, but we didn't get along nearly as well as these two do. If my dorm looked like this I would have spent more time there!

Yay! Only thing I would do differently is face the beds so that the feet touch, not heads. ;) But great job, ladies!

You all did such a good job with your dorm. I love the lime and turquoise!

Maybe it's just PMS, but I got choked up when I read the part about the dad making the ladder. Dads are the greatest.

Infinitely better than what I lived with. Well done, and nice of Emily's dad to build you the ladder.

Great transformation! I wish AT had been around when I was living in the dorms to help me make the most out of my space.

LOVE! College dorm life- such a unique and special time. This makes up for AT's recent designer sprawling single family homes! :)

Very nice work ladies! I get hives when I think about my old dorm rooms. :)

I am a middle aged woman that is more into eccentric surroundings. Here's my problem.
I am now in a small apartment. I call it a studio apartment because the main room is like a dorm room. Only I have a galley type kitchen off of one end and when you first come into the door you are in the main room but to the left is a small hall where there is a double closet built in dresser and the bath.
The main room is 10 x 21 ...210 sq. ft.
I can not paint it any other color but the off white.That's not the issue.
The floor space is the issue. I have little funds and a single bunk wouldn't work for me because I have a partner that comes over & we sometimes stay here.
I now have a very small table with drop leafs,& two chairs , a full sofa,round glass coffee table which I love,a recliner, double bed,and a huge older cabinet that holds my art supplies. Any suggestions???

@threeacres - they probably put the heads together because when you get up, you swing your feet out and they'll be next to the ladder. If you put the feet together, you have to scooch to the end of the bed to get to the ladder. I'd probably just fall off the bed if I had to move across it to get to the ladder :)

Very clever! A few of my former roommates and I did similar set ups. I almost always had my bed lofted.

When I was in a single, I had my bed lofted with my desk and dresser underneath. The only items that weren't under the bed were my bookshelves and ladder (that I instead used as another bookshelf/landing strip). The room opened up completely, and it was amazing.

The one time I didn't loft, I pushed the head into a 40" wide closet, and I hung all of my clothes in the underside of the bed. I also had a little storage section for my out of season clothes further back.

What a transformation! And I'm so happy to finally see a real dorm room on AT, and not those glamorous, sprawling spaces that were supposedly called dorms.

You had me at bunks--if we had had bunk beds in our dorm, we would have had so much more space. This is very well done.

no window?

They have the added benefit of being able to walk from Georgia Tech to the Ikea store.

@kushkush, the window is to the left of one of the beds- you can see the whole thing in the first picture and the edge of it in the second.

Kushkush, have a look at the first picture.

Great use of space. But I'm curious -- do students still work at desks in the age of laptops?
I have a computer-based job, but haven't used a desk for years.

I really like your bedding!

WOW. What college kids are able to come up with this kind of thing? I'm super impressed. I was not that skilled in college to "maximize my floor space" or "use rugs to divide the space." But I was in the business school - not industrial design. But still. I'm giving high fives to you girls.

fresh flowers could definitely have been because they took the picture of their dorm room -- i have a friend who is staging her home for a photoshoot tomorrow and she has 28934712089374012938743210937490 different flowers everywhere that aren't normally there!

Looove it! I am so impressed with this and you actually fit a SOFA inside your dorm room. Major props to you.
We must know: Is your Designing Duo the result of random assignment or did you purposefully choose to live together?

Very nice and good use of floor space....love that ladder!

This looks very cute, although, it doesn't seem very practical for most college students who are actively dating/ having overnight guests. This arrangement leaves something to be desired in terms of privacy. I'm sure the dad who built the ladder was pleasantly happy about it though =)

Nicely done but I feel claustrophobic just thinking about two people living in there. Yeesh.

This is Vanessa, thank you for all the wonderful comments!

@Lady J: of course we bought those flowers for the pictures :) but Emily's mom has a rose garden so we did have fresh flowers in our room very often

@flyingsofa: We purposefully chose to live together

think of it as place for their stuff. college students shouldn't be 'living' in their dorm rooms. they should be living on campus. the kid who stays in their room too much is having problems.

Good job! One last step, maybe curtains for that window? Tension rods are your friends....

I was thinking that the room must be huuuuuuge, but an extra-long twin is 80in, so add on a bit for the bed, then the divider, then for the beds not being flush with the walls, and that wall is ~15ft. If the room were square, it would be ~225sqft, but assuming the drawing is more or less to scale and the other dimension is smaller, it's probably ~200sqft, which is actually what my freshman dorm room was....

(Actually, I felt like the dorm rooms we had were pretty roomy. Although they didn't give us loftable beds by default, we could have bunked... but I admit to putting zero effort towards my dorm room.)

Brings back memories! Great job girls... I had a lofted bed one year with my desk underneath, the dorm didn't come with lofted beds, we had to build it.

This is Emily. (I see Vanessa just posted above) Thanks for all the comments, we love getting to share the room we had so much fun designing/ living in!

@ lisa- since we are design students, we frequently used the desks for drawing; but it was really nice to have a sofa for computer work too

@W&Mgirl- we were both single at the time and pretty focused on Tech's challenging curriculum, so it wasn't a problem for us :)

Laurastutler, you could place the sofa at the foot of your bed, then the coffee table making a little seating area. Your cabinet go could then go against one wall in your seating area. Can the small table fit against one wall next to your bed with the leaves down? You could pt the chairs in the seating area and only pull out the table when needed. Use it as a writing table/tall nightstand the rest of the time.

Or you could float your bed with it's back to your kitchen area. Then put the art cabinet behind the headboard, your table and chairs to make a dining area.

Or, if there is room, your table could serve as an entry way table with the leaves down and the chairs on each side. Can be pulled out when needed.

I'd try to draw out some floor plans, cut out furniture and play around on paper first. Dont' be afraid to step outside the box, use things unconventionally, AT's small cool contest would be perfect for you to get ideas! Check out the entries, your answer may be there.

Rock on! You girls did a fantastic job!

I wish I'd gotten along with my roommate well enough to do this.

Those desks look pretty similar to the ones provided by my college; I'm sure you've checked, but if you want more desk space, they might have a flippy-up thing in the back. The one thing I miss about my dorm is that I was able to have a desk the size of a twin bed.

Doing a whole lot of something with very little, I like it!

Nice job ladies. We got rid of our beds completely the year I was in the dorms and bought futons that folded up into chairs for the day...convenient but a teeny-tiny surface to sleep on even compared to a standard twin.

How great that you are still young enough to still climb in and out of bunk beds. Enjoy your college years. They are such a great time.

Adorable. What resourceful girls!

As an aside, I really don't understand the little digs by people like Lady J who have to comment on the fresh flowers in their room. SO WHAT if they go to Trader Joe's once a week and divide up a $5.99 bouquet into bud vases. The pettiness of some of the posters on this site never ceases to amaze me...

God I hated living in a dorm.
The dad ladder rules. Yay crafty dads.

very impressive!

Great job, gals!

great room, and I love the little bulbs above your desks!
honestly-I don't imagine myself climbing these beds up and down..especially if you need to do so in the middle of the night. but well, maybe 20 years ago i'd be less worried about that..

W&Mgirl: "This looks very cute, although, it doesn't seem very practical for most college students who are actively dating/ having overnight guests. This arrangement leaves something to be desired in terms of privacy. I'm sure the dad who built the ladder was pleasantly happy about it though =)"

Uh, it's a COLLEGE DORM ROOM. Privacy does not exist anyway. And almost no college, ever, would let you do anything like install a wall (even a temp one) for fire code reasons.

Dealing with roommates while dating is part of average college life. That's why people make up rules like "don't come in if there's a tie on the doorknob" and such.

This is very smart work. Seriously good.
And I want to thank you for that "curtain over the wardrobes area" tip-- am going to use that.

Lucky that they're both in a design course. Great ideas and good execution.

Lovely. It's much better than any dorm room I've ever seen. So cute guys!

Makes me remember how abusive dorm rooms are. Nice to see the usual prison cell look turned into this fab space.

So glad I don't live there. All my dorm rooms at college had huge windows; I feel so sorry for you guys.

Helluva helluva helluva helluva helluva nice looking dorm room :)

The best part is that it looks like they might have done this themselves, rather than their parents bringing in a decorator.

absolutely incredible! i'm sure you girls loved living there and got the most amazing reactions from your peers!
also, another shout out to the crafty dad-- what a lucky daughter!

Well done! Love the bright blue curtains and green pillows - a nice splash of color.

I can't believe there are some haters here in the comments. Alas, I congratulate these women on making the best of their small space. Nicely done!

The best part of this is that I looked at the first picture and thought "that looks just like a Georgia Tech dorm room." When I saw that's where they are, I had to laugh. Nice job girls, this looks way better than any of my dorm rooms at GT ever did. Then again, I'm just a design-challenged engineer... ;)

! I like the ladder / divider. I like that you made it your own and made it cozy. Ya worked with what ya had! bravo!

"Done Right" except no way blocking windows like that would pass a fire code inspection. I am relieved they don't live there anymore.

My only critique is get yourselves some nicer curtains, it will make a huge difference.

@ chicelectic- the windows actually didn't open; there was a larger (and opening) window in the adjoining bathroom

@ artsy girl- we would have loved to! but it wasn't quite in our budget since we would only be living there one year. what you see in the picture are actually some sheets we found on sale that vanessa sewed into curtains :)

Well done, ladies!

Finally, AT features a dorm room that other students have a hopr of re-creating.