Chances are when you arrive at college in a few weeks; your new home will look something like this:

It looks like a prison cell, right? The only thing missing in this picture is a steel toilet bolted to the floor. When you add a roommate or two and all of your belongings, your dorm room can quickly change from lacking personality to lacking floor space all together. Not only do you have a lot of personal items to make accommodations for, you have a lot of things to do in this teeny tiny space.

Your new one-room home, which is smaller than most studio apartments, will now take on the personality of many rooms at once. Bedroom, kitchen, dining room, study room, dance studio… How can you possibly share this space and keep your sanity? You’re talking to Certified Interior Designer with over 35 years of experience, so we’re going to start off where I begin all of my interior design projects:

Space Planning

Know your dimensions. Design Your Dorm has an amazing internet based 3-D design tool that will help you figure out how to arrange your furniture before your move-in day. Why push and pull your heavy furniture into all of the possible floor plan combinations when you can point and click your way into an ideal living space? Customizing your floor plan will allow you to free up as much floor space as possible. Luckily, most shared dorm rooms are equipped with beds that easily convert into loft or bunk beds.

If lofting your bed is not an option, use bed risers to free up that much needed under-bed storage space. While most bed risers will give you an extra 5”, these Power Bed Risers from Bed, Bath & Beyond not only lift your bed an extra 8”, they provide you with a pair of both grounded outlets and USB outlets.

Storage

If raising your bed hasn’t gotten you the storage space you need, consider investing in a free-standing shelving system. Cube stacks can be great space savers when utilized in the closet and can easily be moved around as your needs and locations change. Four years is a long time to be living out of the suitcase under your bed!

Personalization

Most dormitories do not allow cosmetic changes to the property. No painting and no holes of any kind in the walls. So where does that leave us when it comes to livening up the place? Colorful bedding and throw pillows will definitely make your bed look specular but it doesn’t do much for your very bare walls. Temporary wallpaper is a fantastic option for bringing a pop of color or a punch of pattern to your space. It’s basically a giant sticker that you can take down and reposition as many times as you like, leaving no residue behind. Take a look at this Freshman’s prison cell-turned-talk of the campus dorm room:

Privacy

You’ve maximized your floor space and storage; you’ve personalized your walls and bedding. Now for a moment of privacy. HA! Very funny. Privacy is almost impossible to achieve in a shared dorm room. Almost. With the dormitories’ tight rules and restrictions when it comes to decking out your space, installing a wall just isn’t going to happen. Or is it? Fabric room dividers are an option, but you have to get creative. If you can’t even hang a postcard with a thumbtack, how can one hang divider curtains? With a tension rod, of course.

Do you have dorm room design ideas that you’d like to share? Leave a comment below or connect with us on our Facebook page. We’d love to hear from you!