How to Personalize Your Dorm Room.

Months after moving into my dorm room, my roommate and I still found it sterile and lacking personality. These dorm room essentials will add pizazz to your dorm room without over doing it.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• your imagination

1. Every dorm room needs a curtain and at least two rugs. Dorm rooms are by nature blindingly bright and this needs to be toned down. IKEA is your best bet for affordable dorm room needs.

2. Add a personal touch. I made a collage on my side of the wall with pictures of family, friends, home, and pets. I made another collage with vintage photography, something that made me happy when I noticed it.

3. Find a plant that can stand some neglect. It will add a calming effect to any dorm room. Since most dorm buildings ban candles or anything that produces flame, we used a diffuser. Everyone commented on the sugar cookie smell of our dorm room. We also set flameless candles around the room.

4. Make your dorm room company friendly. We set a rug and a dry erase board outside of our dorm room so people felt comfortable coming in. We also kept our dorm room open almost anytime we weren't sleeping. People dropped in all the time. A floor length mirror can create the illusion of a larger dorm room.

5. The biggest difference between a bland dorm room and an overdone dorm room is placing.
   To tone down a very bright dorm room you want at least two items on every wall but don't go crazy. We strung up christmas lights as a quirky touch. And added a different theme for every season. Mutual friends wrote about 100 integers of pi on individual post its and strung it along the top of their wall.
   Be creative!

[my1212]

on 8/2/2009 great tips! esp loved the pi post-its idea

[jaymierp]

on 7/28/2009 Great solutions to a dull room even for a room at home!