When our recently graduated daughter headed to college, she knew she wanted a space that would be a refuge in the very public life of campus living. She hoped for a space that would reflect simplicity and focus, warmth and comfort.
Our daughter has always had a strong sense of her own style, so she started out planning her dorm room on her own. She searched the world of Pinterest, but there are not a lot of inspiring college dorms in that world. She’s worked with me on several other spaces in our home, so I was thrilled when she asked me to help her design something.
It’s a big task, trying to get something as sterile and standard as this to feel warm and inviting:
When we look for an inspiration picture, we are not necessarily looking for a space with any similarity to the one we are designing. We look for something we love the feel of. “Start with the ideal, move to the real” is one of the educational principles we teach that also applies directly to interior design. Wendy was originally thinking pink, as that is her go-to in room design, but after exploring the options, she decided to go with a beautiful, calming blue.
This image is clearly AI and posted all over the internet, but it has a lovely feel. This room feels the way our daughter wants her room to feel: serene, architectural, and tidy. We roughly entered resources into an image editor until it gave a similar balance of color and texture.
My husband moved our daughter in before school started. We knew there were some things in our design we wouldn’t be able to determine until we were actually in the space. She opted against the bed skirt we originally planned. The headboard was on backorder, so we had to wait on that. We were still deciding on some framed prints on the side wall above her bed. Last weekend I had the opportunity to visit our daughter in the states and put the finishing touches on her room.
By this time in the semester she knew she didn’t want her room to be just a place where she felt comfortable. She also loved that her five roommates liked to hang out in her room. She had a sweet little lamp, but inspired by the larger, cozier lamp her roommates had, we looked for something more appropriate to studying by that also felt nurturing. I hemmed the curtains (that she and her roommates brilliantly hung with Command Hooks), which polished things up a bit. The headboard came in a little more grey than we anticipated, so we decided to balance out the color profile and remake the nailheads in gold. We found some gold nail polish and she painstakingly “polished” each one. It made a world of difference. That and the beige throw pillow warm things up a bit. We determined that one picture over the desk would balance things better than two above the bed. We usually photoshop the image with all of the elements before purchasing anything, but when we made our Target run to buy the lamp, we found the Monet replica. We knew it was made for our daughter’s room.
A big need was a floor rug. Roomies want to feel comfortable chatting on the floor, so this rug added a level of hospitality in addition to a clean space. Today the final piece arrived.
We love it! The experience was a bonus: we had fun working together and grew closer in the process. The process of transforming this sterile dorm room into an inspired study and living space is an excellent example of how effective starting with the ideal can be. Although our final product does not look anything like the inspiration picture we selected, it’s better than what we would have come up with if we simply patterned our decor choices after other dorm rooms. There were some good ideas—and we learned from those too—but the real magic came when we dreamed of what we wanted the space to look like and feel like rather than what was most practical. I miss my daughter every day, but I feel just a little better knowing she has a space that feels clean, comfortable, and uniquely her.
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