23 Genius Ways To Make Your Dorm Feel Like Home
How To Make Your Dorm Feel Like Home
It’s time to pack your belongings and move away from all you know to an unfamiliar location; your college dorm. Your dorm room is much smaller than your homeroom; there’s nothing there to comfort you; you are completely homesick!
Although living alone and surviving on your own sounds fantastic, let’s be honest, it’s also a bit unsettling and overwhelming. College students would feel more at ease about living on their own if they could bring all of their belongings. You’ll be comforted to know that there are wonderful ways to make your dorm feel more like home. These include;
- Create A Coffee Station
- Have A Lockable Snack Drawer/Box
- Make A Comfortable Seating Area
- Decorate The Walls
- Pile On The Pillows!
- Create A Pretty Make Up Station
- Hang Fairy Light Curtains
- Get A Large Fluffy Rug
- Make A Photo Collage Headboard
- And more…
This post is about how you can make your college dorm feel more like home!
1. Create A Coffee Station
What feels more like home like having a rich cup of coffee in your gown first thing in the morning? Create a small coffee station or coffee shelf displaying your spoons, mugs, sugar, tee, and coffee canisters, and install a mini-refrigerator underneath to store milk and other beverages.
If you want to spruce up your dorm, ask your parents for a coffee machine they don’t use anymore, or save a few bucks to buy yourself a fancy new one! A coffee station not only makes your dorm feel and look more like home, but it smells homey too.
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“Study in style darlings!”
2. Have A Lockable Snack Drawer/Box
A snack drawer should be a must-have on every college student’s “dorm essentials” list! Here you can store mom’s homemade cookies and rusks and eat them anytime you feel a bit homesick. If you have a dorm mate, make you have a lock on the drawer.
There is nothing worse than reaching for a snack while studying to realize there’s nothing left! It’s ideal since we all had snack cabinets at home, so it would feel like you never left.
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“This will save you an awkward, “who done it” conversation.”
3. Make A Comfortable Seating Area
Ensure comfortable seating in your dorm room plan, whether it’s a plush futon, a bean bag chair, or anything else that provides a soft and cozy spot to sit down, unwind, study, or read a book. It will not only provide another place to hang out in your dorm, but it will also create an inviting, relaxed vibe.
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“It’s lovely to relax and unwind in comfort.”
4. Decorate The Walls
The walls of most college dorms are often dull and depressing. Try to imagine the wall as a blank canvas and decorate it with everything you care about to help you feel at ease. Hang beautiful tapestries, abstract art, or other wall decorations to liven up the space.
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“Wall décor adds so much warmth to a room. Make it count by decorating it with all the things that will make it feel like home to you.”
5. Pile On The Pillows!
Nothing beats a bunch of soft, cozy pillows to make your dorm room feel like home. There is something oh so comforting and inviting about them. Use them as a backrest, or scatter a couple on the floor for relaxing and reading a book or when visitors come over.
Layer a variety of designs in complementing colors, differing sizes, and materials to give your area personality and warmth and make it feel cozy and homey.
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“It’s so much fun lounging around in your dorm with friends. Create a space that nobody wants to leave.”
6. Create A Pretty Make Up Station
One of the first things you do in the morning is wash your face and do your makeup. Having a designated makeup space with a mirror is all you need to create your look for the day. Use pretty and creative containers to organize your makeup essentials. You could even recreate your bathroom like the one you had at home.
Don’t forget to add wall décor, flowers, pictures of your loved ones, and anything else that will inspire you to start your day.
7. Hang Fairy Light Curtains
There is something magical and calming about fairy lights and butterflies. To create soft lighting, hang a gold and silver butterfly fairy light curtain on the wall behind your be. It makes the dorm’s atmosphere seem warm, homey, inviting, and cozy.
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“Light up your life.”
8. Get A Large Fluffy Rug
These are especially great when it is winter. It makes the dorm a little warmer, and it also looks nice. It is the perfect décor accessory to help tie a dorm room together. It is also perfect for when you get up in the middle of the night and don’t want to stomp your dorm mate awake on a hard floor.
Buy at BED, BATH, & BEYOND
“Don’t get cold feet.”
9. Make A Photo Collage Headboard
You can do this whether you have a headboard or not. If you have a headboard, make a photo collage on top of it displaying everything that reminds you of home.
This can include concert tickets from a concert you went to with your parents or small memoirs that only you will know what it means. If you don’t have a headboard, you do the same thing, but make the collage on the wall behind your bed.
“Every dorm room needs a touch of DIY to make it feel like it’s been your room forever.”
10. Get A Fancy Headboard With A Laser-Cut Initial
A headboard with your laser-cut initial may turn an ordinary dorm room bed into a cozy, fashionable, and welcoming environment.
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“Sleep in style!”
11. Elevate Your Bed
If you want to feel like a queen, you must live like a queen! Have a higher bed makes it feel like your bed is a throne. It also adds dimension to the room and creates the illusion that the room is bigger than it actually is.
We all know blankets keep you warm physically, but they should also make you feel warm when you look at them. You’ll want a good comforter and warm blankets in a neutral color that you can wrap around you when reading, studying, or enjoying a steaming hot cup of cocoa on a rainy winter evening.
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“Everyone needs a bit of comfort every once in a while.”
12. Keep Your Dorm Clean & Organized
Remember when you’d come home from school only to find that your mom had cleaned your room and made it smell like a fresh meadow? Now is your time to apply what you learned from your mother when it comes to keeping your dorm neat and clean.
Use space-saving storage containers and shelves that won’t look cluttered. Do a spring clean once a week and use the cleaning agents your mother used to clean with back home. This makes your room feel like new every time, but it also makes your room smell like home. When your parents decide to pay you a surprise visit, they will be so proud!
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“Everyone knows that cleanliness is close to Godliness.”
13. Display Your Favorite Novels
Although you won’t be able to bring your complete bookcase to college, you will be able to display a handful of your favorite novels in your new room on a small book rack. It might make you feel more at ease to see the covers of your old books, and you will feel even closer to home when you read them during spells of homesickness.
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“With all the stress and hard work college has to offer, escaping with a good book is essential.”
14. Create Symmetry
If you and your dorm mate are like sisters, why not create a mirrored image of each other’s space. Do everything on the one side of the room, exactly like the other side. It will bring in a sense of sophistication and unity.
“Sisters before misters!”
15. Add A Little Nature With A Few Pot Plants
Plants bring life into any room. Since you will be spending so much of your time in your dorm, it would be ideal to bring a bit of the outdoors indoors. Succulents are great plants for dorm rooms because they do not require a lot of light, water, or attention.
You can also create a vertical succulent garden against a blank wall. This is a fantastic way to bring in twinkle lights by installing them behind your vertical garden. This is perfect for guys’ and girls’ dorms.
Buy at BED, BATH, & BEYOND
“Go green!”
16. Potpourri & Essential Oils
If candles aren’t permitted in your dorm, you can use potpourri to recreate the scent o
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“Scent from above.”
17. Get A Bluetooth Speaker/Stereo
The quickest and cheapest relaxing mode is to have a portable speaker or stereo music playing in the background. Make a collection of your friends’ favorite songs or albums from home so you can all revisit shared experiences. Create playlists for different occasions, including exercising, studying, resting, and partying.
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“Sometimes, all you need to do is get your groove on!”
18. Get A Cool Light Timer
Wouldn’t it be amazing waking up to the warm warmth of a lamplight rather than a dark and empty room? A light timer (which costs about $5 at the hardware store) is a fun and useful tool for your dorm. You need to program it to come on in the evening and turn it off just before bedtime. It’s
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“A timer with compassion, who would have thought!? Now I’ve seen everything.”
19. Bring Mementos From Home
Do you have a beloved poster or lamp in your room that you’ve had since you were a child? Bring these with you to your new college dorm! You don’t want to recreate your former room exactly, but a few familiar objects might make the space feel more comfortable. Go through your childhood belongings and determine what you can’t live without.
Bringing personal souvenirs from home can make a big difference by creating a homey atmosphere in your dorm. These could also include trophies, a wrapper, a soft toy, certificates, or anything that might bring a particular sense of familiarity to your new living environment. Every time you see them, they will immediately make you feel more at home.
“There’s no place like home!”
20. Install A Room Divider & Light Bulb String Lights
Install a bright blue room divider against your wall and use the vents to display photos, jewelry, birthday cards and other décor accessories you would like to see when you wake up in the morning. Hang light bulb rope lights overhead your entire dorm to create an artificial night time street market atmosphere.
21. Get A Letter Light
Letter lights are great, and they add a vintage touch to a space. Get a letter light in the first letter of your name and place it above your bed. Yes, we know that you know where you sleep, but it makes you feel special knowing that this bed belongs to you and only you. It makes your bed seem like a throne!
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“Lights, camera, action!”
22. Install Shelves
Dorm rooms have limited floor space, and the last thing you want is to trip over an overload of items standing on the floor. With permission, install extra shelving to display all your happy memorabilia from home and free up some floor space.
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“Hanging shelves supply a lot of extra space for college students to display anything they want, without taking up any floor space. It’s storage in the air!”
23. Create A Study Area With Plenty Of Storage
Sorry guys and gals, but college entail a significant amount of studying. Studying will be much easier if you have a welcoming desk and workplace. Make your study nook handy and comfy to keep you motivated to study. Although most schoolwork is completed online, it’s always good to jot down notes or highlight important ones.
Use funny mugs or empty cans decorated with washi tape to get creative with pen holders. Choose something interesting and fun so you’ll be delighted to grab your pens and pencils every time you need to study or do homework.
If you have space for a whiteboard, it will make a great addition to your study area. They are wonderful to have when planning projects or making summaries after studying to test your knowledge.
“Having a decorated designated study area makes studying feel less daunting.”
This post was all about how you can make your college dorm feel like home!
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