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As new students enter their freshman year, many look forward to decorating their dorms to suit their personality and interests. This is often expressed with personal memorabilia on their side of the room — posters, postcards, homemade items and the like.
However, during the last few years a new trend began to rise in popularity on TikTok and Instagram: professional dorm decorators.
A professional dorm decorator is exactly what it sounds like — an interior designer who specializes in providing custom furnishings and room installations that give a once-plain dorm a sense of luxury.
The professional dorm decorating process begins with a personal consultation, where decorator and student discuss theme ideas, color schemes and desired visual elements. After assembling this initial plan, the decorator designs a package that typically includes headboards, bed sheets, pillows, side tables and ottomans. Other accessories and decor such as rugs, wall art, lighting and wallpaper complete the look, with an additional price tag. Each package is tailored to the needs and wants of the client.
With the unique job of morphing a generic dorm room into an extravagant suite comes an exorbitant rate. Professional dorm decorators charge up to $10,000 for the full package. Often, this price tag is split between two roommates, but the price still floats in the thousands of dollars. For reference, the average price of one semester of in-state tuition in the U.S. is around $11,950. If you think spending $50 on brand new bedding is breaking the bank, imagine spending $10,000 on a luxury room transformation.
Yikes.
In a recent article on budgeting for dorm supplies, writer Erica Sandberg estimated that families should expect to spend nearly $1,400, aside from housing and tuition costs, on getting their student ready for college living. Over half of that will likely be spent on dorm room items, such as furnishings, organizational tools and home decor.
Professional dorm decorating has only grown in popularity, influencing young students — especially freshman girls — to spend far beyond what is necessary in outfitting their room.
Because of intense inflation and increasing prices, it is becoming more and more unreasonable for college students and families to spend large amounts of money on a living space that will only be occupied for nine months. Not only is the price a major downside to the trend, students also sacrifice their individuality when they pay for a professional decorator.
In the days before social media platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok, college students moving into dorms blanketed their walls in band posters and photos of friends from high school. Now, they may hang the same monogram print they’ve seen in viral videos above their headboard and match their bedding with their roommate.
Because these luxury dorm bundles come with so much furniture and decorations, the designer leaves little to no room for students to showcase their personal hobbies and interests.
One easy way to meet people and make new friends as a freshman was leaving your dorm room door open. Other students could peek inside and notice your cool music poster or your soccer ball in the corner, sparking conversations about shared music taste and interest in sports. I even met one of my best friends over a Chappell Roan poster hanging above his bed during my freshman year.
When rooms look the same as hundreds of other students, striking up these conversations suddenly becomes much harder.In People Magazine, Zoey Lyttle wrote, “Almost all of the rooms are perfectly symmetrical, a true testament to perfect coordination between roommates’ parents.”
Collaborating with your roommate to combine your interests into a cohesive decorative scheme is a core memory that shouldn’t be surrendered to parents or interior designers. Instead of focusing on what makes a person unique, these external decoration efforts are often tied to attempts to perform wealth and communicate status.
College students can feel pressured into meeting a certain look or aesthetic during their time at school.
Students planning on rushing sororities or fraternities are some of the main customers of professional dorm decorators. A custom dorm is part of these students’ images. Just as they post videos of their rush experience, they want to post dorm tours and dorm reveal videos.
If you've considered hiring a professional dorm decorator for your living space, think about all the money you’ll save and the memories you'll make by staying true to yourself. Your year — or more — in a dorm will be more memorable if you’re surrounded by those crafts you made right after you moved in and mementos from your childhood rather than generic, trendy pieces of decor.
Skylar Small (she/her) is a junior studying journalism.
