Creative dorm room decor turns an impersonal space into one you can’t wait to come home to. And it doesn’t take much make your room trendy, organized, eclectic—or whatever else you want it to be.
The best reasons to make your own dorm decorations?
- Really cheap
- Extra fun
- Super personal
- Potential bonding activity with the total stranger you’re going to live with all year
Easy how-tos for super-cute dorm room decor
We’ve got some ideas for you (quelle surprise). Let’s go.
DIY some pillows
Make pillows that look like the super-expensive ones you see at boutiques with these easy tips from our artists. Create designs, patterns, school symbols and slogans, your initials, or your own catch-phrases and favorite quotes. It’s some of our favorite dorm room decor because it’s comfy and cool.
Deck your walls
Nothing fills an empty wall like a garland, and no garland calls to us like one with tissue paper tassels. Our pals at Hallmark’s Ideas blog show you how easy it is to turn a pile of tissue paper into an explosion of color. And because it’s insanely cheap and incredibly easy, you can change them out whenever—for seasons, or school colors, or to match your new mermaid hair.
Organize your stuff v1: Decorative file folders
There will always be paper. And piles of it will always threaten to take over your desk and hide that one thing you really need. SO. Grab some paint or markers and create some gorgeous folders to help you keep everything under control…or at least LOOK that way.
Organize your stuff v2: Labeled zipper bags
You will be living out of your dorm room and your back pack, and zipper bags will be your new best friends. But zipper bags are nearly useless if you don’t know what’s in them (she mutters after sorting through three different ones to find a damn pencil). Genius Hallmark Designer Lauren H. came up with a way to make zipper bags FROM SCRATCH WITHOUT SEWING. Now your makeup and your phone stuff and your lady business and your school supplies can all feel special.
Organize your stuff, v. 2: Tiny bowls
Where do you put your earrings and your keys and your rings and your pocket change? Adorable pinch pots, that’s where. And if you didn’t hang on to your grade school clay-shaping skills, we’ve got a quick refresher right here. You know what else you can do with these little punkins?
Hang some plants
If you can tie a knot, you can make mini-macrame plant hangers to decorate your dorm room with a tiny bit of nature. And because you’re going to be plenty busy learning how to survive college, you do NOT need a high stress plant. We recommend air-plants: They’re hard to kill and cheap to replace.
Or make some plants
If you don’t trust yourself with even that much responsibility, we suggest DIYing yourself some cacti. We’re all big fans of succulents—except that thing where you come in late and leave the lights off so you don’t wake your roommate and knock over that Fairy Castle cactus and now you’re screaming and picking spines out of your feet for days. If you make the plant yourself, you can’t kill it. And we’ve got six different ways to do that.
Make some wall art
We love this idea because it’s art that incorporates a favorite photo, and we are here to admit that at times we did get a little bitty bit homesick at college. So you can make some cool art and that happens to include a picture of your family or your best friends or your cat Snowball who you haven’t spent a night without since you were 10 years old. #bestrong
Please oh please show us your dorm room decor. Tag @think.make.share on Instagram. It gives us the good kind of flashbacks.