Home Decoration

Shopping online for dorm decor is the smart way to shop. You’ll have the flexibility of browsing a variety of sources without using even a gallon of gas. And you can click your way through hundreds of selections at midnight or noon. It’s your choice.

Whether you want to find the perfect set of sheets, a cozy down comforter, a purple transparent lamp, or accessories for your jungle-themed room, you’re sure to find it somewhere online. And whether you find a dream dorm room at PBTeen or on the organized shelves of The Container Store, the many styles and colors available today mean you’ll probably be able to find exactly the right items for your taste and budget.

Here are eight steps with tips on how to start your search for great room decor:

1. Ask for information from your school about room sizes, existing storage, and recommended items. This may be on the college website or in their orientation materials. If not, call the administration office to ask if they have a list of requirements or suggested items. For example, will you need linens, kitchen equipment or lamps?
2. Next, determine which items are prohibited. For example, some dorms don’t allow candles, halogen lamps, or flammable wallhangings. Find out now so you don’t waste time and money.

3. Contact your future roommate. Discuss financial arrangements and room decor, being honest about your budget. Try to be flexible and share ideas and opinions. You may land a roommate who really doesn’t care, and maybe won’t work with you. But maybe you’ll at least be able to decide on a color scheme or room theme to help you plan for decorating purchases.

4. Browse dorm decor websites to get inspiration, see color schemes, and find theme ideas. The Bed Bath & Beyond® site is a terrific place to start with dorm checklists, tips, and a convenient “pack and hold” shipping service to send your order directly to your school on the date you specify.

5. Bookmark favorite items on websites or print out photos to compare colors, styles, and prices.

6. Fill in your “need” and “want” lists and prioritize each, so your budget is spent on the basics first. Decide what items you already have (sheets, rugs, lamps, TV) that you can take with you, and what items your roommate will bring.

7. Research choices. Make a detailed packing list with everything you might need, including furniture, desk accesssories, and clothing items. If possible, ask other students what’s worked for them. Compare sizes and brands. Browse for various storage options. Don’t buy in a rush, only to find out later something else would be better or cheaper. Use your measurement list or floorplan to help determine what will fit.

8. Buy only when you have a clear plan, know what you need, and know what will fit both in your room and in your budget.

It may be on your mind right about now — just what to take and what to leave behind as you pack for college. You may have already gotten a lot of advice from your friends, your parents, your school, and your relatives.

But ultimately it’s up to you how you’ll live in your new “home away from home” and how you’ll try to decorate it. Comfort in this small space will be one way to make a tiny dorm room feel homey and inviting.

Here’s our list of items that will make any room more comfortable.

1. A big rug will soften the look and feel of hard institutional flooring and make it more inviting to lounge or exercise on the floor.

2. A featherbed mattress topper or mattress pad can really improve the comfort of a dorm bed. They’re fluffy and comfy, and available in either feathers or fiberfill.

3. Good lighting is essential. Have focused task lighting at the desk, by a chair, and near the bed, so you can read and work anywhere.

4. A comfortable place to sit is a must. It can be a side chair, loveseat, or even pile of pillows, but will be great for studying, lounging, or talking on the phone.

5. A BedLounge is a great chair-lounger-reading pillow built with an ultra-lightweight, internal Active Frame. It can support an adult’s weight and can bend, move, flex and customize itself to the user’s body shape and comfort needs. It even has a headrest and armrests. You shouldn’t go away from home without it!

6. Closet accessories are made to solve storage problems. Evaluate your space, then choose from peg racks, over-the-door shoe racks, belt and tie holders, and hanging shelves to organize your clothes and accessories.

7. Large body pillows are great for sleeping. But you can also use them to turn your bed into a “sofa” or for extra floor lounging.

8. Handled laundry and shower totes are made to organize and carry just about everything. Keep a big one on the floor of your closet to collect laundry, and use another to hold bathroom supplies. Then grab and go!

9. A large bulletin board or white board is essential for notes, photos, schedules, and assignments. It can help you get organized, show off mementos, and serve as a message center.

10. Filing space — another must-have . Whether you use a file crate or full-size cabinet, it will go a long way in organizing your completed schoolwork, letters from home, insurance papers, pay stubs, tax info, scholarship applications, and more.

11. Wall Decor can be another touch of home. Use artwork to reinforce your room theme or highlight special interests… make a collage out of favorite photos (using color photocopies)… hang favorite posters — whatever feels like “home” to you. A full length mirror is another wonderful convenience. Use it to check your outfit and decorate the edges with photos, tickets, and memorabilia.

Make a dorm room your “own” and you’ll love living there! You might not even miss Mom’s cooking so much!

Dorm Room Decorating Ideas
Summer is here and college students everywhere will soon be headed back to school. And besides worrying about classes, schedules, clothes, and transportation, now they’ve got to think about decorating a dorm room as well.

Confused? Overwhelmed? Excited? You’re not alone! Read on — help is a few clicks away with these articles from About.

Where can you buy dorm room decor?
Some online stores cater primarily to students , while others offer a general selection of merchandise as well as special dorm decorating departments in the summer.

There are also many other websites that have interesting products , storage solutions, and bedding patterns that may also fit your budget and decorating desires.

Ready to begin? Grab a tall cool glass of lemonade, and window shop to your heart’s content.

Hold off buying anything until you have a good idea of your space limitations, any prohibited items (check with your school), and until you have an overall plan in mind for the room. You’ll find some really helpful dorm room advice from a mom with two college kids in our article on dorm room organization.

In the meantime, check out some of these sites to see some of the colorful, functional, and fun products designed especially for students.

Bed Bath & Beyond - Shop in their summer “Shop for College” section with products categorized for sleeping, washing, eating, and studying. Take advantage of the a handy “pack and hold” service so you can buy it now and have it shipped directly to school as soon as they will accept your packages. What a great idea!

Even if you’re not a Martha Stewart fan you may like these coordinated collections of bedding and bath products, including fresh plaids, solids, and prints.

Some dorm rooms stand out among others as a popular hangout for all students and where everyone loves to spend time in. Here area few tips, tricks and ideas to transform your dorm room into an ideal retreat :

• Plan well beforehand.
• Remember, your dorm décor showcases your personality and thus, it should be functional, stylish and yet have some character of its own.
• Most dorm rooms have extra-long twin beds that need special sheets and bedding.
• Choose and invest in a comfortable mattress so that you can sleep well.
• Fluffy and soft throw pillows can add instant style to your bed to be used as sofa for a get together with friends.
• Choose a study area according to your preference, such as a desk, bed or even a beanbag chair on the floor.
• Make sure for bright halogen lighting in your study area with the help of desk or floor lamp.
• You may use stacked milk crates, instead of shelves to store textbooks and table to keep your dinner plates, as a much cheaper option that occupies little space.
• Funky high-tech music and light gadgets can lend an instant party touch to your dorm room. Choose something you can afford and is a source of constant fun.
• High-tech furniture is also available such as ottomans that can double up as massagers that look quite stylish and have a soft.
• If you are investing in furniture and furnishings, invest in pieces that are versatile and can serve for multi-purpose duties. They must not occupy much space, which is often a problem in a dorm room.

Dorm rooms serve as home away from home for college students who need a place to study and relax, watch movies on weekends or just read a good novel. However, it has to be inexpensive as it is a temporary abode and college students usually cannot afford huge expenses. Roommates may or may not like your room décor ideas. If you cannot coordinate well, it is wonderful, otherwise respect their territorial rights and stick to your space for decoration, creating comfort zone and special personal touch. Here are some cheap dorm décor ideas that you can use:

• In a dorm, the bed serves many purposes such as study area, couch and even a coffee table. It is also the largest piece of furniture that you may own in a dorm room, so choose a comforter that does not get dirty easily and can be cleaned easily too. Reversible comforters in solid colors that match the color scheme of your dorm room are good options.
• You may dress up your bed using fluffy throw pillows in funky patterns.
• Since mostly dorm rooms have long beds to accommodate tall students, you may need to buy extra long twin sheets.
• Maximize your storage space by opting for high beds or raise the bed using bricks or cement blocks and you may push your boxes and luggage under the bed.
• Plastic crates or wire storage systems that can be rearranged, decorative hat boxes and closet organizers can be a great help to keep your things well organized.
• Cheap plastic hooks and metal towel hangers attached to your closet door and back of the room door will provide you space to hang your clothes.
• Buy a table that can accommodate your computer or TV too. Place it where there is adequate lighting.
• You can use walls to put up posters or other wall decoration to customize your area and use special poster adhesive to avoid chipping paint.
• If you are artistic types, use colored chalk or butcher paper and colored pencils to draw new murals for your wall, every time you feel inspired as they can easily be washed off or removed.
• Buy frames or make some from cardboard matte and decorate them using decorative items such as glitter, buttons, feathers and beads, some funky memo holders and French memo boards to display photos of your new friends and love interests or may be some good quotes.
• Another way to display your photos is to string them up and hang them from your laundry line across the room.
• To decorate metallic surfaces such as refrigerators, use magnets.
• Use dry erase boards on your door and room to leave notes for your friends and roommates to coordinate with then.
• To lend a romantic touch to your dorm room, you can drape sheer fabric across the window or over a bed.
• A colorful beautiful shower curtain can be used to mask the messy open closet.
• Fashionable and functional lights can change the look of your room too. A lamp of the study table and mini-lights for the moody atmosphere across the room is quite relaxing. While white lights are bright and good for eyes you can use funky colored lights in shape of stars or hearts for special occasions.

Room Décor is not as easy as it seems at the first sight. You may fancy that glamorous room in the home décor magazine but you may find it almost impossible to translate into a reality because of the simple reason that the construction of your home and measurement of your rooms is entirely different. You may be renting an apartment where you cannot redo the positioning of walls, doors and windows or have a large large hall you do not seem to put to best use. Color, lines and furniture arrangement can make a huge difference to your room décor. We have identified the five most common problems that people often face while doing room décor and have come up with the possible solutions. These are:

1. Very Long Room

• The best way to deal with a very long room is to split it into two using screens and room dividers that you may use as study area, living area, dining room, personal gym or just entertainment room.
• Use warm dark colors on shorter walls to make them advance and give the room a balanced look.
• You may also define separate areas by using different area rugs.

2. Low Ceiling

• Long curtains that can be draped from above the door level and window level all the way to the floor, add height to the room.
• Paint ceiling in light cool color to make it recede and add light to the room.
• Tall accessories such as lamps look good and make room look taller too.
• You can add height to a room by installing vertical and tall cabinets or bookcases in the room.

3. Narrow Room

• Any linear arrangement on shorter walls such as placement of shelves, art pieces or rugs, will make them look wider.
• Diagonal arrangement of furniture looks better.
• You can also fool the eye by painting your longer walls in cool light colors to make them recede.

4. Tall Room

• Horizontally placed shelves, crown mouldings and art pieces cut off the height of the room.
• In such rooms, ceilings should have a warm dark color.
• You can also play the visual trick of installing the mouldings or chair rails to one half to three quarters of the way up the walls.

5. Very Big Room

• Experiment with warm and dark colors on your wall to make the room look cozier and friendlier.
• Group furniture pieces into two or more separate seating arrangements.
• Like long rooms, big rooms can also be divided into smaller areas using screens and room dividers and can be used for better purposes and will make the room look cozier too.

In the past, living room or the parlor was the place with formal settings to welcome the honored guests. With times, it has evolved into a multifunctional room meant to welcome guests, sit and relax comfortably while reading a good book or watching TV, spend some time with the family, chat and gossip with friends and for entertainment. The most common furniture pieces found in the living room are sofas, love seat, sofa with chairs in different combinations, coffee table, end tables, ottomans, benches, shelves and perhaps a desk and bookshelves. If the living space is also used as a family room, you can also find TV and entertainment center in the room along with accessories, lighting, art and crafts on display and may be carpets.

An extra large living room may accommodate a piano, eating area complete with dining table, tennis or billiard table or even a number of plants, if your living space receives lots of direct sunlight. You may also shift am armoire to make use of the extra space for storage purposes. Living room can use maximum number of furnishings and it is a challenge to fit in all the desirable furnishings and accessories and coordinate them with carpeting, wall color, crown moldings, lighting style and window treatments among many other things. Usually, sofa or the entertainment center is the largest piece of furniture in a living room and since, placement of sofa will decide the view and focal point for the people seated in the living, room, use it as the starting point for living room decor.

Express your personality, your personal taste and decorating flair in the way you decorate your living room. Remodeling or decorating your living room doesn’t just mean to throw away items and add furniture pieces to the living room but how you arrange what you already have in the room. Arrangement mistakes can ruin the look of your room. Do not go wild with imagination. Some of the rules and traditional ways of keeping things and proper design must be followed to keep things sane. Creative and unusual living room decorating ideas should be limited by the comfort and usability of the room to make the living room more inviting.

Designing in innovative ways that ‘break the rules’ can be tricky, so is best left to professionals. Ensure that you maintain visual balance and harmony while displaying your accessories and should not look chaotic. For budget decorating, try to use what you already and then only opt to buy new things that you think are absolutely necessary. See, if rearranging furniture and accessories can achieve the effect you want. For a dream living room, it is not necessary to start from scratch. Make sure that you do not let your precious collection of art lie wasted or ignored just because you didn’t think of placing them correctly.

While decorating a living room, one must pay attention to the natural focal point of the room, lifestyle of the family members, functional placement of furniture, creating well-defined traffic patterns, creating close grouping and intimate conversational areas, visual balance, ambient lighting, color scheme of the room and fabric patterns of the curtains, window treatments and the upholstery. You must also watch out for organizing things, display of accessories, camouflaging architectural elements that are ugly, hanging art and wall groupings, proportion and scale of decoration, unifying factor of your decoration and most importantly, when to stop.

Room Décor for children is a booming industry and customized furniture and furnishings are available in all conceivable sizes of colors, patterns and styles are available in the market. Parents often have fun shopping for their kids and indulge in their childhood fantasies while making them a reality for their little ones. While hand-me-downs is a downright insult for those pouting cuties, here are some tips on not to go overboard and yet make the room for children special for them:

• A wide range of bed linens and pillows featuring all the popular cartoon characters, action figures, alphabets and interesting animals, flowers and toys are available in the market in bold primary colors that can make any child beam up in a second.
• Wallpapers with above patterns and patterns can also be used to cover the walls of the room for children but most children would love blank walls with easy-to-wash finish that allows them to scrawl on them with their crayons and pencils and draw mom and dead with them in between.
• Kid-size club chairs and sofas, ottomans shapes like dices and beds like little castles for your princess are only a few of furniture pieces that people use to decorate their children’s room.
• Theme-based furniture is also available such as those with nautical themes for little sailors and pirates and jungle themes for those who love Tarzan and his animal friends.
• Adventurous and active kids love to occupy the topmost bunk of their loft beds while twins or siblings of almost same age will want identical set of beds, tables and chairs.
• Baby monitor for smaller kids will wake you up in case your baby needs you while some children might need soft nightlights as an additional protection against the demons under their bed.
• Avoid any pointed or sharp ends and always opt for furniture and accessories that have smooth edges and are unbreakable and cover the floor with soft carpet to keep the child from any accident.

Many students wonder what to take and what not to take while living in a dormitory during school and college education. It is always easier to take as few things as possible and yet have everything that you might need during the years you have to spend here. Here is a checklist for your help:

• For cleaning and laundry purposes, you will need Bleach, Dish soap, Fabric softener, Glass cleaner, Iron, Ironing board, Laundry bag/basket, Laundry soap, Paper towels, Safety pins, Sewing kit, Sponge, Stain remover and Trash bags.
• It is always better to check beforehand, if you are allowed to take Cooking appliances with heating elements, Fireworks, Hunting equipment, Incense candles, Outside antennas or satellite dishes, Pets (though some of them allow you to keep fishes), Space heaters or Toaster ovens with you to the dormitory. It is better not to take anything that may be risky or pose danger or discomfort to your fellow roommates.
• Other miscellaneous items may include 3-prong converter, Alarm clock, Area rug or carpet, Athletic equipment such as roller blades and basketball, Backpack, Batteries, Board games, Camera and its film, Comforter, Drawer-liner paper, First-Aid Box, Fishing tackle, Flashlight, Full length mirror, Jewelry box for trinkets, Overnight bag, Peg board hooks, Photo albums, Plants, Plastic Airtight Containers, Playing cards, Posters, Sleeping bag, Small fan, Small tool set or box, Stereo, headphones, Study lamp, Sunglasses, Tapes, CDs, Trashcan, Trunk, TV, Umbrella, Vanity mirror and Wall decorations.
• You may check if there is space for Futons and Futon Mattresses and Desk and Workstation in your dorm room too.
• You will need some utensils and some basic cooking ware so that you can make some of your favorite dishes at your dorm, on special occasions at least. So, it is advisable to pack some Bowls, Can opener, Coffee maker/pots- Espresso Machine, Cups, Eating utensils, Hot air corn popper, Hot pot, Microwave (check if you can hire it), Microwave able cookware, Mugs, Plates, Popcorn Pop-up toasters and may be a small Refrigerator.
• You will need to keep Address book, Bookends, Bookmarks, Calculator, Calendar, Computer, Computer diskettes or other removable storage media, Desk organizer, Dictionary, Envelopes, File box, Folders, Glue stick, Highlighter, Hole punch, Index cards, Markers, Note pads, Paper clips, Pencil sharpener, Pencils, Pens, Rubber bands, Ruler, Stamps, Stapler, Stationery, Storage Containers, Tape and Thesaurus in your study area along with books and bags to carry them.