We sent interior designers Laura Hodges, Patrick Mele, and Xavier Donnelly back to school with a photo of the same college dorm room—then asked each of them to create a new design for it in their particular style, however they pleased. Three artists, one canvas, each bringing something different to the space. See which designer inspires you most on how to decorate your dorm room this semester.
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00:00 These three interior designers have been given a photograph of an empty college dorm room.
00:05 They have free reign to design it in any way they please.
00:08 My name is Laura. My design style is modern, tailored, and classic.
00:13 My name is Patrick, and my style is exuberant, charismatic, and colorful.
00:18 I'm Xavier, and my design style is purposeful, narrative, and full of life.
00:23 No clients, no restrictions. Just blank space.
00:27 Okay, so my first impressions of this dorm room are, thank God I'm not in college.
00:33 It's very standard. It's very uninspiring. This is a place where people are coming to
00:39 get inspired to learn, and it's kind of a bummer that dorm rooms don't reflect that.
00:42 I understand that dorm rooms are notoriously bland and boring. However, we can definitely
00:48 do better here.
00:49 Everything that you do to it has to be able to be removed at the end of the year. But
00:54 that's a long time, and you want to make it your own, and you want to make it feel like
00:57 an inspiring place that really reflects your personality.
01:00 First of all, I'd like to eliminate the idea of these bunk beds. Nobody wants to climb
01:08 up and down into a bunk bed every night or morning. I don't like bunk beds. I always
01:12 feel like I'm going to roll right out of them and onto the floor in the middle of the night.
01:17 If you have a space that is on the smaller side, creating different places to be is a
01:22 great way to make it feel more spacious.
01:27 So even though in this original space, they did have a lot of functionality in that you
01:31 have your bed and you have your desk and it's all in one place, it feels juvenile and it
01:35 feels cramped. It's not very graceful. It's not very mature or sophisticated. If we can
01:41 spread it out and make it feel more sort of luxurious, I think that we can make a much
01:46 better space for these two college students.
01:48 I'm going to kind of try to dismantle these bunk beds. Most college bunk beds are actually
01:52 made up of some parts that are stacked. You can usually unscrew them and then move this
01:56 lower part of the bed down to the ground. So that's exactly what we're going to do.
01:59 If we actually put a bed on each side, we can upholster a headboard along the back and
02:07 along the top. And then we can have lots of pillows on here and just really make it feel
02:11 so lovely. And you can see already that now it's almost like a lounge space, more so than
02:17 just for sleeping. It's for hanging out. And then we can put a desk on each side and just
02:21 kind of continue that sense of symmetry that makes it feel very calm. If you have a day
02:26 bed and then you have a desk separately, there's more places to be in the room.
02:30 Rather than two bunk beds, I think it'd be a great idea to have upholstered pair of day
02:35 beds that face one another to create sort of a living room atmosphere when need be.
02:39 I love the idea of just a plain, simple tuxedo, custom-made day bed with some drawers underneath
02:45 for extra storage. And thought that this fabric, which has got great utility to it,
02:50 it's a synthetic but feels like a velvet, is a great color.
02:54 So I just imagined two people forced to share a room with completely opposite aesthetic
02:59 sensibilities. On one side, the punk, one side, the princess, to use some tropes. And then I
03:05 also thought, picturing these as being maybe art school students, what would it be like if they had
03:09 to DIY all the decor in their room? On one side, we're going to create a wireframe form out of
03:17 some sort of like chicken wire or other kind of wire mesh. And we're going to cover that in plaster.
03:23 So we're going to create a four-poster bed with really tall, long, spiky posts at all four sides.
03:31 And that we'll be able to just, you know, chip away and remove at the end of the year.
03:35 On the other side, we're going to utilize the students' sewing skills and slip cover the entire
03:40 bed in this kind of beautiful gold moiré velvet material. And then we're going to trim that out
03:47 with a beautiful, like light blue piping and tassels at all four corners.
03:54 So the second thing I wanted to address was to have proper like workstation. I'd love to see
03:58 a desk that sits by the window. There's a beautiful view out there, and I think you'd
04:04 want to be as close to that as possible. I love birch veneer. I think it's a really
04:08 natural, beautiful product. And I chose some white file cabinets from West Elm.
04:14 I would love to figure out some way to make that HVAC unit feel more integrated into the room.
04:19 So I'd actually like to continue that same surface behind both beds as a built-in shelf,
04:27 basically. And so as you're lying in bed, you could put a glass of water back there. You could
04:30 put a book or something like that. These students are obviously very handy,
04:33 so they can create their own desks. On one side, I'm going to build a desk out of plywood. I'm going
04:37 to stain that plywood with kind of like a dark black stain to pick up the grain of the plywood,
04:42 and then I'm going to wash it over with some colors. Now for the desk chair on this side,
04:47 a very common first-year art school project is to make a cardboard chair. So obviously,
04:52 we need to have a cardboard chair. On the other side, I decided to create kind of like a nice
04:56 floating desk with some nice gold chain up to the top. Obviously, knowing this student,
05:02 they're going to slip cover it in the gold fabric with the tassels and the trimmings.
05:06 And for the desk chair there, I used one of the ash pillow chairs, which is kind of a fun little
05:12 like poofy chair in a very like beachy red stripe. Paired with the desk, I chose two Pantone chairs
05:17 from Design Within Reach. It's light, it's playful, and can be moved around the room easily.
05:23 I thought it was a great combination with these two round tables from MoMA and can also be taken
05:29 with you on your next journey. I would love to bring in a really
05:32 interesting chair, something sculptural, has a beautiful profile. I'm thinking specifically
05:37 of these chairs from a Baltimore maker called Crump and Quash. They have a really cool rounded
05:42 back and an upholstered seat. If we have something in that space that feels really special,
05:46 I think it really goes a long way to making those college students feel like they have a unique
05:51 space that is intentional and that they feel can really be a space that they can call their own.
06:00 So in my college, I had concrete block walls and concrete floor, which, you know, in a sort of
06:08 minimalist way could be cool, but it just kind of felt cold and industrial.
06:13 Floor of my dorm was like that, you know, horrible vinyl tile. I think it was like a speckled gray.
06:20 Everything was gray. Pattern on the floor brings me back to my first days at school thinking,
06:26 how am I going to make it through here? There's nothing warm or inviting about it. It feels like
06:31 a place that I can't wait to get away from. We can't do anything permanent thing with the
06:36 floors. We can't rip these out and put in something more attractive, but we can put
06:40 down a beautiful rug. And I would love to get a really cool vintage rug. It's going to automatically
06:44 give some personality and some great texture to the space. They're super sustainable because
06:48 they already exist. A really big rug that continues over the entire floor actually makes the room feel
06:53 more spacious. When you have a tiny rug, it sort of feels like a little floating island in the
06:57 middle of the space. It makes it feel like your room isn't big enough or that the rug isn't big
07:02 enough. When I was in school in Providence, we had a lot of discount warehouses and one of them
07:06 was a big discount carpet warehouse where you could actually buy, you know, big squares of
07:11 carpets or length of carpets for pretty cheap. Both of these students are taking a trip, probably
07:16 in separate Ubers, to go to the carpet place. And on one side, we're going to do like really sort of
07:21 beautiful red carpet, classic kind of regal to sort of like complement this kind of fancier side
07:28 of the room. And then on the other side, I want to do like a really rough kind of like high pile,
07:34 black shag carpeting that's going to create this like fun, you know, furry ground to stand on.
07:39 I definitely wanted to cover these bare floors with something that was cozy and utilitarian.
07:45 I partnered with Aronson's Carpet, my go-to resource, for squares of broad loom
07:50 wool that we could then piece together to create a grid-like interesting pattern on the floor
07:56 reminiscent of farmland from the bird's eye view when you fly over.
08:01 We have to think of a way to address the design without being too permanent. And one of the great
08:11 hacks that I love is to actually do an upholstered wall with liquid starch. If you haven't heard of
08:16 this before, it's actually really cool. So you just paint the wall with liquid starch, you put
08:20 your fabric on, and then you paint on more liquid starch. You get a little mini squeegee, and you
08:25 squeeze out all of that liquid starch, and then it just dries perfectly, maintaining the original
08:31 texture. And in this case, I think I would love to do something with a really kind of fun but
08:35 simple pattern where you can still feel like you can add more personality to the room. And the best
08:40 part is that you can take the fabric down, and you can wash it and use it again. So it's zero
08:45 waste and really inexpensive. And if I can do it, you can do it. So I'm imagining these two roommates
08:51 and their boring aesthetics. On the left side, there's this one reference image that I found of
08:57 Andy Warhol's studio sometime in the 70s or 80s. He had covered the entire thing, wall, ceiling,
09:03 every piece of furniture in tinfoil. I thought, what better material than tinfoil that you can
09:09 get at the grocery store, and you can kind of cover anything with it. So I'm having this student
09:16 cover all of the walls and the ceiling in tinfoil, and I'm going to attach it with this
09:21 aluminum foil tape, which you can also get at the hardware store. And it's going to create this
09:25 amazing, reflective, you know, super cool, wrinkly texture, but then also with this kind of structure
09:31 of a grid that I'm going to create with the aluminum foil tape. On the other side, I think
09:35 we have, you know, maybe a textile major or a fashion major, somebody who knows how to work
09:40 their way around a sewing machine. So they're going to go to the fabric store. I'm going to
09:44 have them get a really beautiful peachy colored silk velvet, something with a lot of sheen to it.
09:50 And I'm going to have them make a drapery that's going to hang from the ceiling all the way around
09:55 the walls of that space. I thought it'd be great to bring wallpaper from a company called Muse.
10:00 It's a non-permanent wallpaper, and I thought that the use of the world map would be a great idea
10:06 to bring the students' attention to the world outside them and think globally. So I decided
10:11 to wrap onto all the walls and the ceiling and right over that AC unit. By wrapping walls and
10:17 a ceiling in the same paper, I always feel like the eye travels further and the volume becomes
10:24 larger. This little heater box that's stuck on this back wall, they're both going to kind of
10:28 create a little bit of a slip cover for this with probably a cutout around the vent so that the air
10:33 can still come out. So on the one side, probably like a green faux fur, and then on the other side,
10:39 continuing using that velvet from the curtains from the drapery.
10:42 This light is an unfortunate thing. The placement, it bothers me that it's off center.
10:52 It's one of those horrible like fluorescent ceiling lights, and it's very clearly on one
10:58 side of the room. That pesky light that we couldn't change, one of my favorite designers,
11:02 lighting designers is Ingo Maurer, and tried to emulate one of his fixtures by taking three
11:09 layers of white transparent fabric and suspending them in a gradation form down so that it looked
11:15 sort of like a cloud. I think in order to address this light on the ceiling, I would love to have a
11:21 fabric sort of canopy that sits over the light fixture. It's going to distract from the fact
11:26 that it's actually off center. This canopy can actually be the same width of the window so that
11:31 it can feel nice and symmetrical. Not only does it improve the look of the light fixture, but it
11:36 actually will improve the way that light is sort of diffused throughout the whole room. I just had
11:42 him paint kind of a relief of a grasping hand on there, which is a little scary, a little punk,
11:48 little like horror movie. I think that would be a kind of fun antagonistic gesture to the
11:53 space next door. So for the other lighting on this half of the space, I wanted to, you know,
11:58 echo this kind of like human body part element theme. I got these two kind of like desk IKEA
12:04 lamps that are little globes and had them painted as eyeballs. So there's kind of like these eyeballs
12:10 coming off of the wall. The cords just kind of trail down and plug it into the outlet down there.
12:15 That gives another little spooky horror show punk element to that lighting scheme. On the other
12:21 side, I made this like kind of fun obelisk out of just a wire frame and some waxed canvas. And
12:28 that we would use as a lampshade basically over whatever light base you could get from IKEA.
12:33 That'll kind of create a fun little glow, but then it's also this kind of very formal,
12:37 beautiful pointy form that will sit on top of the kind of a cool half column plaster, a side table.
12:44 I would love to put sconces, plug in sconces, because we can't do anything hardwired,
12:48 that can mount right on the wall so that each student can have access to light. And then they
12:52 can have even more floor space because they won't need like side table to put a proper lamp on.
12:57 Over the workstation desk, I chose two Jean Prouvé Petit Potence light fixtures that are industrial,
13:03 clean, and easy to use. I thought that it was a great pairing with the Prouvé to mix the
13:09 GLD lights that are really colorful and fun. They're playful, they're youthful. They're also
13:15 highly indestructible. The last thing is kind of like the jewelry of the room is the decor.
13:23 And I would love to have on this daybed, lots of beautiful pillows and beautiful fabrics.
13:28 And I'd love to also do some plants flanking the windows. We could have some really cool
13:33 wall planters. Plants over time can sort of drape and trickle down and really feel very welcoming
13:38 as you're walking into the space. If you are in college and you're not necessarily in your room
13:43 very much, something like a pothos is going to be perfect for a wall hanging because
13:48 A) they actually put up with a lot. They're very forgiving. But they also drape really well and
13:52 they don't necessarily need as much direct light as other plants do. And then they also will not
13:58 die on you immediately if you forget to water them when you go home for Christmas. I also want
14:03 to add cork that runs along the perimeter of the desk for mood boards or for reminders. Cork is a
14:09 great material. It's easy, breezy, inexpensive, looks great. The window shade, I thought it'd be
14:14 great to use bamboo roll-up. They're easy, they're classic, inexpensive. Palette-wise, tone-wise,
14:21 was really nice with the desktop and the cork. On the daybeds, I chose some Pottery Barn white
14:26 cotton quilted blankets that can be easily washed and pairing those with Paul Smith striped pillows
14:33 in this yellow and blue and orange. It has great movement. I definitely thought that we needed some
14:39 shelving in here so I decided to use Bitso shelving, one of my favorite systems designed
14:44 by Dieter Rams in white. They're great because they're an investment but you can take them with
14:50 you once you've completed your college studies. So our very element of this room is sort of already
14:56 decor. This is just starting out the semester. Just imagine what's going to happen by the end
15:00 of the semester. It's going to be even crazier. The one thing I did want to add is something
15:05 reflective, some mirror I think. And on this side, a very traditional mirror element in a lot of very
15:11 fancy old houses is this kind of like beautiful gilt convex mirror that you would see, you know,
15:16 at the top of a staircase or above a mantle. We can't afford that because we're college students
15:22 here so I found this convex traffic mirror that you'll often see driving to look around the corner.
15:28 So it kind of accomplishes the same thing. It's got a really nice red frame around it and I think
15:32 it looks perfect in this space. So I love how this design is coming together. I would want this to be
15:41 my dorm room. I'm quite jealous that it can't be my dorm room. It feels really warm. It feels like
15:46 a home away from home which is really what I think a college student is looking for. And yet it feels
15:51 open and light enough that each student could bring their own personality and they can put their
15:55 own artwork up on the walls. So looking at this ultimately, it's a little crazy but I actually
16:00 think these two halves kind of speak to each other in more ways than one. And I think they actually
16:05 kind of work together even though they are so completely different. Every single thing in this
16:10 space you could buy at the art store, the fabric store, at Home Depot. Pretty accessible to a
16:16 college student. Maybe you need a little modest budget to do it. I think these students are
16:20 obviously so different as evidenced by their competing halves of the room. They probably
16:25 start off the semester day one in conflict but I'm pretty sure they end up in love with each other.
16:31 Overall I think the dorm room feels academic, global, interesting, and soothing at the same
16:38 time. My hope is that this room makes these students dream, think outside themselves,
16:44 and how they might make their imprint on the world.
16:52 Wow. Oh my god. How we're talking. Amazing. These are the best. That is something. What's
16:58 happening on your wall? What's going on? Okay yeah because a lot. A lot. What's going on?
17:02 Okay so you don't get to pick your roommate. I mean I didn't. Right. You got the princess and
17:08 the punk. What would happen if they just couldn't compromise at all and so just I decided to split
17:13 it down the middle. Yeah. I love this map thing that you've got. You know I thought like let these
17:19 kids look out into the world. Yeah. Imagine where they want to go, where they want to travel, and
17:25 experience. And I guess I envisioned like two little twins going off to college and they'd be
17:31 exactly on the same bed. You both did something very clever with the light I think. It was off
17:37 center. That's awful. And it was just like so yeah similar to Patrick I draped fabric over it to kind
17:43 of create like a cloud-like effect above you. That's beautiful. And then the walls are actually
17:48 upholstered in a fabric. And I love the idea of like creating like a daybed. I think we kind of
17:53 both did the daybed thing. Yeah. Yeah I think it's you know invites you to treat your room not just
17:57 like a bedroom but to sit and have conversation. My actual dorm room um was kind of just sad and
18:04 small and dark. Yeah. I never spent any time in mine. Yeah well that's the thing you don't you
18:10 don't end up staying there because you're just like well I don't want to be here. Get me out.
18:14 Mine had a view out to the highway. So depressing. It's like really inspiring.
18:20 I thought you were gonna say something else. I thought you were gonna say a view out to
18:23 something like nice. No. No. These ones had a nice view actually. They did have a nice view.