Growing up, I always watched Youtube videos ranging from dorm decoration ideas, college life-hacks, move-in vlogs – you name it, I watched it. The summer before my move-in, I revisited these types of videos to finally curate my ‘dream” dorm room. Here’s the places that I started at before arriving to my dorm move-in day.
Firstly, find the measurements of your exact dorm room. UW has a very handy website of each dormitory that has measurements of the rooms, including measurements of the furniture the room comes with, and virtual room tours. I used these statistics in order to figure out how I wanted to layout my room and also to know exactly what size the items I was shopping for could be. The worst thing would be running out of room, right?
https://www.housing.wisc.edu/residence-halls/halls/furnishings/
Second, I recommend looking into your utilities set up such as the heater placement. For me, this meant figuring out a room set-up that allowed room near my heater which determines where the rest of my items would be placed. You can determine this by looking at pictures of your future room on your residence hall’s website under Compare Our Halls.
Lastly, decide what style you want your room to have. You may want to coordinate with your roommate, or maybe you don’t care at all. Making this decision may take time to decide or it might be obvious. Either way, you need to decide this before you start shopping for the items you need for your dorm room.