How to create a cozy freshman dorm room

I feel like I haven’t posted something in a very long time (mostly because I’ve been busy working at my new job at Anthropologie). I decided to dedicate this post to all of the college freshman who are looking for dorm decor inspiration! I know for me, it’s super overwhelming with what colors to chose, if there’s a theme, matching with your roommates theme (or in my case, waiting until the beginning of August to even meet my roommate). I’ve been stalking a few places for just the right colors and I am going to share my plan for my dorm room!

I’ve never really designed my own room before, but I’ve seen a lot of dorm ideas online and I sort of have an idea of what I want in my head. A couple of my boyfriend’s girl friends always do an amazing job with decorating their dorms (I wish I had a picture, but sadly I don’t.) Their room is basically the only girly dorm room I've seen (and it's dorm room goals), so I wanted to model mine after theirs.

For graduation, my grandparents gave me a painting of a girl hailing a taxi in New York City, which made me come up with the idea to decorate it with New York City and fashion pictures on the wall. As for the colors, it was a super tough decision. I definitely wanted to have a light grey in my room, but I wasn’t sure on whether I should pair it with a dull, light pink or a light blue. I decided on the light blue because it matched the painting more than the pink did.

The first place I went to for ideas and a list of basics is Dormify.com. They have an amazing display of rooms that are put together by themes. In order to get a better idea on what you want, they have you take a personal style quiz, where you select colors, styles and more! That way, Dormify is able to narrow down the options to what best suits you. They give you a picture of different styles dorm rooms, and once you press on it, it comes up with the exact link to purchase each and every item from the full picture. There, I was able to find a majority of what I was looking for. The only issue that I had was that they didn’t have the blue I was looking for. I spent most of my time on Dormify shopping for cute pillows and wall art. Here are the stuff I found:

The next place I went for all my Bedding supplies was Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie because, being an employee at Anthropologie, I get 40% off their home and apparel. I was amazed at the amount of adorable dorm decor and bedding that was online at Urban Outfitters. I was able to find the exact blue and grey that I envisioned in my head. I was also able to find some cute wall and room decor at Urban Outfitters as well! Here are my top favorites from Urban Outfitters:

When I looked at Anthropologie’s selection, they had a couple of duvet covers that I liked, but it didn’t really go with the theme of my room. These Anthro picks were just too pretty not to include, so here’s what I found:

And last, but not least, is Target! Target always has everything, and for a more affordable cost as well. I really focused on finding more of my essentials at Target (and looking elsewhere for the decorations). On the Target website, they have a very helpful category of "college items" going from lighting to bedding, all the way to the bath caddies and towels!

Now moving on to my favorite part; the decorations! Etsy is an amazing place to go for wall art especially because they have so many decorations to chose from. Etsy is my favorite place to shop for my miscellaneous things, like decorations and gifts, because they have everything imaginable! Etsy is definitely where I’m going to get all of my fashion and New York City pictures to hang up on my wall.

I hope that this blog post gave you some ideas with what to do with your dorm room, or if you like to just design rooms for fun! This is only a small portion of everything on the list that you need to live at college, as you can tell, but its definitely the most creative part! The tricky thing about dorm shopping like this is that you need to do shopping in store, as well as online, because it's a lot harder to visualize what you have pictured in your mind when there's already a picture for you online. Since I am doing a lot of shopping online, it will be very interesting to see how it turns out in person. Comment below and let me know if you have any tips on how to make my room even better!