DD decorated her freshman dorm room last year out of Pottery Barn's Teen (Dorm?) catalog and loved it. It was fresh and very pretty and everything wore and laundered well. These are some of the cute things we bought her:

Comforter cover, sheets and pillows :

Throw pillows:

We found their storage bins and closet organizers to be on the pricey side and bought hers at our local BB&B in colors to coordinate with her linens.

This year (her sophomore) she'll be living in her sorority house, and will be using all of her pretty PB things once again, as they've really held up well.
Lynn

This post was edited by lynninnewmexico on Mon, Jun 17, 13 at 11:27

I have toured a bunch of colleges over the last several years and I want to know where THAT dorm is!! ha!

I poked thru the web site and liked a bunch of the throw pillows and bedding.

My dorm room never looked like that! I could have got some serious studying done if it had!

I hope that you all aren't thinking DD had a queen bed in her dorm room! Those pics were from the PB Teen catalog. The girls had semi-lofted (single) beds, but I do have to say that they ~ and their moms (LOL!)~ did a fantastic job decorating and maximizing the space they did have. So much so that the university used to request that they use their room to show prospective student tour groups what a dorm room could look like. I forgot to mention that the girls also had these PB curtains, as well. They were very easy for the girls to put up, were easy to wash and did not fade. DD is planning to use them in her room at the sorority house this coming year, too.
Lynn

This post was edited by lynninnewmexico on Mon, Jun 17, 13 at 18:03

No, I meant TFP's pics!

Yeah, I was also wondering where that dorm room is!

I'm a huge fan of PB kid's & teen's. I buy a lot of my sheets & quilts from them over the regular PB for grownups. :)

I got that catalog too and loved the feel of it. My oldest is 8 so I have a long time, but I really liked the bright vibe of the bedding and making it such a focal point, since the walls and floors are likely to be drab.

My dorm room was a tiny cell in a brutalist concrete building with slots for windows. It was literally designed by an architect known for prison design. In the grey winter I can't imagine a more depressing place. I lived on student loans and did not have money to decorate let alone with pottery barn. My decor was a bed sheet tacked over the bare cinder block wall and posters taped to that, lol

DS1 is still too young for college, but he did a summer camp at UCLA and the dorm rooms didn't look anything like that either! The rooms were narrow and tall and they cram 3 kids into them. I have no idea how you can live/study crammed in like that.

Lynn, not surprised being a GW offspring!(^_^)

DD had mentioned she wanted to decorate her bedroom in her new college apartment with navy and white. I definitely showed her that cute duvet when the catalog came the other day.

Decorating peeps should get a kick out of this. Last week I sat down w/DD to talk about her room so we could plan for furniture, window treatments, etc. My daughter, who is not known for her common sense, took out her notes and confidently told me the room was 166 inches by 73 inches ??? Is your new room really 14 by 6 ??? Needless to say the planning halted until she can get the real dimensions from the landlord.

Not to hijack, but I just had a "decorating" chat with DS, who moved into his first apartment a couple of weeks ago. He is known for not caring what his surroundings look like, and he's also a slob. So he's telling me what he's done with his room and he says he needs a rug. I almost fall over because I think, wow, he's thinking about what his room looks like. Nope. He goes on to explain that with the bare floor, the dust sticks to his feet, and if he gets a rug, the dust will get "trapped" in the rug. Hmm. I wonder if any of his roommates owns a vacuum?

My son had a dorm room that very much looked like the first picture, i.e. hard-wood floors, lead-stained window, high sloped ceiling. Only difference was his window was like the top half with a large window seat underneath, and the room had a (non-working) fireplace.
Oh, and he shared it with three others....

deee and sueb, so cute and funny about your kids!

When I went to college, it was my mom who got the new sheets and towels. I got a set of serviceable, but old, sheets and a set of towels.

They didn't even match each other!

And I was crammed in a room that was 7'x14' with one other girl my freshman year. That room was formerly a single, but due to overcrowding...well, it became a double. My sophomore year, I headed off to school with another well-used but serviceable set of linens and landed in a triple room that was, actually, pretty huge. But it didn't have AC.

This whole "dorm decorating" must be a fairly new concept. I think the only new thing I had was a write on/wipe off board for the door. Of course, I imagine you would have no need for such a thing now.

Our son's dorm room . . . and later apartments at college and grad school were just like your sons' rooms: messy and serviceable, which is just the way he liked it (LOL!).

DD inherited my love of decorating very early in life. A couple of nice graduation gifts of Pottery Barn gift cards made her dream dorm room a reality, although the room should have been four times as big in her opinion (LOL).

Wow, all of my kids' dorm rooms were little white boxes with orange oak furniture. :) Not that we didn't try our best to pretty them up, though.

And by the way, I suspect that the only male students with clean dorm rooms are living in our country's military academies. :)

They're pretty fastidious about their clothes, too. :) My son-in-law can iron a dress white shirt better than any woman I know! LOL

My HSBF from college lived in a dorm like that. Old Main at Kutztown University.

Yup, reality is in public universities (in my state, UC's) more and more kids are being crammed into triples!! DS just came home for summer and to my dismay most of the bed linens that I sent him off with 2-years-ago will have to be replaced! Didn't wash well when he threw everything together in one load...when he remembered to wash! haha

Now DD1 will be going off to college and so we begin again and I'll essentially have to shop for two! DD1 was lucky to get put in a double and at her university they will need to convert some lounges to quads to accommodate everyone. I also like the Pottery Barn stuff as it's easy to wash, all cotton and colors are bright and fun! DD2 (almost 12) will be swapping bedroom furniture with DD1 since DD1 no longer has need of a desk in her room at home so make that shopping for three so DD2 doesn't feel left out of all the room decorating! :)

I should buy stock in Pottery Barn! And, somehow I did not get a copy of the catalog...hmmm as I should be on their mailing list.