My first college dorm, which I moved into in August 1995, was a cobbled-together mess. I had a tiny budget, and my parents’ contributions were limited to some paper goods and the ubiquitous bed-in-a-bag. So my roommate and I had to get scrappy. We filled the room with odds and ends we had made and scavenged from home: denim and preppy-plaid blankets, a batik wall hanging, tie-dyed curtains, and—the space’s focal point—a faded brown-and-gold love seat from my roommate’s basement, where it had been the site of family movie nights and dog naps since the ’70s.
As I’ve dropped my own kids off at college over the past several years, I’ve encountered a strikingly different scene. My fourth son Owen’s freshman move-in day last year was a tightly engineered process in which parents dutifully schlepped a carload’s worth of expensive-looking loot into dorms. Walking down the hall, I saw well-curated rooms coming together with lots of parental assistance. Online, Facebook groups such as “Dorm Room Mamas” and “Dorms on a Dime,” which collectively have hundreds of thousands of followers, are filled with photos featuring coordinated bedding, matching desks and bedside tables, tasteful rugs, and neon name signs—most no doubt paid for by parents. I’d read about the trend of parents hiring interior decorators to create high-end dorms but had assumed that practice existed only for the one percent.
Although the rooms I saw on Facebook may have been extreme, elaborate dorms do seem to be growing more common. This year, the National Retail Federation projects that American families will spend $12.8 billion on college-residence furnishings, up from a projected $6.7 billion in 2019. The jump isn’t just due to individuals spending more, an NRF spokesperson told me; a greater number of people are also choosing to buy dorm decor in the first place. Gone are the days when most students pieced together secondhand finds from the side of the road and parents’ basements, or lived in more spartan spaces. The era of peak dorm decor is here.
In part, this shift can be chalked up to the visual- and envy-driven world that social media has ushered in. Even if my roommate and I had felt moved to snap a photo of our dorm, whom would we have shared it with? Smart marketing from the companies selling dorm supplies most likely plays a role too. Stores such as Target and Walmart, which didn’t have a dorm category at all when I was growing up, now have whole displays devoted to the gear. It also probably helps that, for many parents, the project is an easy sell. Small-space decorating involves much of the fun and excitement of a renovation with little of the hard, tedious work, Gretchen Rubin, who has written about life after kids leave home, told me. Compare this with an at-home endeavor, where parents may be thinking, Okay, I gotta clear out 30 years of clutter before I can use this room, Rubin said, and the appeal is obvious.
And then, of course, there’s the influence of intensive-parenting culture, which typically demands that parents spend more on and do more for their kids. “We raise the bar, raise the bar, raise the bar for parents,” Asha Dornfest, the author of the Substack newsletter Parent of Adults, told me. Expectations “ratchet up in high school,” when many parents help with the college process, she said. A growing number of parents are entwined in their adult children’s life as well. Seen in this light, it’s perhaps obvious why many take an active role in college move-in.
On the surface, it may seem harmless for parents to help out. The adults get to enjoy furnishing the space, and kids most likely appreciate the hand. “ Who doesn’t want free, nice stuff?” Ken Ginsburg, a pediatrician and the author of Lighthouse Parenting: Raising Your Child With Loving Guidance for a Lifelong Bond, told me. But too much interference comes with definite downsides. For one, if parents are making the design decisions, young adults can miss out on the opportunity to express themselves, by themselves. Jessica Lahey, the author of The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed, explained to me that “when parents impose their tastes and their wishes” on a room, it can dampen “kids’ yearning to start living their own life.”
Parents getting overly involved can also rob emerging adults of an opportunity to develop autonomy. “College is not just about academics or the vocational side of things. It’s about becoming a psychologically independent person,” Laurence Steinberg, the author of You and Your Adult Child: How to Grow Together in Challenging Times, told me. Parents can stymie that growth. “The more things you do for your child,” Steinberg said, “the fewer things he can do for himself.” Robbed of this agency, even in small ways, kids can start to lose confidence. Ginsburg said that although an adult child will probably appreciate a dorm decked out on Mom and Dad’s dime, they still might internalize the message I don’t think you could have done this on your own.
Most kids could set up a room without their parents. A Pinterest-ready aesthetic isn’t a prerequisite for academic or social success. And students tend to live in the room for less than a year. Come summer, every mini-fridge hauled up the stairs and every hook adhered to the wall must come back down and out the door again—until students return the following year and get to try something new. The dorm room, in this way, is the ultimate blank canvas on which a young adult can paint themselves a new identity, and the perfect place for parents to practice letting go.
Plus, students may learn something from decorating on their own. Sourcing secondhand furnishings requires ingenuity that may serve them well in other arenas. Negotiating with a roommate about which posters to hang can help them work on compromise. That process tends to be easier when students arrive at move-in on similar footing. It gets a lot more complicated when “one student has a professional decorator,” Rebekah Peeples, an associate dean at Princeton University, told me, “and their roommate is a low-income student who only has the essentials.”
Granted, most parents aren’t hiring professional designers; they’re just trying to prepare their kids as best as they can while facing down what, for many, will be their longest stretch of life apart from their child. Fixing up dorms may be one way some of them are tempering the anxieties that naturally come along with this transition. In the “Dorm Room Mamas” Facebook group, sandwiched among the photo ops, plenty of parents shared deeper concerns. One member sought suggestions for a small, inconspicuous safe for stashing prescription medications; another asked if her daughter’s sudden anger and attitude before move-in was normal. Their devotion to interior design might have surpassed mine, but their care for their kids was relatable.
Luckily I haven’t yet had to fully face the monster of modern dorm decor. When my adult sons headed off to school, they weren’t too worried about what their space would look like. Their dad and I sprang for basic bedding, towels, a shower caddy, and a starter supply of toiletries but left decor choices mainly up to them. If and when my 16-year-old daughter heads off to college in a couple of years, I expect I may be under a little more pressure. But in that scenario, I’m planning to do us both a favor: I’ll mostly opt out.
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