It took Lara Becker six months to find two extra-long, industrial bed frames, a hallmark of university life, which she needed to complete a life-size replica of a college dorm room she assembled in her Atlanta home last year.
The beds aren’t sold to the public, and to date, no one has slept in them, but they are a crucial part of Ms. Becker’s business.
Ms. Becker, who is in her 50s, is one of a growing group of online influencers who earn income posting about mastering life in a dorm or college suite on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook, most of it found under high-traffic hashtags like #dormtok and #dormroominspo.
Think of them as a subset of momfluencers, women who post about being mothers online, often to make money. They are tapping into the lucrative business of college life. More than 15 million undergraduate college students attended college in the 2025 spring term, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit organization that collects data on higher education. The National Retail Federation said in July that these shoppers — or more likely, their parents — will lay out $88.8 billion on back-to-college supplies in 2025.
Dorm influencers make much of their money through what is known as affiliate revenue. That’s when companies like Amazon, Walmart and Target offer nearly anyone a percentage of sales made through links to their e-commerce sites. When a reader clicks on a shower caddy an influencer recommends, and then buys it, for example, the site where the link was posted earns a portion of the sale.
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The post These Moms Want to Design Your Dorm Room appeared first on New York Times.
