Your dorm wall reflects your personality. There is nothing worse than having a boring wall, when your dorm is your home and college is stressful. From DIY to hiring professionals, all across the US people have been getting pretty serious into customizing their dorms. Dorm decor is a serious forte now, and its heart lies in the wall.
Since it gets pretty exhausting to start with, here are 21 ideas in which you can customize your wall. In this article we have covered everything that you need to know and might find useful if you are clueless from where to start.
21 Ideas to Spark Up Your Dorm Wall
1. Use polaroids and paperclips for photo collage
Image Source: Instagram
Using polaroid photos and hang them with clips on a row can prove to be the most efficient and cost effective method of wall decor. Use any kind of polaroids, family photos, friends, memories from trips, anything that makes it look homey.
Add on some fairy lights to the charm, it only makes it look cozier. With this method you are open with the possibilities of addition, playing with the order, and even changing the arrangement all together. This is a classic for your free will and low efforts to a good display.
2. Hang neon signs and lights
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Adding neon signs are always a cool upgrade for when you have friends over. Neon lights have the ability to make a place look like an arcade and in an instant it becomes a hang out spot. Choose your Neon signs according to the vibe you are going for.
It’s the perfect addition of funk in your wall and its trend never dies. A neon sign or light sets the mood from stressed to relaxed, and that is the perfect combination for evenings.
3. Put up posters and custom your order
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If anything is cooler than having a hobby in college, it is putting up posters of it on your wall. It is the most classic dorm room decor thing that lives evergreen in the heart of American youth. Putting up posters—gigantic or a4—it’s always a cool kid thing.
You don’t really do it for attention but your peers will definitely find it cool. It can be anything starting from a 90s retro ad to comic book page or even just your favorite band; posters are your go to!
4. DIY; put your art on the wall!
Image Source: Reddit
Nothing beats a wall decor that has your own art up there. This is your way to display your own personal art gallery and unleash that creative you. Put up your paintings with strings and clips like polaroids, or just simply paste them with care.
You can even frame them and hang them if you can. Your wall should reflect that artist in you and that’s always a proud feeling to look at it when you seek motivation.
5. Hang plants—real or fake—whatever suits you
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Adding some green plants in your room brings nature inside the dorm. So why not hang them on the wall? For this you can choose to put any kind of house plants, either by installing hanging shelves and arranging them accordingly, or you can simply hang them by installing hooks and using ropes to fix their weightage.
If you are not someone who likes to keep live plants in order to avoid maintenance, use fake plants from local ikea or thrift shops or even pottery barn. You can even enhance it by using ivy leaves for decor.
6. Create a Travel route for your wanderlust soul!
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College days are meant for impromptu trips and cross country road trips. Be it planning a last moment trip to Europe or driving from Washington to Texas; Your wanderlust soul needs that itinerary on that dorm wall!
Posters, souvenirs, even maps—everything can go up there. Be messy, draw on the maps, write on it, put up sticky notes. The more you plan the messier it gets—the interesting it becomes.
7. Use Faux Greenery to cover the space
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If you have an awkward corner or space that you need to fill, use this hack and put some artificial plants or faux plants in that area. It creates an illusion of an earthy old building with plants growing in it and plays off a subtle aesthetic to your room.
You can use any kind of plant patches available on amazon and stick on with tape. Most of the time these come with an adhesive backside, so it is a hassle free arrangement any given time.
8. Your space; accessorize with your accessories
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Start with setting up your organizer. Continue with adding your favorite lamp or accessories such as figurines, sculpture, calendars, or simply a cute plant. Now end this decor with adding some magazines, books, some stationeries. And now you have your recipe for creating your accessorized space as a wall decor.
This hack is not only useful for wall decor but also useful for optimizing space, if you happen to have a smaller dorm space.
9. Use interesting wallpaper
Image Source: Instagram
Investing in a wallpaper with a quirk of pattern in it, is perhaps the most colorful and interesting choice wall customisation in budget. You can buy it easily on amazon, or aliexpress, whichever option suits you the best.
A colorful background if matched with the right color coordinated elements, such as bedsheets, headboards, pillow cases, cushions etc, this is the easiest and cheapest way to a cool dorm room theme.
10. Opt for printables online
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If you are looking for something that sets your mood right, ordering printable collage is a new tradition amongst young minds. On social media these days their are small businesses who run printables according to your taste, in bundles.
These printables range from 30-40 prints at a time and are thus well collected and theme oriented and base their prints upon your customisation. This is another friendly of helping small businesses grow with sustainable choices.
11. Floral Collage for the go
Image Source: Pinterest
Floral decorations always add a charm to the room and who would dislike flowers, right? Although real flowers are a bad and rather foolish investment, fake flowers can compensate for the shortcomings.
Just a wall full of flowers arranged and taped to it, is both unique and a lovely chic decor to go with. Just remember to clean them once in a while, cause you don’t want your flowers to look lousy, right?
12. Vinyls and music records on the wall
Image Source: Reddit
In the heart and soul of America there lives music, and with music lives vinyls and records. Eras come and go but vinyl never died to be a trend, and lives prosperous since the 80’s peak.
Decorating your wall with vinyls, records, musical instruments is the classic American sentiment. This never gets old and like the American dream this is evergreen. So mix up everything that jinxes your musical soul, the combination of record posters, and music CDs reflects the American in you.
13. Floating wall shelves are a must
Image Source: Etsy
Probably every other dorm wall has this, so it’s safe to say that floating shelves are a given necessity when it comes to small spaces. It’s everything it is expected to be, space efficient, aesthetic, and gives an intellectual character to the outlook of the room.
Customize it with photo frames, books, aesthetic figurines and anything that you find optimizable in the shelves.
14. Wall of art for your inspiration
Image Source: Flickr
Make your wall an entire art by putting art cutouts, sketches, prints and all that quenches your artist inspiration. Your artistry is inspired and reflected in your wall and for the dreamy effect, this could be enhanced by warm lights of your choice.
15. An aesthete’s gallery
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A mirror, a few vintage photos, renaissance paintings, printouts of poems and old postcards. A gallery like this is meant for those who love literature like the secret history, and spend purging onto libraries and books.
This kind of gallery style customisation is optimum for everyone who has an eye for a certain type of aesthetic, and hence can be customized accordingly.
16. Choose Textured Wallpapers to give a 3d effect
Image Source: Amazon
To give an elusive look to your wall, opting for textured wallpapers with a 3d effect can be a good investment. These are easily available on online stores and come in a varied range of textures like bricks, tiles, velvets, etc. and installing them is easy due to their adhesive backside.
They are super easily available and are adaptive for customisation of your choice. So if you are in the mood for some DIY, you have fun with it!
17. Hang a Tapestry
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Like many other wallpaper ideas, tapestry is another easily affordable customization to opt for your wall. Any boutique today owns a tapestry and its installation is also pretty easy. Just hang it in the major position of the wall and there you have your wall looking minimal yet bold full of character.
Customize it with fairy lights and chinese lanterns or any lighting of your choice. This will give you the bohemian vibe that you will surely enjoy!
18. Make a vision board instead of bulletin
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Setting up a bulletin board with pasting self made posters is a good way to manifest good vibes and positive energy. A to do list, some quotations, energy vision boards, etc are very minimalistic yet clean decor for a dorm room person.
This not necessarily be about just an energy manifestation vibe, but anything that sets apart and makes a boring bulletin routine a little different from usual is the need.
19. Create a princess bed
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If no ideas run through, a very genius decor is to add some fairy lights and create a princess bed with mesh cloth or net attached from the wall. This not only gives a royal look to the bed and the dorm itself, but also cleverly occupies the wall without having to do too much to it.
To add to this you can add some polaroid mood boards if that accessorizing is suiting your taste.
20. Use your wall as an extended closet
Image Source: Reddit
Your wall could be your extended closet if you are just the right amount of intelligence with it. All you need is to install some hooks and hangers to it and you are good to go. Hang any and everything, starting from caps to coats to bags to jewelry; literally anything that is hangable.
This technique is cost effective, space optimizing and most importantly efficient in making a bland wall look funky.
21. Put up a hanging collage
Image Source: Reddit
Apart from tapestry and your extended closet, a sustainable decor idea is making your own wall hangings and creating collage with it. Fabric works in the cottage industry are full of it and most importantly it’s trendy.
If you are also willing to support small businesses this is your go to niche since boho fashion and neutral decor is the most aesthetic and impressive today. You should opt for thrift stores and platforms like etsy for relying on such decorations.
So these were a few of the ideas to funk up some vibe to bland dorm walls. We all get the importance of it and hope that this gets you to get on with adding some character to your wall. Something that is totally you!