Students make drab dorms fab with decorating tricks

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Among grubby bathrooms, cramped quarters and high noise levels, living in the dorms isn’t meant to be a luxury living experience. But many around campus are attempting to change that, pouring time, energy and creativity into their rooms in order to create an atmosphere they want to live in for the next nine months. And they’re doing it on a budget.

“We spend so much time in here,” international relations sophomore Ashley Herzovi said. “It’s not like we even need to go to the bathroom, everything is in our room so it may as well be something we love.”

Herzovi and her roommate, comparative cultures and politics sophomore Sam Meyer, began planning their dorm in Case Hall second semester of last year. Between their international majors, Meyer’s love of “Moulin Rouge,” and items they had from home and last year, the room’s international black-and-white theme came together. Each girl went shopping during the summer, but the two kept in close contact so all decisions on what to buy were mutual. Herzovi estimates that between her and Meyer, the duo spent less than $100. Some things, such as a few pillows and curtains over the windows, were made by the girls.

“All the picture frames match,” Herovi said. “Everything coordinates perfectly.”

Another way to dress a dorm so it looks like something out of the PBteen catalogue: Get a roommate with obsessive-compulsive disorder. The rug will be clean, the closet organized and all the pictures on the door only will not be pasted on to green and white construction paper backgrounds, but they will be laminated. This is the room of no-preference freshman Matt Weal and electronic engineering freshman Andrew Warner, who are residents of Bailey Hall in the Brody Complex. The room is coordinated in shades of black and blue, a flat-screen TV sits on one side opposite the futon and there’s even a vacuum tucked away near one of the desks.

Of course, there are some traces that this is the dorm room of a college boy. A beer pong poster hangs above the futon and an empty vodka bottle glows green under a black light.

“We took the bottle and we filled it up with water. Then we took a highlighter and cracked it open and just squeezed the juices in there. Once you turn on the black light it glows whatever color the highlighter is,” Warner said.

The guys plan to expand their collection of glowing bottles through the year and have a pink highlighter to use for the next one.

As always, posters are a popular and cheap way to decorate the dorms. Laura Hall, the owner of Agog Arts, 225 E. Grand River Ave., sells posters and tapestries to many MSU students. She said the most popular this year have been ones of Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe and the Pink Floyd Back Catalogue picture, where six nude women are photographed with their backs toward the camera, each one painted to resemble a Pink Floyd album cover.

“We carry an artist named Steev that is a huge seller,” Hall said.

“He’s a graffiti style artist that’s into things like DJs and boom boxes.”

One of his pictures portrays a man with President Barack Obama’s face at a set of turntables.

It might take extra effort, but having a stylish dorm room has benefits.

“It’s a happy place to go home to instead of just a dorm room,” Herzovi said. “People just kind of naturally gravitate toward it.”

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