When business freshman Olivia Pistone moved into Cedar Hall, she posted a video on TikTok showing her empty dorm, then transitioning to her matching, fully furnished room. Less than three weeks later, the video has 2.8 million views and 456,000 likes.
Pistone’s video is one of many dorm transformations posted to TikTok during college move-in week over the past few years. Students at LSU and other universities in the south show off dorm designs that transform the room, so it looks like a completely different space. This trend is especially prominent at Ole Miss.
Pistone and her roommate were originally going to attend Ole Miss together but switched to LSU. Still, they wanted to participate in the southern dorm trend found at Ole Miss.
“Most of the dorm rooms that are really insane come from Mississippi and Mississippi schools. So coming from out of state we really wanted to have the cute, matching rooms,” Pistone said.
Pistone considered hiring an interior designer to help in the dorm decorating process. Interior design companies like After Five Design and Essentials With Eden are specifically known for designing dorm rooms like the ones in Mississippi. According to Pistone, these designers will buy everything for you, deliver it to your dorm and set it all up.
When Pistone got a quote from an interior design company, she was told it would cost around $6,000 to $10,000 for her and her roommate.
Pistone looked at the price breakdown and noticed that the high costs came from custom items, like bedding. After researching, she was able to find the supplier the company used and realized that buying directly from them was cheaper.
“I love a challenge – I wanted to do this exact same thing but I [was] going to do it for a fraction of the price,” Pistone said.
Over the course of five months, Pistone and her roommate planned how their dorm would look. They bought two of everything and evened the cost out, using a spreadsheet to keep track of everything they purchased.
In the end, Pistone and her roommate spent around $3,000 on their dorm – half the cost of an interior designer.
The move-in process took Pistone and her family nearly all day. It took Pistone’s car, her father’s truck and a U-Haul trailer to transport her half of the dorm decorations from her home in Houston, Texas to Baton Rouge.
“Our stuff literally lined the entire hallway, I’m not even kidding… It definitely was a lot of stuff,” she said.
After posting her dorm transformation on TikTok, companies reached out to Pistone offering brand deals and free dorm decorations. Still, the reaction wasn’t always positive. Pistone received negative comments on her video saying things like “it’s giving undeclared major,” “this is so basic,” and “this looks like Pepto-Bismol threw up.”
Despite the backlash, Pistone is proud of her dorm.
“I think that’s a little bit wrong for [people] to assume just because someone likes girlier things or someone likes to invest time into decorations or things that you think are girlier, that doesn’t really equate that I’m a ditz or a bimbo,” she said.
While Pistone doesn’t think decorating your dorm room is necessary for succeeding in college, she thinks everyone has the potential to do it.
“If you know how to shop and you know how to pick and choose what things you spend your money on and what things you don’t, I firmly believe anybody can do this. It’s really just like a game,” Pistone said.
TikTok creator Camille McCallum gained popularity with the rise of what she’s dubbed “southern DormTok.” In her videos, McCallum rates and reviews dorms in the South.
McCallum is from Mississippi and attended Ole Miss from 2012 to 2016. Even then, she noticed that people would go all out on their rooms.
While at Ole Miss, McCallum recalled moving in and seeing the extravagant dorms in her hall for the first time. The girls on her floor would even participate in “dorm tours,” where they would walk by other dorms just to see the decorations inside.
Dorm decorating was big in the South while she was in school, but McCallum believes the trend has grown with the rise of social media. Many of the dorm pictures she uses in her TikTok videos are from a Facebook group called “Dorm Rooms of Mississippi and Beyond,” where people post their extravagant dorm room transformations.
While students around the country decorate their dorms, McCallum believes it’s a “culture” in the South.
“I think that the South has a bigger emphasis on extravagance and pageantry, in a sense. And I feel like if you look at a lot of the really popular dorms, it looks like something you would see in a southern magazine,” she said.
McCallum knows that the dorms she reviews likely cost thousands of dollars, but she doesn’t necessarily believe that everything in the images is authentic.
“I imagine that there are a lot of dupes… I see a lot of people having like these designer books or designer spreads or throw blankets or whatever, and it’s like, a real Hermès throw blanket can cost you $3000,” McCallum said.
While other schools in the south have begun participating in the dorm transformation phenomenon, McCallum believes Ole Miss is the originator of the trend and where girls continue to spend the most money.
“[At Ole Miss] you’re going to see some of the most extravagant stuff, but also the most widespread… if you go to some dorms [at other schools], there might be two dorms on every hall that’s decorated, versus at Ole Miss there are entire floors where everybody is decorated.”
McCallum has found that there are three items essential to the dorm transformation process: good bedding, a rug and art to cover the walls. While she has seen these key elements in girls’ dorms, she has also seen this combination be used in boys’ dorms as well.
“In the boys’ rooms, I feel like you can definitely see how the staples of like a rug, some art and some good bedding can really just totally make a room look really elevated,” McCallum said.
Patra Coco is a professional interior designer and architect. Her daughter and son started attending LSU at the same time in 2019, where they both lived in South Hall.
Coco helped her daughter and son design their dorm, budgeting around $900 for her daughter and $600 for her son, who both paid for half of the expenses. Like Pistone, Coco also used a spreadsheet to help budget.
“I did [my son’s] room, but boys are a little less demanding about what they want for a dorm room. We got some cool art and some bedding, but you know, they’re much more utilitarian about the look,” Coco said.
Coco is also a part of the Dorm Rooms of Mississippi and Beyond Facebook group, where she posts images of her daughter’s old dorm and finds inspiration from other parents and students.
Coco believes the main principles of design can be applied to dorm transformations. While looking at other dorms in the Facebook group, she noticed that girls cover up the main parts of the room. They use headboards on the beds, buy rolls of vinyl to cover the floors and put a rug on top. But the biggest change Coco has found is with lighting.
“If you look at a lot of these pictures, [the girls] do not turn on any of the industrial lighting that’s provided for them… when girls bring in lamps… they’re changing the whole ambiance of the space,” Coco said.
While Coco has heard criticisms of extravagant dorm transformations, she thinks it’s important for students to have a nice place to come back to at the end of the day.
“[My kids and my clients’ kids] environment has a lot of reflection on how they feel, and I know moving to college can be pretty intimidating for freshmen,” Coco said. “I know there’s a lot of hype about these extreme dorm rooms and [if it’s] just boasting or showing off, but I think it has a practical purpose for giving kids a nice place to come home to when [they’re] facing a lot of challenge in [their] life.”
