For Bethany Sphar and Emily Tiller, moving into their dorm room in mid-August culminated a one-and-a-half year planning process.
It is a planning process that is familiar to many students – the dorm-decorating process.
No matter how big or small, how cute or masculine or how excruciating or easy the project is, many students go through this one day of agony every year.
From the moment Sphar and Tiller decided to live with each other a year and a half ago, the girls’ minds have been deciding what their first home away from home would look like.
Being 60 miles apart did not hamper their decorating spirits.
“I would send digital pictures of what I bought for the room, and I would e-mail them to her,” Tiller, a mass communication freshman, said.
Both girls collaborated on the room’s design and took real pride in what they were doing.
“We wanted to do something that we created together, like our personal design,” Tiller said.
A trip to Tiller’s local dollar store supplied the color inspiration for the room.
“I bought these pink plates from the dollar store, and the room just took off from there,” Tiller said.
Sphar, a pre-interior design freshman, said she is not too fond of the hot pink plates, but in her interior design mind she started to formulate a plan.
“Green is the complementary color to red, so I was like, bright green and bright pink is kind of like bright red so that’s close enough,” Sphar, whose favorite color is green, said.
Once the color was decided, all that needed to happen was shopping and planning. First, there was the purchase of the green and pink bedspreads online. Then there was the purchase of the pillows to complement the bedspreads. And from there the room started to come together.
The room took a day to decorate and has been a continual process since mid-August, but it still is not finished.
“We need more stuff on the walls, and our carpets slides,” Tiller said.
Sphar said the reason behind decorating the room was to make it as “homey” as possible.
“The curtains, the pillows the rug and the sink carpet make the room feel like home,” Sphar said.
While Sphar and Tiller went for a more “homey” type room in their East Laville dorm, across campus Scott Keen, a music education senior, said the plan for his Kirby Smith dorm room was a little different.
“I really made a hard effort to make it more of a haven for me,” Keen said.
Keen said he wanted to make his room a place where he could relax without studying or eating.
“I found that if I study in the same place that I sleep, then I sleep when I study,” Keen said.
With a floor lamp to light the room, two pictures hanging on the wall – one of Mike the Tiger and the other of his wife – and a wall clock, Keen said he has completed his task of making it a place of relaxation.
Demetra Bernard, Springmaid marketing manager for brand licensing and brand development and an LSU alumna, said decorating a dorm room is fun for freshmen because they are living on their own for the first time and are finally able to “make it their own space.”
Bernard said when she attended LSU she lived in Johnston Hall, which was not air-conditioned, and decided to go another route with decorating.
“I did not do much to the room,” Bernard said. “All I did was purchase a bed in a bag from Wal-Mart.”
Some students have different motives for decorating their room, but for Sphar and Tiller, the idea of decorating a room should come from within.
“Your personal tastes make a dorm room,” Sphar said.