Nashville Dorm Decoration Guide

Welcome back to school, everyone! August and September are busy times for college and university students as they attend orientation, get settled into a new schedule, find their classes, and still try to have a life. You are on your own when it comes to getting a life, but ThriftSmart can help get settled in to dorm or apartment life with Nashville’s best guide on decorating affordably in six easy lessons!

Lesson #1: Call Up Your Custom Mural Guy

HGTV recommends finding a great picture and then sending it to your mural guy. What’s that you say? You don’t have a mural guy? Good news! Here’s a great website that can do the same thing but using your own printer and regular printer paper at home. Sorry if this disrupts the mural guy industry.

Lesson #2: Washi Tape To Bring It All Together

When you look around for some tape to stick your mural to the wall, why not consider using Washi Tape? And while you’re at it, go ahead and stick it to pretty much everything else! Washi Tape, which means Japanese Paper, is a rice paper-based tape, similar to masking tape, but trendier and with a huge variety of patterns. It makes a great accent piece to the ends of bookshelves, around furniture, as a photo frame, or even just to decorate the walls. While this is better for your walls than regular masking tape, like all tapes, it can leave a sticky residue when left up for too long. Most people won’t have a problem for just a couple of semesters, though.

Lesson #3. Succulents 101

The perfect plant for procrastinators. Green up your room without the high maintenance hassle of needing a lot of sunshine, water, or attention. Succulents are like the perfect date in a pot. You can even decorate the pots with your leftover Washi Tape. To save even more money, order a whole flat from a wholesaler and sell the plants you don’t need!

Lesson #4. Get The Right Light

Dorms typically have a bit of a “cave” vibe to them. Usually this is due to a lack of natural lighting, but fluorescent lights and cheap desk target lamps certainly don’t help. Brighten things up by adding some more lights. Christmas and string lights are a popular choice, but you can take it to the next level by getting some ThriftSmart lamps and outfitting them with bright new led bulbs. Once you get close to finishing it up, if you have some room left in your budget you can spring for some color-changing smart bulbs that are voice controlled to have the right ambiance for every occasion. They are pricey, but in small spaces like a dorm, you only need one or two. You can also consider a light strip if you have the right space.

Lesson #5. Spinning Up Some Vinyl Wall Art

If you’re not into Washi Tape or if your mural guy is on sabbatical, then you may want to consider vinyl wall art. Simply buy some Contact Paper at Walmart or Amazon and either have one of your art major friends cut out a design that you like. Or if you are feeling ambitious, draw your own design on a piece of paper, borrow a transparency projector from your favorite associate professor, and project your design onto your Contact Paper and cut it out. Contact paper comes in a variety of colors and patterns. You can even buy chalkboard contact paper to write out your tasks and schedule. This will help your room look good and keep you on point.

Lesson #6. Get Some Higher Class Furniture For Cheap

Most dorm room furniture falls into one of two categories. Either it is cheap, shoddy Ikea-style furniture or it is old cheap, shoddy, Ikea-style furniture. Rather than trying to extend the life of hand-me-down furniture that wasn’t high quality when it was new, why not pick up some high quality used furniture from ThriftSmart? Often you can even find vintage looking furniture that is still higher quality than the merely outdated furniture typically seen in dorms. Plus, every Friday is 50% off with your student i.d. at ThriftSmart! That should keep your dorm decorated with some money leftover for a pretty great ugly Christmas sweater party as well!

You’ve now graduated from ThriftSmart’s online decorating course with a PhD in dorm room decorating. And you aren’t even $30,000 in debt! Congratulations!