Nicole Wielondek’s current home is about the size of two Volkswagen Beetles but, like the trendy retro car, what her space lacks in roominess is more than made up for with personality.
Her small digs are in a dormitory at Barat College of DePaul University in Lake Forest, where Wielondek, 21, is a senior studying elementary education.
She is one of thousands of Chicago-area college students settling into dorm rooms this fall.
The Long Grove native, a residence assistant known for an artistic bent, has crammed her tiny room with drama and stuffed it with stylish stuff to the point of overflowing.
A high king-size bed (yes, king) is dressed in a leopard-print comforter, stacked with colorful pillows and canopied with a tie-dyed burgundy sarong tacked to the ceiling. Her own large-scale art shares the pale cinder-block walls with posters of vintage movie stars, and beads swing in her bathroom door opening. Mood lighting is provided by hanging paper lanterns and funky mod floor lamps.
Even with the supersize bed, actually two twins on cinder blocks, Wielondek has managed to fit in a computer work station, two tall dressers and other sundry storage, two small refrigerators, and an entertainment center, complete with TV, DVD player and comfortable seating.
Wielondek’s bohemian boudoir look evolved from her dorm furnishings last year, when “I was into that whole leopard thing,” she said during a recent tour of her room, which involved pretty much just standing and slowly spinning. “That got too dark, so I started adding to it.”
Her exuberant room, Wielondek said, expresses her personality and “makes me feel at home.”
She is not alone when it comes to wanting a fashionable, comfortable dorm room to come home to after a long day of classes. Last year, the National Retail Federation estimated a record $5 billion was spent to outfit dorm rooms, and that’s not including computers.
All that decorating usually must be paid for out of limited funds, and savvy students are hitting national discount chains, garage sales and thrift shops to furnish their rooms.
A hip, new dorm room line at Target–a favorite store of Wielondek’s–by fashion designer Todd Oldham offers everything from lighting and reversible bedding to kitchen utensils. Items sport bold colors and patterns, and many have a vintage 1960s and ’70s feel. Prices range from 99 cents to about $60. “[Students] are able to pick and choose a complete look on a very narrow budget,” said Target spokesman Douglas Kline.
IKEA does not have a dorm-room-specific product line, but spokeswoman Janice Simonsen said the furniture retailer’s affordable Scandinavian-style home furnishings are perfect for the cramped dormitory dweller. Many IKEA products are made with technology storage in mind, such as a small $30 computer table or a $13 set of wall-mounted, removable CD carry cases, Simonsen said.
Bright colors are big this year, Simonsen noted, as are items which lend a personal touch, such as frames for family photos, throw pillows and artwork, all of which work to “create a homelike atmosphere,” she said. “I think the days of board-and-cinderblock bookcases have gone by the wayside,” Simonsen said. “A person’s room is a calling card to the rest of the dorm.”
The old standby, plastic milk crate shelving, is still common in residence halls at Northwestern University in Evanston, but so is high-tech, in particular computers, DVD players and video games, said Shane Carlin, area coordinator for university residential life, a full-time, live-in job.
“Even the laundry baskets are getting more advanced,” Carlin said, describing stylish and compact chrome and canvas laundry carts on wheels.
Northwestern residence assistant Mario Jobbe, 21, of Homewood, said many students try to make their rooms homier by adding futons or small couches.
Posters, a college room classic, are still “a method of self-expression–right away you see what the person is interested in,” said Jobbe, a senior studying computer science and economics. He has posters from the films “GoodFellas” and “Swingers” and the band U2 adorning his walls. “Your style is your own,” Jobbe added. “Everything doesn’t have to match to be OK.”
Cheitali Bhansali, 20, of Glendale Heights, is a junior at University of Illinois at Chicago. The psychology major said she prefers a coordinated look, and in her single room has followed her lavender decorating scheme down to the bed skirt. She also has white silk sheets hung for a coved ceiling effect, photos and an Asian statue.
“I feel like my room is a really good place to come back to,” Bhansali said. “It’s my way. It’s clean, it’s neat, it’s comfortable for me.”
Freshmen Sara Kim, 19, of Dallas, and Mary Mattingly, 18, of Tennessee, share a dorm room at Loyola University at Chicago. Even with its Lake Michigan view, the fast friends thought the space at first “was pretty bleak,” said Kim, a political science and communications major. “It made us feel like we were at a summer camp.”
So the pair set out to make it homey, and hung movie posters, photos, Tibetan prayer flags and Christmas lights. Other furnishings include a comfortable “mish-mash of stuff we already had,” Kim said. “We actually call it `home.'”
At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, students pin up colorful fabrics as wall hangings and room dividers, display their own art, and tend to accessorize with an Indian influence, said drawing and film student Tyrell Cannon, 20, of Colorado. Cannon, a junior, is senior residence assistant of the school’s Chicago Building in the Loop, which houses some 200 students in loft-style studio apartments. Bottle collections and plants are popular, Cannon said, as are entertainment centers and “magnetic poetry”–refrigerator magnets with interchangeable words. Mattresses are sometimes plunked on floors without bed frames to make rooms seem larger.
“Everyone has rugs in their room, and some people hang beads in certain doorways,” Cannon said. “It seems like everybody here puts up Christmas tree lights.”
His own room, he noted, is so void of furnishings “it echoes.”
Gina LaGuardia is editor in chief of College Bound Magazine. The Chicago edition of the New York-based national magazine comes out twice this school year and is available free in many area high schools.
LaGuardia said today’s students in general enter college with a more sophisticated design sense than in the past, in part because there is so much available in stores. She also said students have a good idea of how they want to live once they are on their own because they’ve seen smart decorating in films and on television shows like “Friends.”
And whether it leans toward retro “Austin Powers” style with flashing lava lamps or sleek modern with stainless-steel accessories, individual taste is the important thing when it comes to dorm room decor, LaGuardia said.
“A room should be comfortable, it should be fun, and it must be conducive to studying,” LaGuardia said. “If you love your room, you are going to want to go back there and study. The big thing we’re seeing is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to create a super room, a home away from home.”
Students are frequenting thrift stores and yard sales. Some are going for an inexpensive “scrapbook look” by putting photos of family and friends on the sides of plastic storage containers or along ceiling trim, LaGuardia said. “Just because dorm rooms are small doesn’t mean they can’t have personality,” she said.
Jeff Tonjes, 23, is a senior at Barat College and as a residence hall assistant has a veritable mansion compared to most dorm rooms: a casual sitting room with TV, a bedroom with an office and a bathroom.
The Ohio native, who is majoring in acting, directing and theater, has found clever, cheap ways to furnish his roomy room. Many of his accessories were found on sale at discount stores, and on occasion he shops in thrift stores.
His own black-and-white photos and friends’ paintings decorate the walls. There is a tabletop fountain. He hung an inexpensive bamboo shade as a room divider and decoupaged a hand-me-down side table with magazine photographs of his favorite band, ‘N Sync.
“I still do spend a lot of money,” Tonjes said, pointing out his tech gadgets, including cell phone, digital camera, DVD player and stereo. “I buy what I want, then I budget from there. It makes me happy. This is like my little home.”
Downstairs, fellow student Wielondek is just as pleased with her teensy space, which she decorated with money earned over the summer. She calls it “the smallest room in the world.”
“People say `Oh, my gosh, how did you get all this stuff in this little room?'” she said with a laugh. “Hey, there’s room enough for me to walk around in here, so it’s fine for me.”
