Ep. 467: Dorm Room Design 101 with Lauren DeLoach

0:01Welcome to How to Decorate from Ballard Designs, a weekly podcast all about the trials and triumphs of decorating and redecorating your home. I'm Caroline. I'm on the marketing team. And I'm Taryn, and I'm a product designer. I'm Liz. I head up the creative team. We're your hosts. Join the expert team at Ballard Designs for tips, tricks, and tales from interior designers, stylists, and other talents in the design world. Plus, we'll answer your decorating dilemmas at the end of each episode. We love answering your questions, so don't forget to email us at podcast at ballardesigns.net. Now on with the show.

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1:20That's right. Maybe her only dorm room, I suppose. I think it probably will be. And we partnered together a little bit because we were just launching a dorm line. And we had to bring you back to talk about dorm, everything you learned, everything, your, you know, pieces you use from us, but from elsewhere. What does install look like? You know. Let's bring it all back. Yeah. The whole download. So let's just start at the beginning. Um, you know, what maybe like what were some things early on that you were, you know, focused on for the dorm room? You have a daughter. So I'm sure she had an aesthetic she was looking to work toward.

2:02Right. Well, that was what was so nice about what Ballard offered was she had so many choices. So, you know, you could kind of narrow down by color what was speaking to you the most. And it was the spa and sage kind of combination. and she really gravitated toward that. So that sort of started our kind of talking about everything. Y 'all had wonderful fabrics too. And so we just started with picking her headboard fabric and it was that ditzy floral, I think. It was so cute. And picked the headboard and then kind of just started building layers from there. And we pulled, I always like to use a check in all of my designs.

2:42Yeah. And so you have this wonderful spa colored buffalo check and we used that in the bedding so we used that for her duvet and her um euro sham and then we kind of accented with deeper the sage color in her lamps and um kind of pieced all the bedding together from there so we started with color and with all the ballard line stuff that we wanted to use the monogram pillow um the larger pillow that went across the dorm bed um the bed skirt and then that was really that's kind of and what was really nice actually is that her adorable roommate that they didn't know each other at all. And now they're such good friends.

3:20That's the best. Oh, my gosh. We have been so fortunate. That and her mom. Shout out Bobby and Ann Francis. They were incredible. And they really were so trusting because, you know, I mean, we didn't know them. And so then I'm here I am saying, we're going to use this stuff so that they can match. And I hope you like it. You know, and they really they coordinated and talked. So we knew that they were going to be happy with the colors. But it was just a really, really nice place to start. It felt very familiar just because the patterns are so friendly. They're very soft. And it just felt like, you know, something that she could feel comfortable with.

3:56And so we started, yeah, fabrics is where we started. It makes sense. You're all starting with a bet because, you know, as we all know, that's kind of, that's what you got. That is all on a tour when she did kind of her, you know, admitted students day and got to go into one of the dorm rooms. And I think all of the colleges are really good about having dimensions of everything. So we got a packet with all of the furniture measured out, you know, from every angle. It's not like it used to be. So even, so the room is basically dimension, but not each individual room. And that's something that we learned.

4:34There are like more master maps of a lot of the dorms that show you where the chases are in the walls and the soffits are in the walls. And you just have to finagle your way into finding who has that master map to know what your exact room, like how it's laid out. I'm so impressed. But y 'all, there's so many Facebook parent groups and all these things where people pass this information along. So like you will find it. It's not that hard to come by. So we found where she had a chase on the left side that was vertical and she had a soffit over her window. And so... So people know what a chase is.

5:10Oh, a chase is where on a high rise, plumbing is running up and down vertically. And so a chase is kind of blocked off. It's just where it like eats into the corner a little bit and it runs all the way down, up and down the building. And so it kind of cut into the rectangle of the dorm room. But yeah, so the beds take up the most room and we just kind of had to piece it together. And you can't take any of the furniture out. all of it has to stay in the room so even if you don't use it it's in the room like under the bed or wherever you want to put it um so we had to kind of it's like working a puzzle around and figuring out how it's all going to fit together so that's kind of um yeah that's kind of okay so talk to us about the anatomy of a great bet you said there was a you started with a headboard you had a dutch pillow but like you know for someone maybe who isn't you and you're very you know comfortable mixing and matching patterns like what would you kind of advise people so i've definitely like the under layer i would get for a dorm especially a topper that's like a you know foam topper or something that can make that mattress a little bit more plush um and then from there like really good sheets just something that will maybe feels like your home your sheets at home so that it feels a little more familiar um madden just used white just cotton percale sheets.

6:28And I like white sheets almost on every bed anyway, because they just work with everything. So that's kind of one of my rules. And then I will say for a dorm, you should always order, especially if you're going to raise the beds, order a queen size, a full queen size for the outer things like the duvet and the coverlets, because you're going to want them to look proportionally more appropriate with the length of the bed skirts, because they're going to be long. And then the great thing about that is those pieces can go transition with you into your apartment living in a full size or a larger bed, which is great.

7:04So then I would say we did a we did. Is it Amelia? The matlissae that's kind of got the little balls on the edges. Audrey. So we did the it's kind of the spa colored Audrey as the coverlet. And then the Buffalo check duvet and Euro shams. I like to mix the patterns a little bit. And I think we had the sage band on the bottom of the bed skirt, but I popped that color like that's represented in the headboard. We did the lamps and we did the monogram pillow up on the bed with the sage. So, like, I think when you're repeating that color a couple of different times throughout the room, it kind of brings it all together and makes it feel successful.

7:45Yeah. What I loved about Madden's bed, that buffalo check and all of the different layers, I think some people tend to go white on everything. Yes. But the color and the pattern makes the bed more like heavier visually. Agreed. Which draws your eye there and it just makes it more impactful, which I think is what you. Thank you. Yes. Yes. Well, that and white is hard. It's hard to live with a white bed when the bed is the biggest part of the room for a whole year. It's everything. You study. You're eating vaccinated. You're doing homework. Yeah. So we were trying to keep that in mind, too, that this had to suffer some wear and tear.

8:27And it all looks great. I mean, I saw it a couple of weeks ago, and it really has held up. It looks pretty darn good. So outside of the sheets, everything else, you basically got as a fuller. I did. And then I figured, you know, next year when she goes to an apartment, we'll piece together more of those Euro shams for her queen size bed and kind of add whatever we need to. But we have the main pieces to start with, which is great. That's nice to give you a head start. Yeah, exactly. That way you feel wasteful. When you're going into the apartment, you're not having to, you know, sell some trash.

9:01Yeah. Right. All over again. Yeah. Right. You just bought all the twin stuff. Now you're buying all the queens. Exactly. Yes. So it's been great to have. Okay, well, I know that there's so much more to the dorm room than just the bed. So, okay, what's next? What are all the things? Well, I guess the stuff that you have to use, they had desks. So we ended up putting them side by side. And I, because I had great dimensions from the school, I had table skirts made to fit over it. And then we had glass made to go on top of that. We put them side by side, and they used them more as makeup mirrors, rather, or vanities, I should say, rather than desks.

9:37Though I think there was some studying done there as well. but we or so they say that's what yeah that was right word on the street um and then um they had little nightstands that came with the room and neither girl wanted to use one of those they didn't fit so they tucked those under their beds but they were good drawer space for storage um and that's all that we and two chairs too they had some ugly you know kind of metal chairs that we bought cute little ballard um woven rattan the shield back oh yeah i think is that right Don't ask me names. They're really cute. I know which one you're talking about.

10:12Oh, I can tell you what it looks like. I can draw it. Couldn't tell you his name. Yeah. So we did those and I made little pads to put in those to make them a little more comfortable for sitting. And anyway, that's what we, we tucked the other chairs under their beds also. That's how high they go. I mean, the drop is like, I don't want to say it's over 24 inches. And so everything else was under the bed. And then we ended up purchasing a futon from somebody from the year before. And we did a little coffee table from them. And then some Ikea kind of like block shelves with the baskets, you know.

10:45Everybody has some of those lying around. I actually had them in my garage. But we flanked the futon with that. And then I just made some extra pillows. And it just kind of like all came together. It was a really cute, you know, even though it was a tiny room, there was a living space, a getting ready space, and a sleeping space. You know, kind of felt like it was compartmentalized enough that they, you know, it was cute. Yeah. So, well, yeah, and we'll repost. We'll probably repost your reel so people can see on the screen. But, okay, so they had the back-to-back or the side-by-side desks on one side.

11:22And then that was sort of facing the futon? Right. Okay. Yeah. So each girl at the end of their bed, Ann Frances had the vanity side and Madden had the living side with the futon. Talk to us about the storage, because that to me seems probably the biggest conundrum it is. So the bed, but there's a lot of space under that bed. So we did start with four of those kind of, I mean, there's a million reels about them, but the rolly Tupperware drawer units. And we zip tied them back to back. So you push them under because that's how deep your bed is. It can accept two depths of those rolly things. Well, they roll out.

12:05You, like, lift the bed skirt up and roll them out and then flip them around if you need them and roll. You know, like, you can access both sides. You know what I'm saying? Yes. But you wouldn't be doing that all the time. You might put stuff that you don't need. No, I think that's day to day. That's day to day. Because we didn't have visible. This is for clothes. Yeah. Visible chest of drawers or anything where they could. That was where they stored all their clothes in addition to the closet. The zip sign back-to-back is kind of genius, but I would have never thought that. Oh, I wouldn't have either, except I saw it on TikTok.

12:41But it saved a lot of space. And so we had two of those side-by-side, which were essentially four of those living units, in addition to the little drawer thing from the school next to it under there, and the chair way back in the back corner. Oh, my gosh. Shut up under there. Yeah, you've got a lot under there. We did. And then in the closet, we did, you know, like a little shoe rack. And we did some of those hanging cube things. And then she had all of her clothes. And then we had baskets up on the shelves. Okay.

13:14So underneath the bed, you have the cubbies. Oh, this is what I was going to ask. Would you say that this is sort of something that all the dorms do? or were you looking at Ole Miss stuff specifically? I think all the dorms tend to raise their beds. I feel like it's, I mean, it's rare that you don't see it. So I would say more often than not. Ole Miss is a little bit special in that people really decorate their rooms. So I, and it's, I feel like that's happening a lot in the SEC schools with the girls particularly. But I was, yeah, I think most people could benefit from using that kind of storage under a raised bed.

13:57I was just curious if Liz will. I was going to say, you have someone heading off. I do. I do. And we're at the point where we're starting to sketch things out and be like, what do you really need to take? What don't you need to take? So was there anything on the list that she took that she ended up not using? We were talking about it. But I just wanted to get her feel or her take on this all. And she really did use everything that we took. I would say the main thing I came home with were command hooks. I didn't use any of the command hooks. I used a ton of command tape and command Velcro strips, but I didn't use a lot of the hooks.

14:41So that was just, but that, other than that, we brought, we used basically everything that we took. And she says she's, you know, has been rotating out clothes and things like that. And when she's come home, she's brought some things. But you would be shocked at how much is shoved into that room. And you don't see it. I mean, it really is nicely disguised. Okay, what about the moving in, though, before you've arranged everything and you've just got all this stuff? That's something. That feels like a real panic moment. It is. And I wish I had set up a time-lapse video because what they do is like, for Ole Miss, and I'm speaking only because I know that process.

15:21But they meet you out at your car and they take everything out of your car and have these huge, almost refrigerator boxes on dollies. They load them all up and then your stuff gets in the queue. So then we went up and we're just basically waiting for it to come off of the elevator. And we were fortunate our room was right off of the elevator. But what they don't really tell you is, well, they don't tell you that you have to keep all that furniture that they provide in there, number one. and they don't tell you that you can't put stuff out in the hallway when you're trying to set it all up so yeah fortunately i had my husband and my 16 year old son so we had a little bit of of muscle and so we would slide all the everything to one end right because we did a rug so we had we did a rug that basically fit the footprint of the room roll it all out and then put everything on the rug and then roll the other side out and it was just like this back and forth back and forth back and forth until we got all to the right place.

16:19But it was also the four of us, my daughter, myself, my husband and my son, and the roommate and her mom, we were all in that room together as we're doing this back and forth. It's a lot of bonding. Yes. And meanwhile, like all these refrigerator boxes of stuff from other people's rooms are coming off the elevator. I mean, it was, it's crazy. But everyone is so, I mean, everyone's so excited. Everyone's working together. And it's just like this really fun and, you know, exciting atmosphere. Wait, was that like the first time they met too? It was like Azure role in person. Oh, great. Yes. I love it.

16:49Yes. Isn't that crazy? And again, it was just so magical because they gotten along and they've become such good friends. But like they we all work together so well as a team that day. And it was a lot, a lot, a lot. Yeah. So so you're just going bit by bit, like organizing. Is there other than the rug? Do you start with the bed? And like we did. My husband made a cabinet to go between the beds too. So a lot of people do, and I would say that's part of the reason it was so successful, this room, but a lot of people do a cabinet with a refrigerator that's like the tall refrigerator with the freezer on top and then the microwave on top of that.

17:29So that makes your cabinet really tall. I, and my husband's a builder and he has no problem like working with all this stuff and putting it together. So we kind of drew it out so that to keep the height down because I thought it blocked a lot of the window light and it kind of made the beds look out of proportion when that cabinet gets so tall. We made it so that each girl had their own square refrigerator. So one on each side and then one microwave. So it kept the height down. So that was the next thing to go in was once we got the rug in, we had to get that against the far wall and then got the headboards up, beds in place.

18:07I think then we dressed the bed so that we could get all of that because that's all in bags. Got that all out of the bags, off the floor, on the bed, and then you could get the bags kind of like folded up and out of the way. Oh my gosh. I love this Tetris. It totally is like Tetris. That's exactly, yes, that's exactly what it felt like. Hi listeners. If this episode has inspired you to tackle a project in your own home, we want to help with a special offer just for podcast fans. We know how exciting it is to bring your vision to life, whether you're updating a room or starting a refresh. You'll find everything you need to create a space that feels uniquely yours.

18:43As a thank you for listening, enjoy 20 % off plus free shipping on your next order with the code PODCAST20. Visit BallardDesigns.com to get started. Your dream home is just a click away. Use PODCAST20 for 20 % off plus free shipping. Code's not combinable with other offers. See terms and conditions for details. All right, happy decorating. Let's get back to the show.

19:05but also with like six people four well no no say it was six of us in a room yeah that's 15 by i think it's 12 by 15 ish yeah wow just like an episode of friends that's all that's right Pivot, pivot. That's right.

19:26So true. Yeah. Okay, but you also did window treatment. So talk to us about the window treatment. Yes. So I think it was, people would ask me, you know, are you putting your designer hat away for this? And it was like, I can't. I mean, you give me a blank canvas and I'm going to think about how I would handle it. And I think one of the main things that I do in all my designs is think about, like, how to soften it. and how to bring the room down into being more intimate. And so for me, a lot of times that is adding fabric, adding window treatments and covering the walls with things that mean something to me or make the room tie together.

20:05They had one really big, decent size window, I should say, in the middle. And then a soffit was over that all the way across. And so in my mind, I was like, if I could drape that whole wall and make that all the cinder block and all the drywall go away, Um, I felt like it would be just very cozy. Um, so we, and this was, this was something we learned on the job because we, I, so I bought Amazon drapes and I glued on some, you know, cheap trim on the lead edge. Um, I took a Ballard, um, drapery panel that's in the Buffalo check and had my workroom make it into a valance, but not on a board. It was just a piece of fabric that was pleated.

20:46And so and then I bought an Amazon drapery rod and we bought clear like stick on drapery like brackets. Well, the brackets just would not hold the whole thing up. It just was not happening. So we my husband actually had the great idea to zip tie the curtain rod to the blinds that are there that are permanently affixed to the windows. They're like the white metal blinds and they're so secure in that window so we zip tied that puppy to that window it was and then we still used the the sticky brackets but you know when we put a lot of them up there but these curtains were not meant to move they were just meant to drape the back wall yeah um and so they we just kept we stuck them all along and we had i mean we seriously had alien tape and command tape everywhere.

21:41Just like wherever it would touch the walls, we'd kind of have stuff there just in case, and just to let it hold as long as it possibly could. It's still standing. It's still, it's still there today. It's impressive. Yeah. It's impressive. Yeah. And then the, the balance across, we just put alien tape up across the whole thing. What is alien tape? Okay. So I did, I learned this on the job too. It was like our next door neighbor had some, because we were having trouble getting things to stick. And it's this clear, I mean, it's, It's kind of like a tacky, like stretchy, plasticky thing. And it has an adhesive that is super strong, but at the same time you can peel it off the wall, rinse it, and it reactivates the glue.

22:26My dad believes in this stuff, hands down. So I get packages of the glue and tape them down. You'll be all set then. I'm like between the glue. Okay, yeah. I've written down command tape, command velcro, zip ties, alien tape. Yes. Yeah. You can file that away for, what, two more years? Well, I'm asking for, you know, a little bit of a graduation gift. That's right. Actually, that would be a good, that's a cute graduation gift. Yeah. And like a cute basket. Okay. So what are the other, like, random things that you would suggest? Oh, man. Let's think. um well i would say my daughter did say she wished that we had made made it so the drapes would close because it even though those blinds operate it's still really bright so there's just a little hot tip if anybody can figure out how to do that with you know for zip ties i know yeah so you can't close the curtains because of the way the draper got it and i didn't i didn't i actually didn't order them to function i ordered them only to drape about they wouldn't have been long enough to do that but yeah in hindsight i could have done that um let's see other tips what else did we do well i did instead of um a lot of people do little side bedside shelf unit things and i was like we just couldn't figure out how to get that together and what do you mean like uh they're kind of like shelves that they're narrow so basically for madden's side it would have covered like the width of the the chase you know and like come out from that and um ann francis's side i think we didn't have enough room to do this anyway.

23:58So maybe that's why we didn't do it. But I found these, they're little plastic, like L-shaped shelves that are probably maybe 12 inches in length. And they stuck with alien tape. And so we just put it kind of at the mattress height and ran up extension cords from under the bed. And then she had like a place to charge her phone and have an alarm clock or whatever you needed right there by the bed. That was something that that kind of worked out really well um i also ordered um what do you call them well they're sconces but they were battery operated sconces with led light bulbs um and we stuck those on with alien tape and then they just take off the bulbs and recharge them when they when they want to and they change like to a million colors so if they're having people over they can have purple lights or whatever and that was fun and um i found a a little that was not little a big poster on Etsy that said, what's the best that could happen?

24:54Which I just thought that was like a good, that would be good to see that every day, you know, like leave the, leave your room with that kind of message. And my sweet framer framed it for, for her graduation part, like present. And we hung that over it, but framed it very light. So it was like with, I think it was a light, not even plexi, because it was really light, but something over the front, over the image. um we've hung that up oh another thing i did because i always like to decorate with plates too that's pretty common knowledge um but i found some adorable melamine ones from anthropology that were like a mint color they kind of went with all of the um all of the the color scheme and um they were just adorable this like scalloped melamine plates and i stuck those on with command velcro around above the picture um yeah like just another little touch of like making it feel more residential i mean i think that was kind of the goal just make it as a residential feeling as possible yeah and we layered another small rug kind of at the the futon too like on top of she had a kind of a big jute rug and then we layered a smaller like colorful rug on top of the rug or the big rug there how many extension cords are you using let's think i think we i think i bought like more than five oh i think i brought 10 but i can't say that i use 10 okay i think we She probably has three going.

26:17One for a fan and the light on her side. And Anne Francis has one for her fan and light. And then one up for her phone charger. And then I think there's another one like over. Got to be some of the vanities. Yeah, there's some over there. Yeah, there's one though because they're side by side. So you kind of like, you know, but they were both plugged into the same one and into the wall. Yeah, and then zip tie those on up the bed frame. We did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Zip ties are, I mean, like, I didn't. Which size zip ties? Like the minis? No, not minis. Minis won't do anything. But you need probably like the 6 to 12 inch.

26:54Because some of the big boys you need for, you know, those cubbies we were talking about earlier. Yeah. Right. You want heavy duty ones to handle that. And then you can just clip them. And then for the curtain rods, you need the big boys, too, to kind of hold them tight. Yeah. Yeah. Zip ties are good. This is great. You know. Dorm room's best friend. I know. You've got a supply list. Yeah. Yeah. Scension cords. Mm-hmm. All the tapes. All the tapes. Did the closet have doors on it? No. I used the Ballard Buffalo check drapery panels. And just, we put those on curtain rods. Or, I'm sorry, shower curtain rods.

27:28Yeah, yeah. In between the door frame. Extension rods or whatever. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, smart. And then I did have some tassels I had ordered, and we just tied them back with tassels. Huge. So you just keep them open? Huge. Yeah. What about closet storage? Okay, you said there were, y 'all had the long hanging cubbies. We did. You had a shoe shelf. Mm-hmm. Anything, I mean, you know, I think all of us ladies can attest that you got a lot of clothes. You got a really tiny closet. Yes. So any tricks that you learned? I feel like I also hung, I did hang some of the command hooks in the closet because, you know, between where the clothes stop and the door frame, there was about 12 inches maybe.