Creating gentle surroundings in a freshman dorm

GRACIE CULVER ’19
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Katie Comfort is a freshman here at Trinity and lives in a quad in Jackson. Her common room is a popular spot for students throughout the hall to meet up and she’s constantly complimented for her spectacular dorm room décor. I met with her to ask her about her design inspiration and any words of advice for a top-notch room.
GC: You went to boarding school before and have previous room decoration experience, how does the décor this year compare to your previous room?
KC: It’s interesting because throughout my four years of high school, my room has completely changed every single year. My room décor has just improved and transformed as my personality and taste has changed from year to year. My senior year of high school, I had a lot of the same decorations that are in my dorm right now, I just added a lot more tapestries this year. My junior year of high school I had one tapestry and more pictures, so I think I’ve just grown to want the tapestries more and more.
GC: Coming from a seasoned dorm decorator, what are some essentials to bring?
KC: The most important things to me are those scotch adhesive hooks and hangers. They’re super versatile and easy to use and are such a huge help. Also, personally, tapestries are an essential. I love them because they’re just one piece of fabric that covers the entire blank wall so I don’t have to work hard to cover that blank space with tons of pictures. I also think Christmas lights are an essential. The fluorescent lights really aren’t attractive and the Christmas lights can really transform a room and give it really nice lighting.
GC: You have an incredible amount of tapestries, why the tapestries?
KC: Like I said before, I like how they’re so easy to immediately decorate a whole wall. I also love the color and the dimension they can bring to a room.
GC: Why these colors and patterns, are you trying to create a certain mood?
KC: In my sophomore dorm in high school, I started with just one red tapestry. I liked it because it was big and had elephants on it (which are my favorite animal). Later, I added a blue one because I just thought the red and blue looked good together. Then I added a yellow and pink one because I thought I needed at least another primary color. I’m not necessarily trying to create a certain mood, but I like incorporating my favorite colors in my room without it being too overwhelming and without letting them clash. For the common room I just picked a tapestry I liked and didn’t already own, and then found the other one in the common room because the colors melded really well with the other one in my common room. I just like incorporating the colors into the room through the tapestries.
GC: How do you make use of space in here, or make the most space that you can?
KC: In my actual room, I put my desk under my bed because I’m personally a library person, so I knew my desk would just take up space in my room that I could be using for something else. I still put things in my desk, but under my bed it’s out of the way and a good hidden storage space. I ultimately just wanted to move out anything that I knew wasn’t going to be used or it would just add to the clutter. In the common room, we wanted to make it a great living space that could fit a lot of people, so we decided to center everything around our table and TV. We worked with that space and added different seating around it and now there’s more than enough room to fit a bunch of people.
GC: Do you feel like you are you done decorating yet or is it an ongoing process for you?
KC: I’m never done. I think I’m constantly adding more stuff to my room. The base of the room is obviously done, but I’m constantly finding little things, especially online, that I think would work perfectly in the room, like cool pillows. I think from now on I’m just going to be adding small things, such as more pictures on the wall.