My topic today addresses dorm rooms and their “decor" (if, indeed, that term may apply to a room where college students live). Gender can play a significant part in how your future dorm room may look. If you are a guy, your room may benefit more from a Spartanesque approach. Simple functionality can pay off by making your room easier to clean, assuming that cleaning is, in fact, on your to-do list. A well-placed TV, futon, or empty beer can temple can augment your simple decorating tastes.

However, if you are female, well, then your room may function as a projection of your good taste and personality. Of course, if you're sharing your room with fellow females, then there may be a need for a United Nations-like summit to decide on what goes where.

Whatever your situation, as you begin to fantasize about your first-year residential college experience, I thought that I would throw some fuel upon your imagination fires to help you gather a plan for upgrading that industrial cinder block domicile where you'll be spending the better part of nine months, starting next year.

Our friends over at Campus Grotto sent me a great article that provides plenty of quality inspiration for your decorating duties. Here are some highlights, with Grotto's permission, and a few pictures from there presentation. I strongly urge you to check out the article and be amazed at some of the extremely elaborate approaches others have taken with their dorm rooms.

Grotto begins with an overview:

When you first enter an empty dorm you may notice the room looks quite minimal and you can't fathom how you and another roommate are going to live in this space for an entire year. Tiny dorm rooms with cinder block walls, florescent lighting, and little to no carpet come off a little institutional looking and are very uninspiring.

While many colleges around the nation have made a push to design more luxurious dorms over the past few years, it's your job to transform your dorm room into a more livable space. This is your home away from home while you're going to school, so you'll want to add as much comfort and personality to the room as possible. Given the small size of the room, designing a dorm becomes a test in utilizing space in the best possible manner.

Use these dorm room ideas to spur your creativity as you design your space.

Wall Decor

A dorm with plain and bare walls is boring and isn't going to cut it in college. You need to cover walls with the best possible decor you can come up with on a college budget.

Dorm Bed Ideas

Unfortunately, the bed is the centerpiece of most college dorm rooms. You can either hide it the best you can or accentuate it by adding duvet covers, throw pillows, and other bedroom decor.

Desk

Your desk is your sanctuary when it comes to getting work done in your dorm. You don't want plain and boring; you want something that inspires, keeps you motivated, and puts you in a positive mindset.

Dorm Storage and Organization Ideas

Your room would be a chaotic mess without proper organization.

Other Dorm Room Ideas

Rugs.

Dorm door mural.

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The above is just an excerpt of all the good ideas that College Grotto offers on the subject of dorm room creativity. I have to laugh when I think of what my first-year dorm room was like. The pictures from the Grotto article look like the Presidential Suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York City compared to what I lived in. At least we didn't have bed bugs or fleas.

So, spend some quality time thinking about how to make your dorm room a place where you'll want to be, rather than a place to avoid. To inspire you to upgrade your room's decor and make it more attractive, just do a simple calculation. Divide the number of nights you'll be spending there over the course of the academic year into the total cost of one year of college. That will give you a crude daily rate, just as if you were staying in a hotel (maybe the Plaza!). That should make you want to take full advantage of that likely pedestrian-looking little room from Day 1.

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