Too cool for school
A survey of the coolest dorm rooms on campus
They feature place mats, used serving trays and shower curtains -- as decorations.
They make nods to Hello Kitty, anime and SpongeBob.
And they don't necessarily cost an arm and a leg to create, especially because they are only temporary.
(Richrd A. Chapman/Sun-Times)
That's not to say the rooms aren't often loaded with expensive electronics. But technology alone wasn't enough to make a room cool. One student at University Center -- the downtown dorm shared by Columbia College and Roosevelt and DePaul universities -- decked out his room with a 37-inch flat screen television and surround-sound system, two flat-panel monitors for a desktop computer, a laptop, handheld computer and a robotic vacuum. It set him back about $3,500. But beyond that, the room was boring, featuring little else to spruce up the drab white walls.
Most schools don't allow students to paint the walls, but several students found ways around that.
Johanna Foege, a sophomore at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, bought 45 yards of red and black fabric and pinned it to the walls of her 12-by-13-foot room in University Plaza residence hall.
Those are her favorite colors -- it's just a coincidence they also happen to be the school colors. But like others with nice rooms, she maintains the color pattern throughout her space. Her microwave and fridge? Both black. Her bass guitar? Red. The gravel in her fish tank? You guessed it, red and black.
"All this from a biology major -- yes, it's weird,'' admitted Foege, 19, of Naperville. She wants to be a vet, not an interior decorator.
Shaun Nunag, 21, found four orange and green place mats he liked at Bed Bath & Beyond -- and then built his room at DePaul's Clifton-Fullerton Hall around them. In addition to several other place mats on the wall, he hung an orange shower curtain on a wall and one with a picture of a jazz band on another. He even hung up round black plastic serving trays left over from an orientation at DePaul. Believe it or not, it works.
"I like to reuse stuff,'' said Nunag, an accounting and marketing major from Waukegan.
The "couch'' in his 17-by-10-foot room is actually an air mattress with pillows lined up against a wall; his coffee table is a plastic storage bin with a sheet over it. In all, he spent less than $200 decorating. "I'm a bargain shopper,'' he said.
Noticeably absent from the room is anything that would reveal the school he attends. "I don't have much DePaul stuff,'' he said. "It's too expensive.''
Still, others, like Christine Diep, spent a lot of money -- close to $1,000 -- and got results. Diep, a senior accounting major at Illinois State, is fascinated with the "harajuku style'' -- a fashion of dress in major cities in Japan. Her room at Dunn Hall is loaded with accessories such as purses and shoes -- as decoration -- as well as Japanese anime characters like Hello Kitty. (Even her television is a pink model based on the character.) "It's always been a part of my life,'' said Diep, 22, who is from Aurora and is Vietnamese.
The pictures, mainly of friends and family from home, form a "collage of my life,'' the 19-year-old from Orland Park said. She also found less-expensive ways to decorate, like hanging illustrations from an old Mary Engelbreit calendar and even putting up paint samples she got at a hardware store.
"If there is a white spot, it gets filled,'' she said.