Story by Tess Alongi
As $20,000 dorm rooms make headlines and dorm designing emerges as a new career path, the trend has yet to make as big, or costly, of an impact in North Carolina. At least for now.
The trend took off in 2020, when Mississippi moms, Tamara Wingerter and Stephanie Swedenburg King created the FaceBook Group “Dorm Rooms of Mississippi and Beyond.” Since then the group has grown to 80,000 members, while a quick “Designer Dorm Rooms” search on tiktok garners hundreds of videos with millions of likes.
While social media has helped turn dorm decorating into a billion dollar business, North Carolina’s version of the trend remains much different than $20,000 makeovers.
Walking into Maryvan Gardner and Mae McCloskey’s room in Chapel Hill, the green monogrammed bed curtains hang behind the head, framing what could be a window. Vintage Carolina Magazines line the wall. The First State University, authored by William S. Powell, sits among a four-book display that holds the matching bedside lamps.
The carefully coordinated decor almost makes you forget what’s beneath it all: a concrete floor, a concrete ceiling and most noticeably, no windows.
However the room wasn’t decorated by a professional dorm designer, instead the room was crafted by Maryvan’s mom, Mara Gardner, a kitchen and bathroom designer from Winston-Salem.
During the summer, Gardner scoured her local Goodwill and incorporated old pieces from home for the room. Their room offers a distinctly UNC version of a trend that has exploded on social media.
An $8 piece of Goodwill artwork became wall decor, paired with leftover wallpaper from Gardner’s garage. Frames from Goodwill turned into bulletin boards where Maryvan and Mae hung photos from their earlier lives. Above her desk, Gardner framed the covers from Carolina Alumni Review, which she had been saving in her house for years.
“You don’t want to spend money on things that you’re going to throw away,” Gardner said.
Instead Gardner says that students, and parents, should buy things that they would use again, look for second-hand items and bring objects sitting in basements and garages at home.
“You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars,” Gardner said. “Look in places in your hometown for things that are unique. Look at people getting rid of really nice stuff all the time. People throw away nice stuff and give it to Goodwill. Look at Goodwill.”
Gardner’s approach to dorm rooms contrasts with the social media trend taking over online; however, Gardner doesn’t dismiss the trend. She said when she was in college, students didn’t have social media to show how everyone was decorating.
“It’s a fun trend and the girls enjoy it,” Gardner said. They have these beautiful things.”
She said the elaborate rooms in the SEC are fun. But when she asked Maryvan and Mae if they actually needed their desks the answer was obvious: they did.
Ultimately, Gardner said the goal was to create a place where Maryvan and Mae could study, get ready and feel like home.
For Maryvan it was that feeling of home that mattered the most.
“Living in college can be hard and your room is your place to go at the end of your day and enjoy it and not feel stressed,” Maryvan said.
The design for the dorm room also has practical purposes. Because the room has no windows, Maryvan said adding color, especially light green and Carolina blue, makes the space feel a lot lighter.
Maryvan and Mae weren’t involved in the designing of the dorm room. Both girls were away working during the summer, so Gardner surprised them with the finished room.
“I feel like it’s special for Mae and I because it was just kind of all natural,” Maryvan said. “We weren’t necessarily going for a certain look, but we both love it and it reflects us.”
For Mae, the difference between her room this year and last year is quite noticeable.
Last year, Mae and her roommate picked out their bedding and pillows about a month before school and didn’t put much thought into their decorations.
“The difference this year is that it’s a lot more put together,” Mae said. “I feel like it’s a lot more of a home.”
The experience of having such a coordinated and well designed dorm room isn’t very typical at UNC.
“I think it’s very heavily like SEC schools and not as much like the UNC vibe of people doing it,” Mae said. “So I guess I don’t see it often down here.”
The difference raises a larger question: Is North Carolina actually much different from the dorm design trend taking over the internet?
According to Shelly Gates, a Mississippi-based interior and custom dorm room designer, while the trend is primarily in the Deep South at the moment, she sees a future for custom dorm room designs across the country.
“I think in the South, it’s almost an expectation to have a beautiful dorm room,” Gates said. “Whether I do it or mom does it or whomever, they’re all so pretty when you get to the school. It’s just so pretty. I don’t know if it has caught on just yet at other schools across the country, but each year I get more and more requests from different places.”
Gates, a former school teacher, founded Mary Margaret Designs after helping decorate her daughter’s room. What started as a part-time summer job has evolved into her full-time career. Gates, along with her team of movers, carpenters and other workers, travels across Southern colleges to decorate rooms.
Gates and her team install the entire room, so while many girls help with the design process, they don’t see the final product until they walk into their room. Gates also makes sure to decorate the room with practical pieces.
“One of the things that we do differently is that we provide a turnkey room, but we also look at it as an investment in four years versus nine months,” Gates said. “So the majority of things that I use in a room can be used all four years of college and even into their first home.”
Even for families that can afford it, professionally designed dorm rooms take a lot of work out of the already stressful college move-in process. But while the custom dorm room industry continues to grow across the Deep South, it has yet to expand as heavily into North Carolina.
For families like the Gardner’s there are still ways to create a beautiful room without a hired designer or designer budget.
Maryvan’s and Mae’s room wasn’t built around an elaborate plan or online aesthetic, it was built around them and for them. They say it feels like home.
