Damn, we love a good dorm room

This week is the perfect time to make your prison dorm room into a comfy home for the year, and we’re bringing back our RoomHop feature to see how Columbia students have been decking their halls. To inspire you to reach you aesthetic potential, Barnard Babe Courtney Couillard chatted with Victoria Martinez, BC ’18, about her famous Brooks Hall single featured on Buzzfeed earlier this week for looking so damn good.

Bwog: What inspired you to put so much hard work into decorating your room?

Victoria Martinez: I like being cozy and inspired, simple as that, I have a distaste for white walls and fluorescent lighting so the main objective behind my excessive decorating is to distract me from all of that and just create a space that doesn’t make me as depressed as being in Butler on a Thursday night

Bwog: Have you always decorated your dorm rooms this well?

VM: I’d say its been an evolution really, I started off in a Sulz Quad (s/o Sulz 516) with a little sliver of wall space, I’d say then I did my best. Sophomore year I had a Plimpton single that was admittedly a bit more cramped but closer to what I have now and this year as I tell my friends is the year that my room was finally big enough to truly soothe the HGTV aficionado inside me.

Bwog: While we hate to use the word “aesthetic,” what would you describe as the general /aesthetic/ for your decor?

VM: Honestly just extra.

Bwog: We noticed that your room was featured on Buzzfeed for being so well-decorated. Has your campus celeb status gone through the roof since being featured?

VM: I’d say those who know me or know of me have taken the time to tell me they saw my dorm room on Buzzfeed these past couple of days, but aside from that nothing much has changed. Honestly if you really think my room is that cool follow me on Instagram (@vampire_weakend), only then will I be truly reaping these celeb benefits I’ve always dreamed of.

Bwog: What’s your favorite piece of decor/spot of your room?

VM: Definitely my fire place/ mantle (being a first year RA has its perks), I found an old corkboard LITERALLY IN THE TRASH IN THE BASEMENT OF BROOKS and I brought it up and decorated it with some fancy wrapping paper to make the cutest accent piece for literally $0. Behind the cork board is my $10 DIY tapestry that will probably the coolest thing I have ever created, so having all of those things together in one cozy little area makes me really really happy.

Bwog: What would be your main piece of advice for anyone trying to spice up their bland white walls in their dorm room?

VM: You don’t have to go to Urban or any of those On Trend stores to make something cool out of your room. My “famous” wall is literally comprised of a collection of $.75-$1 postcards that I’ve picked up from museums over the course of three years. Everything else I’ve repurposed from home, or made myself. Collect little cheap things and make it a focal point in your room, and if you want to hang up posters working with an overarching color scheme makes it look more intentional than your average dorm room. Lastly have fun with it, at the end of the day your dorm is a place for you, fill it with things that make you happy and make your heart sing and you’ll always have a place to lift you up when things get tough.

Find some more shots of Victoria’s dreamy dorm room below. If you have a dorm room/know someone who has a room worth a feature on Bwog, send us their information at tips@bwog.com.