By Hope, Year 12, Weaponness
With the new year just beginning, and spring cleaning right around the corner, everyone wants a fresh canvas to start off their year. Why not start with the one place you spend most of the time? The bedroom. In the boarding houses, you are free to decorate your room the way you want, to give it your own personal touch and to give you the sense that you are still at home. You can adapt it so that you have a colour theme that you and your roommate want and go decor shopping together which is also a nice way to break the ice.
First up! Let’s look at textiles
In my opinion the best place to start is your bed. You can get a range of bedding from lots of affordable stores like Dunelm, Argos and a variety of online stores like Aayfair or Dusk. Then you can either leave it at that or take it a step further and add throw pillows and blankets which you can also get at these stores linked above. You can also add a rug, either to make the room less echoey or just to make it feel more homely. It could be fluffy, full of patterns, plain or whatever takes your fancy.
Dressing up the walls
Pictures of your family, friends and pets back home; memories that you want to look at everyday are the best place to start. To get these, you can use anything to capture a memory, for example with your phone camera or, if you really like photography, you can use a proper camera. A simple option is something like a disposable camera. Anything goes because at the end of the day this is your room to style. You can get pictures blown up or printed online for really cheap from places like Free prints or you can go in-store to most Boots shops (which is like a health and beauty shop) and get pictures printed. Pictures can go anywhere, any spare place on the wall or you can frame them. You can even make a gallery wall. Whatever you do, you don’t want to destroy the paint and you may not have the tools to hang pictures. My advice: Use command strips.
Command strips are easy and quick to use. When you get these, you need to use four of the strips given to you. Firstly, you peel one of the back off the strip and place it on one side of the picture frame so that you can feel the rough side and then do the same to the other side. So there you have used two of the strips then stick the other two strips on them, so that the rough parts are together and the sticker part is still there to use. Then peel the paper off the sticker and place on the wall, making sure it is how you want it. To make sure it is secure you need to press against the command strips on the wall and then check it is how you like it et voila!
When you want to remove it, carefully remove the picture and you will see the command strips separate and you will see a tab on the command strip on the wall. Just pull it down and keep pulling until it comes off the wall. You can get command strips from places like amazon or any supermarket like Sainsbury’s. They range from about £2.50-£10.00, they can vary in size and how many are in a pack, depending on what you are needing to hang. This is the command strip I use myself and would recommend: Command PH203-18NA Hanging Strips, White, Small and Medium. You can get it from Amazon for £9.99.
If pictures are not what you want, then maybe posters of your favorite places or movies. Or even complete an empty piece of wall with a tapestry if you want more of a boho theme, for which you can also use command strips to hang.
Knick-knacks and organisation
These are the extra things that you want. So things to fill blank spaces, decorative pieces or things to make your room smell fabulous. You may also want to be super organised, in which case you can get a little bits-and-bobs drawer or bins to put clothes or bags in. With all these things, I would recommend you wait to buy until you arrive because not only will these take up valuable space in your luggage, you don’t really know what room you will be working with, so you won’t know how much space you will have to decorate.
