Tuition: $9,400. Dorm Room Interior Designer: $10,000?

For some students, the days of racing to Bed Bath & Beyond the day before college starts, clutching a 20%-off coupon to snag a colorful crate and a snap-on desk lamp, are long gone.

Today, a wave of undergraduates – especially in the southern states – are hiring interior designers to completely makeover their dorm rooms at a cost of thousands of dollars per room.

And the students are spending nearly double the amount they did just a decade ago, even if they don’t arrive on move-in day with a professional designer by their sides. This year, according to the National Retail Federation, college students spent about $87 billion, a drop from the high of $94 billion last year but significantly more than the $48 billion they spent in 2014. This equates to an average of $1,365 per student, the group reports.

“We’re moving away from Ikea and getting the opposite of fast furniture,” said Ginger Curtis, the founder of Urbanology Designs, a high-end Dallas-based interior design space that works with students preparing to go to college.

She said she can help students on a budget for $7,000 to $8,000, though the costs can grow much higher. Depending on the amount students (or really, their parents) are willing to spend, Curtis will recommend custom fabrics for the curtains, monogrammed pillows, linens, a couch and coffee table, headboard and dust ruffles; handmade murals or removable wallpaper; luxury light fixtures to replace fluorescent lights; and real wood hutches, shelves and cabinets custom-made to fit the room.

When she began her freshman year at the University of Mississippi, where the tuition is $9,400 for in-state students, Lesley Lachman was taken aback by the dorm rooms, which she described as “completely not doable to live in.”

So this year, Lachman, 18, joined forces with Essentials with Eden, an interior design company focused on dorm rooms. Lachman and her roommate spent about $3,000 for the design company to create a modern-looking, New York City-style dorm room with a touch of Southern charm. This included lamps, a custom cabinet, lettering above the bed and curtains in shades of pink, blue and green with gold accents.

“I leave my door open with so much pride and confidence,” Lachman said.

Eden Bowen Montgomery, the founder and owner of Essentials with Eden, got the idea for her dorm-focused design company after her freshman year at Ole Miss. By the time she graduated in 2021 with a degree in integrated marketing communications, Montgomery had already started her business.

This year, she had more than 200 dorm clients, requiring 25 seasonal employees. She charges about $10,000 per room ($5,000 per student) for the full service, which requires Montgomery and her team to arrive on move-in day and put together the rooms from scratch. Montgomery charges $100 for the initial consultation where the young women – because it’s almost always young women – go through fabric options and chat about their goals for their dorm room. Most of the students are looking for the custom bedding and drapery, a fancy cabinet to hide the minifridge and microwave, wallpaper and a matching headboard. But some have bigger expectations.

In a rare case, Joyce Huston, the lead interior designer and co-founder of Decorilla in New York, worked with a male client (she too tends to have female dorm clients), and he requested that his dorm room be converted into an Amazon rainforest.

“He wanted to have living walls, water features, everything,” Huston said. “After a lot of meetings, sharing ideas and setting expectations, we agreed on a gorgeous plan: We added some plants, a breathtaking mural and a funky hanging chair.”

Huston has different design packages, but her flat room prices range from $549 to $1,849, and this fee includes concepts, 3D renderings, custom floor plans and a shopping list.

This elevated dorm room trend started taking off post-COVID, when students realized how important it was for them to be happy and comfortable in their space. TikTok and Instagram enhanced the trend, with students displaying before-and-after pictures of their dorm transformations.

Lachman proudly explains that her dorm TikTok went viral, while Sadie Perkins, an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Alabama, said her designer dorm room – complete with matching desk hutches, pillows, lamps and décor – got about 200 “likes” on TikTok.

Dawn Thomas, a Mississippi interior designer who is one of the leaders of the high-end dorm room trend, started about 20 years ago when her daughters went to college. Every year, she and her three helpers arrive at the dorms on move-in day to install room after room, each one taking three hours to complete. Ole Miss, which is Thomas’ alma mater and also one of the most-desired interior dorm room schools, presents some challenges, however.

“It’s a two-hour wait to get your stuff into the elevator, so I had my move-in team carry everything up nine flights of stairs,” Thomas said.

Montgomery agreed, adding that the technical aspects of move-in day provide the biggest job challenge. Most of her students are also from Ole Miss or the surrounding schools, and they all have the same move-in day. This year, she did 12 full installations, pulling 12-hour days to make it happen.

Remarkably, some parents (or even students themselves) are still DIY-ing the dorms with moderate success.

Edith Gomero’s son arrived at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with his clothing, a couple of posters and a corkboard. Gomero, who lives in Oak Park, Illinois, shopped for his items at Target and at Marshalls.

“He didn’t want the walls to be bare, but he didn’t want extra pillows on the bed or anything,” Gomero said of her son, who is pleased with the way his relatively empty dorm room materialized.

Others who want to try their hand at doing their own dorms should start with the mattress, said Angela Hogan, the director of design at Ashton Woods Homes in Georgia. Add at least a 2-inch mattress pad and a few different sets of quality sheets that can be mixed and matched to look like intentional designs, Hogan said.

Since most dorms don’t provide table or bedside lamps, it’s helpful to grab a few that can be clipped onto the bed or a shelf. Elevating the bed with the help of risers will provide more room for storage, but you’ll probably need to bring a step stool (even better, a step stool with storage) to make it easier to climb aboard.

A closet organizer over the door for toiletries, and a rug should complete the look, Hogan said. If you want to be fancy, you can grab a few tension rods at Target or at Amazon for curtains to cover open closets and for the windows, Hogan said.

Overwhelmed? Are you a senior in high school? The dorm-focused interior designers said they’re already getting calls and deposits for 2025 fall dorms.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.