Decorate your room under a theme

When living somewhere far away from home, in an environment that feels very strange, we feel like making our surroundings more familiar. Everyone has their own way to decorate their room at home. When it comes to going out of our comfort zone and the cozy familiar surroundings of our home the living accommodation can become a burden at times. The best way to make homesickness go away is to decorate the space allotted to us in a way that suits us the best.

Each person’s like and dislikes are different, so I am not going to tell you how you should be decorating your space. The choice and style is completely yours. Here I am trying to explain to you how exactly you can fit in everything that you need into the small space that has been assigned to you, be it in your hostel room, or a room of your PG (paying-guest). Things are very tricky when it comes to customizing your allotted area in the exact fashion that represents, You.

Step 1. Define your Personality: So the first step for you will be to define your personality. The proper definition of your personality is not always easy to acquire. Let me help you to understand it. What you like/dislike, which colors, patterns and designs soothe you and remind you of home, what things you want, what things you really really need and how you want to place all the stuff you own, is needed to be listed. No two people like the same things. So when you list out all these things you will know how different your personality is from the other person with whom you are going to share your room with. Your personality also includes your habits so think about them for a while. Do you like your room to be messy or you want things to be arranged up in a proper manner. Do you worry about your cleanliness and also of your surroundings? Keep it in mind; these are two different things, cleanliness and messy/non-messy. People can be messy but they may like to groom themselves and take care of themselves very much. It depends of what kind of person you are.

Step 2. Decide : After a list of things that you will be bringing along with you or the things that you own has been made, it’s time to think how to place them. If you are sharing a room with another person then it means that your space will be limited to that part of the area only, that doesn’t belong to him. So let’s say you have a bed, a study-desk and a cupboard, the standard things we find in a room. Students need to make arrangements for their books and how they will be stacked.
If you are a person who likes to spend more time on the bed rather your desk, then that will be the deciding factor of your theme to your space. Bed-lovers need to focus more on the designs they see on the bed, the various pillows, cushions (big & small) bed sheet color, patterns and designs on the pillow cover etc. Everything needs to be YOUR way. Go out in the market pick out that bed sheet you lay eyes on and fall in love with, the pillow covers and cushion covers also. You should also try to have a lot of pillows on your small single bed, one pillow for sleeping and a bigger one to lie on while studying. If you are a guy and do not like so much of cheekiness with the pillows you may improvise. But the basic idea is to bring in your color and style into the approach of how everything appears. A theme cannot be created unless; you know what you want in your “space”.

A desk-person can focus more on the decorating of the area around the desk. In most cases the desk provided in a hostel or pg is very small, so clearly you can’t keep any books on it, what you can keep is things like a Pen Stand containing all your favorite pens, or a small notepad to jot down important things to remember. Also the desk should be placed against a wall. So that no one can distract your attention while you are working. On the wall facing the desk you can put up posters of inspiration or reminders or photographs of loved ones or a time table or schedule of work or a million more things depending on your taste. You can also shed a few bucks to buy a soft board and put up all the notes, photographs (collage of photographs) etc, and decorate it with small low power LED lights and normal junk (ribbon etc) to make it look attractive.

Step 3. Important elements: Most people focus only on decorating their beds, but if you have enough time and can put some effort, it is best to do up both the desk and the bed. The third element is the cupboard. It is the most prominent element and most important too. It’s important that you have a “theme” inside your cupboard as well. Either you are a guy or a girl, it’s important that you use this limited space to the best possible manner. Keep the lower sections of the cupboard for heavier things like books, laptop, and other important day to day useful items. Stack clothes in the rack that is visible at first sight on opening the cupboard, put all your shirts, suits (girls), trousers and pants/jeans on hangers.
The inside of the cupboard door should always have an inspiring quote or, poster, or aim of life, or a photograph of a loved one or anything that makes you feel better and inspires to every morning to keep going strong and keep moving forward.
Apart from all this, you can consider working on the lighting as well. There are many affordable lighting techniques which you can use to bring in a new flavour to the room décor. You can use Zero watt- colourful bulbs, night lamps and table lamp for the desk. You can bring in LED and CFL lights instead of Bulbs and tube lights to save power consumption on the routinely used “white” light. You can also put up some easy to buy/make lamps that are very affordable around your bed area to make it look beautiful.

You can also customize the area by bringing in self made or bought from market items that define you. For example the initials of your name, a book rack, paintings etc to decorate your space. ( See image for illustration).

Step 4. Bring in all the stuff!! Once you have decided on what all you will bring along and how and where you will put all the things you are good to go. Place everything precisely where you have decided place everything according to your convenience and trust me when everything is set up, you will have your theme already made and executed. Any room can be decorated with a theme like a Disney theme or a Fairy theme or anything, but the basic touch of our own personality is important to create the Real Theme!
Happy Decorating! 😀