Parents Justify Spending Up to $20K Decorating Dorm Rooms (Exclusive)

It’s the Thursday before Ole Miss move-in day, and Monicah Wells can’t believe it’s all finally coming together. If you asked her when she initially started planning her freshman daughter’s dorm room, Monicah’s first answer would probably be 18 years ago, when Chrimson was born.

“Having a daughter and living in the South and all the things, everything about her has been over the top and all that,” the proud mom tells PEOPLE. But in terms of actual hands-on planning and mood-board making, Monicah started collecting inspiration for Chrimson’s dorm room about three years ago, when she joined the Facebook group Dorm Rooms of Mississippi and Beyond.

The page — which was started by Tamara Wingerter and Stephanie Swedenburg Knight in 2020 — boasts over 76,000 members from the South and — as the name suggests — all across the United States. Most are like Monicah, soon-to-be empty nesters looking for tips on how to best situation their kids in a new home.

And even one brief scroll through the Facebook page pulls up countless enviable set-ups outfitted with far more than anyone could expect to fit in a freshman dorm room: gold gilded framed photos, ornate glass lamps on pristine white bookshelves and area rugs one might expect to find in a hotel lobby.

The before-and-after photos are striking, demonstrating just how much some of these crafty, keen-eyed parents — most of whom have no prior design experience — can make of the drab dorm layout that greets students on move-in day.

Almost all of the rooms are perfectly symmetrical, a true testament to perfect coordination between roommates’ parents. Color schemes weave a wordless Bildungsroman, contrasting youthful pinks and purples with more mature hues of blue, gold and gray to fit the duality of the freshman spirit.

When Monicah first joined Dorm Rooms of Mississippi and Beyond, she fell in love with the idea of sending off Chrimson with the best possible pad. Their family home in Hattiesburg, Miss., is only about four hours from the Ole Miss campus, but there’s no reason her dorm shouldn’t feel like home all the same.

“I just kind of always knew that we would do a room of that nature for a while, but now it’s real life and it’s actually happening,” she shares. “We’re picking up the U-Haul on Sunday and leaving Monday.”

Chrimson and her Ole Miss roommate went to high school together, so Monicah’s decorating dreams didn’t stutter over any awkward mom-to-mom introductions before they started collecting pieces. Plus, both approached the process with the same fervor, since their daughters are both of their first kids to go off to college.

While Monicah’s spent nearly two decades mapping out her daughter’s dorm room, she joined forces with the roommate’s mother at the beginning of this year.

“We started just thinking about what the girls like, and they were sharing on Pinterest what they like and their ideas,” Monicah recalls to PEOPLE. “I put together a vision board for the girls to kind of look at everything, and they approved it all. The roommate’s mom and I met, and we did a spreadsheet of every single thing that we would need for this room.”

That spreadsheet proved to be their bedroom building bible. They organized it using the floor plan, dividing up what they needed for the closets, the bathroom, the bedroom and the living space. Monicah says she then went through her “trusty little spreadsheet,” found links to everything they had to buy, totaled the estimated costs and came up with a baseline budget for the two moms to split.

“I made a joke that we would have to reconcile it later because I’m pretty sure we’re way over budget, but it’s neither here nor there,” she says with a laugh. She hesitates to say how much they ended up spending on the entire room and ultimately offers a range instead: somewhere between $20,000 and $10,000.

“We just want them to be in a fun space that allows them to have the best possible experience at college,” Monicah adds.

While she admits they might’ve exceeded their budget a bit, Monicah does believe she saved their wallets in some capacity by curating the space without outside help.

“A lot of girls will hire a designer to do all of that for them, or a lot of the parents will,” she reasons. “I felt that I had enough knowledge from the [Facebook] group and enough eye for design … to sort of save that step.”

Indeed, professional insight doesn’t come cheap. This back-to-school season, PEOPLE spoke to Shelly Gates, a Mississippi mom who quit her job as an elementary school teacher to design dorm rooms full-time. Through her business, Mary Margaret Designs, Gates charges between $5,000 and $20,000 to make over collegiate living spaces.

Instead of having a professional source furniture, carpeting and curtains and hire a team to install the room before student arrival — all of which Gates’ fee covers — Monicah handled it all herself. She did consider hiring a designer at one point, but by avoiding the price of outside help, Monicah feels like she was able to “pour that money into other things” for the dorm room.

However, looking back on the very involved planning process, she admits that paying an extra thousand dollars might’ve been something to consider in the interest of saving some sanity.

“Other people have come up and they’re like, ‘Monicah, would you do it again?’ I’m like, ‘Absolutely not. Hire the designer next time. It’s totally worth it,'” she tells PEOPLE. “But I have always loved that thrifting, and my schedule’s a little bit flexible because I’m a realtor … I feel like if I didn’t have that flexibility with my job, I definitely would need someone to fill the gap there.”

Dorm Rooms of Mississippi and Beyond isn’t just for parents who are willing to spend thousands, though. In fact, many posts feature tips on how to save, with people sharing discount codes, budget-friendly hacks and links to Amazon dupes of otherwise expensive items. Some parents advertise items for resale, furnishings they can promise will fit in a specific residence hall room, since they originally bought them for their kids’ rooms at that same school.

Founding member Tamara is overjoyed to see how the page has become an asset to any empty nester, though she had no idea what it would become when she started it five years ago. In 2020, she was moving her son into what she thought was a “nice dorm for a boy,” but when she saw some of his female classmates’ spaces, she was overcome with inspiration.

Her daughter Marissa didn’t start her freshman year at Mississippi State until 2024, but Tamara couldn’t wait to start a Facebook group where parents could share dorm photos.

When it was finally time for Marissa’s college move-in day, Tamara gave her the long-awaited full treatment, a process which she told PEOPLE all about last year. Sophomore Marissa demanded a little less extravagance, funk and flair for her second-year room, which is in a slightly less flexible space. Still, Tamara got to tap her learned expertise and natural creativity to help set up again this August.

“There’s still elements of over-the-top: the custom pillows, extensive headboards. Some pieces [are] custom. Marissa still wanted all of that, but the girls know that there’s just not as much as you can do with these older dorms, and they’re okay with that,” Tamara shares. “They had the top level excess, freshman year, and it’s okay to dial it down a little bit for sophomore year and still have an absolutely beautiful room. And she did. I think it came out gorgeous.”

Tamara was also able to further prove the ethos of the group, that investing in a freshman dorm room isn’t wasteful, at least not if it’s planned correctly. They were able to reuse some of the pricier items, like Marissa’s headboard, which is still in perfect condition. They repurposed her pillow inserts — another expensive freshman year buy — but changed up the look with new fabric covers.

“We’re getting now minimum two years use out of them,” Tamara shares. “Some of the big ticket stuff that we purchased last year, like the desk hutch and the console table, we sold those … at the end of the year and made back almost all of the money that we invested in them.”

Custom artwork is one of the most consistent — and often most expensive — trends seen in photos of dorms featured on the Facebook page. Given the bespoke nature of the piece, which is often made to match a specific color scheme, it’s not the easiest thing to sell after use. Freshmen roommates often end up living with other people the following year, so what happens to the artwork created for a pair of people and their specific living space?

According to Tamara, that statement piece can still be worth the investment. Marissa’s roommate’s mother actually made the one that matched their blue, green and pink freshman room dorm, and understandably, the artist decided to reclaim her piece.

“She didn’t want to part with it. I wanted it so badly, but she wanted it and she painted it,” Tamara shares. “I told her, ‘If you ever decide you want to sell it or give it away, I want it.'”

For Marissa’s sophomore year, Tamara commissioned a new piece from an artist she found through her Dorm Rooms of Mississippi and Beyond Facebook group. She wanted Marissa to have something that would work in her sophomore year room and in any future accommodation she may have.

“We chose not to do what they call ‘dorm arts,’ like the butterflies and the heart and all that stuff. My daughter and her current roommate — who is her sorority sister — actually studied abroad together in Italy this summer,” Tamara tells PEOPLE. “I was like, ‘What if we did some pieces that commemorated their visit?’ Because they were just in love with Italy.”

Shawn Hodges Creative Arts created a painting based on photos the roommates took while they were living in Florence and vacationing on the Amalfi Coast. Custom artwork isn’t cheap, but in Tamara’s opinion, it’s just another way to add long-term value to dorm room purchases.

“Now Marissa has two gorgeous paintings that she will have the rest of her life to commemorate her time spent in Italy,” Tamara concludes. “I mean, those are so worth the investment.”