Rules for decorating your dorm?

<p>I want to put posters/art on my wall, but i'm not exactly sure what the rules are for wall hangings and such. Can anyone help me out?</p>

<p>don’t poke holes in the wall. If you’re in any dorm besides the Parksides, though, and maybe Fluor?, you’ll have a giant corkboard you can put things up on. </p>

<p>I used painters tape to hang my stuff up, and it worked pretty well, though I did take a bit of the wall with me when I was taking my stuff down. Gotta love that $75 fee…</p>

<p>^ lol been there done that.</p>

<p>I ordered some of this tape for my son for him to hang posters
[Dorm</a> Tape must have dorm accessory for hanging wall posters photos magazine cut outs or any dorm room decor stuff](<a href=“http://www.dormco.com/Dorm_Tape_hangs_posters_photos_p/dormco-7120.htm]Dorm”>Dorm Tape must have dorm accessory for hanging wall posters photos magazine cut outs or any dorm room decor stuff)</p>

<p>well I mean painter’s tape isn’t supposed to take the wall with it, so I think it’s the wall’s fault and not mine. Probably USC utilizing planned obsolescence to their advantage… and my dorm building is only four years old!</p>

<p>Three words: WHITE POSTER TACK</p>

<p>All your problems are solved! DO NOT use thumbnails. Tape won’t stick as well. If you have a corkboard in your room (ie New North, Marks) then the tacks are OK – but for hanging things anywhere else, use the WHITE tack. It won’t leave marks and it holds up super well.</p>

<p>yeah they give you yellow tack when you move in but it doesn’t hold much up. And there’s still weird yellow residue when you take it off.</p>

<p>Which is why I said “white.” ;)</p>

<p>And buy a good brand, like 3M. It always worked well for me. The white seems to hold best out of the other colors.</p>

<p>What about hanging things like frames? I’ve been looking online and a lot of people have been saying that the 3M picture hooks work really well. I just don’t want them to take off any paint</p>

<p>no, I know Zelda, I was just reiterating that the yellow stuff is no good. :)</p>

<p>I had no problems with my 3M hook. My roommate did cause she placed it somewhere where it was impossible to take the hook down, but that was her fault, not the wall’s.</p>

<p>Okay–here’s a wild question. Does anyone know the measurement of the twin XL mattress–in height? My son is buying sheets, etc, and he ordered a cool mattress topper but it’s pretty thick. We need to figure how deep the fitted sheet will need to be. Anyway, if you are currently in a dorm room–anyone able to measure the height? (Like 7 inches? 10 inches?) LOL. We’re crazy.</p>

<p>madbean, you are funny! I don’t know the height but I do have a picture of the “model bed” from our tour. It has a sheet on it. I took the picture to get the stacking plastic bins under it so I could remember their size and how many fit. You might be able to get an idea of the thickness from the picture. Let me know if you want me to email the picture to you!</p>

<p>I think 7 inches? I had a feather topper that was maybe 3", and the standard twin XL sheets I bought at Bed Bath & Beyond or wherever fit over the whole thing, though a corner would occasionally pop off.</p>

<p>Thanks NC mom! I’ll pm you for that picture. heh.</p>

<p>And thanks, wisdomsomehow! That’s exactly what my son ordered–a featherbed topper. (btw, was your setup comfy?) It’s good to know your BBB sheets fit–but I am hoping he doesn’t get too many corners popping off.</p>

<p>just an FYI to all of you…</p>

<p>USE the free yellow poster tak that Housing gives you!!!</p>

<p>I’m a housing employee and I can tell you that we DON’T care about the yellow residue that is left over from poster tak. Residents aren’t charged for it… But they do get charged when they make wall damage by trying to cover it up.</p>

<p>People put white-out over the yellow tak to make it look like they didn’t use any. Thus, they were billed at the end of the semester for putting white out on the walls.</p>

<p>Be careful with wall damage.</p>

<p>my feather topper was comfy, I only had two problems, but they were unique to the topper itself, I think. I never had one of those bands to keep the topper on the bed, so it slid around a lot (the mattresses in Parkside at least are pretty slick), and then my featherbed kept poking me with feathers. But I’m sure if I had bothered to go to Target and get a cover and something to keep it in place, those problems would have been solved. :)</p>

<p>I mostly didn’t like the yellow tak because it just didn’t work. It wouldn’t hold up the things I tried to hold up.</p>

<p>It definitely seems like all the freshman I know were billed for wall damage, even ones who didn’t damage their walls at all. It’s hard, because when you do the inventory the first day, unless you’re super specific, you’re probably not going to see all the damage, like tack holes near the ceiling or whatever, so you don’t report them, but you can still get charged for them. And then in Parkside, our whole suite was charged, I guess for something in the common room, but we legitimately only taped things up (and carefully removed the tape and none of the wall) except to the red corkboard wall. Unless it wasn’t a corkboard wall, but we definitely got that impression. </p>

<p>So pretty much just expect at $75 charge for wall damage.</p>

<p>I never got billed for wall damage (or any other damage) when I lived in USC housing. I think it depends on how you report damage when you move in and following up on that same damage at the end of the year.</p>