Your bed is quite possibly the most important thing in your dorm room. You need to be able to sleep in order to do your work, and in order to have enough energy to have fun afterwards.
Mattresses and Mattress Pads for Dorm Beds
Most college dorm beds are adequate. If you have back problems, you might find it necessary to bring a mattress from home. However, mattresses are very bulky and may not fit the bed frame when you get there. Either of these factors may make bringing a mattress from home impractical. Easier to do is a mattress pad, which is placed over the mattress in order to make it more comfortable.
Mattress pads have to fit the mattress that they’re going to be placed on, and you probably won’t know if you’re going to need one until you’re at college lying on the bed. For these reasons, it may be better to wait until you’re actually at university before picking a mattress pad. At least they are easier to get back to the university with you than a full mattress. You can probably get one home on the bus if you really try, although it will be bulky and awkward. It’s not going to fit on a bicycle, so if you can find a friend or parent with a car it will make getting the mattress pad to your dorm room much easier.
Dorm Bedding: Sheets, Blankets, Quilts and Duvets
While my university in Canada provided blankets, I found that they did not provide enough warm bedding for winter – unless you are supposed to keep the heat on all night which seems very wasteful of energy. Some dorm rooms are drafty, which makes warm bedding even more important, and then there are also power outages to consider. All in all, warm bedding is a very useful thing to bring with you.
A duvet or quilt is probably the simplest type to bring. Duvets usually have covers put on them. These covers are available in many different colors and patterns. Because they are so large and visible, it’s important to pick something that you like and that either goes with the rest of the room or that you are willing to build a color scheme around. Extra sheets are also useful – having two sets makes changing the sheets simpler, since you don’t have to do laundry the same day in order to have sheets on the bed that night. If you bring sheets, check that they will fit the bed. Some college dorm beds are extra-long, and need extra-long sheets to cover them.
There’s another reason to bring bedding… the blankets colleges provide are often ugly. They may be white cotton, gray wool, or even a hideous off-pink color that makes you wonder if a previous student used them for dye experiments.
Bedding should be machine washable and dryable. The inside of a duvet probably doesn’t have to be, but its cover must be. Even if it doesn’t touch your skin, what happens if you spill coffee or soup on it? There isn’t room to hang bedding to dry in a dorm room. I’ve tried hanging a sheet over the door, but there isn’t enough time for it to dry before nightfall. It really does have to be machine dryable if it’s going to be washed at all.
Transporting or Storing Dorm Bedding
Bedding is probably one of the bulkiest items you will be bringing from home, but it’s worth it. Fortunately, many universities have storage where students can leave things over the summer until the start of next semester. Check if your university offers this, because it’s really useful if they do. Of course, if you brought the duvet off your bed at home, you’ll probably want to bring it back with you.
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