For the love of comfort: Bedrooms supply sanctuary spaces for students
By Samuel Valencia
You walk over the threshold and pass the coat rack in the entryway through the room with the fine china you aren’t allowed to touch. The family pictures in the hallway announce the presence of everyone in the house. As soon as you round the corner and shut your door, you’re in a completely different zone, buzzing with energy and creativity. It’s your own personal space built by your interests, hobbies, and memories.
This is the power of having your own space, somewhere that is entirely dictated to your ideas, a capsule of your own design.
These four walls of personality and expression take many forms but are always controlled and representative of us, the individual. Decorating a space that is entirely your own allows for creative freedom that isn’t entirely guaranteed in other spaces around the house.
Student Gracy Damaceno is someone that takes her room seriously, with mindful and dedicated care when it comes time to decisions of interior decoration.
“I have BTS posters on my wall, as well as Picasso art,” Damaceno said. “I’ve always wanted to be an artist and honestly, who doesn’t love Picasso? It reminds me of being at a museum which is such a great vibe.”
Posters are the most common wall decorations. There’s one for just about anything you can think of. Whether it’s a favorite band, a map of the world or a game you love, there’s a poster out there waiting for you.
While art pieces and band fandom line her walls now, Damaceno once had other posters up, ones that were more reflective of her interests at the time but are still close to her heart.
“I had anime posters up for a while,” Damaceno said. “I just wanted to change some things around and felt that it was time. Nothing could make me take down the BTS posters though, those were always staying.”
Wall art serves as just one facet for people to express their interests in their room. But on a more personal level, Damaceno keeps a blanket she received as a newborn which has been by her side through thick and thin.
“I got this one blanket as a newborn or when I turned one I think,” Damaceno said. “It’s always been something I kept, because how could I get rid of it when it’s been there for me through all my childhood trauma.”
Others, like Danielle Cygal, prefer to have specific furniture to make themselves comfortable, and some of these choices change the whole vibe of the room for the better.
“I got to a point where I had a lot of stuff put away somewhere, so I took it all out and began to completely redo my room,” Cygal said. “I added things that I knew would make me comfortable, like lights to put up and a salt lamp.”
Comfort is key for people like Cygal. It helps promote that feeling of relief and relaxation when you enter the room. These amenities distinguish it from every other room in the house.
Others love the visual comfort of polaroid pictures, small snapshots of memorable moments, like the ones that Lianne Ma keeps in her room.
“I don’t have much on my walls but the one thing I do have is polaroids of me and all my friends,” Ma said. “It isn’t much, but it’s some of the only things that I have up in my room that have any sort of personal meaning. There are also the flowers that I get that I dry up to keep just so I always have them.”
These spaces don’t need to be overdone with memorabilia to be comforting. Sometimes all it takes is the comfort of those close to you, the ones who make your home feel like a home, no matter how far away they may be. A specific card on Cygal’s wall reminds her of a time with her friends while she was still in high school.
“I was really into stamp making in high school, and I had my friends over doing it one day,” Cygal said. “There was this one specific one with a minion on it and my friend wrote something next to it, in what looks like serial killer handwriting. Definitely, one of those core memories you’ll keep forever.”
This stamp and many other items in Cygal’s room are some of the many ways she is able to reminisce on old times. Artifacts like these remind you of all the good times you had in what feels like a previous life.
Stevie Mancillas keeps two bibles in her room, both of which she holds near and dear to her heart.
“The first one I have is actually one my aunt who passed away had,” Mancillas said. “It had her name engraved in it and was in Spanish as well. It really means a lot that I got to keep it as we were really close. The second one I have is actually a regular bible that has my name engraved in it that I got when I turned 11.”
Mancillas’s room is full of sentimental items, gifts she’s received and awards which highlight her decorated history as an athlete.
“I have tons of posters from anime that I love and Funko pops that I’ve gotten from friends for my birthday,” Mancillas said. “I’m also into sports so I keep all of my medals and trophies up as well to remind myself of my accomplishments.”
While there are students who take real pride and joy in decorating their rooms, there are those who don’t get too into it.
Dalton Craig is a unique example of someone whose bedroom decor isn’t a result of not trying, but not being the proper owner of his space.
“I’m actually renting from somebody right now,” Craig said. “I’ve got some of my own stuff that I like to make it my own place. I have a picture of my grandparents, as well as my extensive collection of books that I’ve had forever.”
Although it may not compare to having total ownership of an area for himself, the little things add up for Craig and give him that sweet feeling of home.
“Yeah it’s weird not entirely having all of my own stuff up,” Craig said. “But the things I do have bring me comfort and make it feel like my own space despite renting it.”
As anyone who has ever tried to reinvent their room knows, it takes time to perfect what goes where, the flow, the angles and the whole process. Conner Nguyen knows this feeling well.
“Yeah I just recently moved and I’ve been super busy with school, so I haven’t had the time to do anything,” Nguyen said. “I have a picture of me and friends from a while ago that I have currently. I also used to have posters up before I moved but it wasn’t anything significant.”
Nguyen’s sparse decor also stems from his personal need to be organized. He always wants to know where something is.
“I like to stay organized and keep track of where my stuff is. If I can’t find it, I get annoyed,” Nguyen said. “If I do ever put anything up, it’s usually to try and make room for the other stuff that I have.”
Disorganization seems to be a leading reason for a lack of decoration, affecting students, Sofia Yip as well.
“Yeah I’ll be honest I’m pretty disorganized, but it’s that and the lack of time as well,” Yip said. “I don’t really see it as that big of a deal. Like yeah, it’s my own space but I don’t put too much thought into what goes where.”
But can disorganization and that lack of emphasis on decoration serve as a representation of a personality too?
Ma’s previous lack of decorations comes as a mix of disinterest and time, but overall does little to affect Ma’s view of her room. The few things she does have are just to make sure she isn’t staring blankly at a white wall.
“I don’t really have any interest in designing my room or taking the time to do that,” Ma said. “I have some things here and there on my wall that I just wanted to put up at the time because I felt like it, but they’re the only things I have on my walls really.”
While our rooms are enjoyable extensions of our personalities, that enjoyment can be polluted by spending too much time in our spaces, like when we have no other place to go. The COVID-19 lockdown was a prime example of this, shifting our view of home, and making our room one of the only places where we could go safely.
Our sanctuaries quickly became flooded with everything else in our lives. Our rooms became our schools, our workplaces, and our cells. With nowhere else to go, everything followed us to the one place we found sanctuary in. For some it was annoying and for others, it was liberating because it gave them a chance to experiment with their own area. Our rooms became our cells, our schools, our workspace, and basically everything essential to us.
Damaceno approached “shelter in place” as an opportunity to reinvent her room and finally overhaul her previous punk aesthetic.
“I found myself getting irritated with how my room looked because of how much time I was spending in it,” Damaceno said. “I decided to take down the stuff I had up previously and just change everything. I love change so it just made sense to me.”
While Damaceno went for change just for fun, Cygal decided to change because she didn’t want to get tired of seeing the same old things in her room.
“I had to make sure that I was comfortable and didn’t get bored of what was in there,” Cygal said. “If I didn’t, I think I would’ve lost my mind having to stare at all the same things all the time.”
Mancillas took the change in stride and worked to make sure she could differentiate her room from her workspace. No longer was this just her space to relax and wind down in, it was her workspace as well.
“Staying on task was hard because it’s my room and previously it was mainly for me to relax,” Mancillas said. “Making and acknowledging that change was probably the hardest part. But once I got it, it was a piece of cake.”
For Yip, The hard part wasn’t staying inside the whole time, it was not being able to go outside. She said that being locked inside didn’t change her views of her room, but it sure made her want to get up and go do anything that wasn’t staying inside her room.
“When I could finally go out again, I was so excited,” Yip said. “I was so tired of being in my room all the time that I was just ready to go do literally anything that wasn’t inside my room.”
COVID lockdowns affected all of us, and all we had were the things that surrounded us in our own little bubbles. These manifested themselves in change and as a result, led to further changes and experimentation on what represents us.
Our bedrooms and personal spaces change like the tides. They are like mood rings, changing in color and composition to reflect how we’re feeling at the time. They are representations of who are, the best of who are, highlighting the things and the memories that bring us joy. Without our creativity, expression and imagination, these four walls are just four walls.
