Most of the goods I bought for my dorm when I was an 18-year-old entering college were crap. Scratchy, thin towels, a flaccid pillow that was a torture device at Guantanamo in a past life, a vindictive ironing board that only ever wanted to close if there was an ill-placed hand or neck between its legs.
You don’t have to make the same mistake. Decent stuff isn’t that much more money, and if you take into account that you’ll want to keep our recommendations for years and years, it’ll probably save you money in the long run. To that end, we’ve gathered the best selection of dorm room essentials, from bedsheets to shower sandals to cozy towels.
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Quick Look at College Dorm Essentials
- Best Bedsheets – Sleep Mantra Percale Cotton Bedsheets
- Best Pillow – Sleep Innovations Memory Foam Pillow
- Best Cozy Blanket – L.L.Bean Wicked Plush Sherpa Throw
- Best Towels – Room Essentials Performance Plus Bath Towels
- Best White Noise Machine – LectroFan High Fidelity Sound Machine
- Best Laundry Bag – Brightroom Mesh Laundry Bag
- Best De-Wrinkler – Conair Turbo ExtremeSteam 1875W Steamer
- Best Shower Sandals – Target-Brand Flip Flops
- Best Clothes Hangers – Room Essentials 18-Pack Plastic Hangers
- Best Handheld Vacuum – Shark WandVac
- Best Tool Kit – Amazon Basics Household Tool Set
- Best Fan – Vornado 630 Mid-Size Room Fan
- Best Air Purifier – Coway Airmega AP-1512HH
How We Evaluated
Dorm rooms are notoriously cramped, so all our picks had to be compact enough not to take up too much precious space in your new shoebox home. Next, durability was important. It’s no good if you have to replace anything mid-way through the year.
And everything had to be affordable, too—not necessarily cheap, but a good value. It’s easy to fall into the trap of buying cheap, and then having to buy new stuff a year or two later after everything’s fallen apart (it’s almost a college rite of passage). Not on our watch: all our picks are good enough that you can use them for the rest of college and even into your post-graduation years.
Best Bedsheets – Sleep Mantra Percale Cotton Bedsheets
Never heard of percale? It’s the best material for bedsheets, in my humble opinion. If you’ve ever wondered why hotel sheets feel so uniquely smooth and crisp compared to the typical cotton sheets at home, it’s because hotels are fond of percale. Its tighter weave feels cooler in the summer, but I’ve been sleeping on this Sleep Mantra set year-round for two years. They’ve held up beautifully without any signs of wear, and they feel great against bare skin.
Best Pillow – Sleep Innovations Memory Foam Pillow
Side-sleeping slumberjacks, rejoice. This memory foam pillow is one of the few I’ve found that lets me sleep on my side without any neck pain. Feather pillows and those stuffed with cotton padding always leave me with a sore neck. It’s not overly warm like many other memory foam pillows, either. I flip mine each night before bed, and I’ve yet to see any noticeable, permanent indentations after four years.
Best Cozy Blanket – L.L.Bean Wicked Plush Sherpa Throw
Throws are blankets made for wrapping around yourself when the heater isn’t pulling its weight. Mine’s kept me warm through four New York winters, including a 24-hour power outage in December. It’s so ludicrously poofy and soft, I sometimes feel funny running my hand over it as I pass by its permanent resting spot on my couch, as if I’m pulling a drive-by head pat on a barnyard goat.
Best Towels – Room Essentials Performance Plus Bath Towels
These Target-brand towels are what I’ve been using for the past six years, and they’ve held up without any unraveling or noticeable loss of plushness. And even after repetitive washing, their color remains rich and vibrant. Why bother with thin, scratchy towels that soak up barely any water when you could lounge in these for barely any more coin?
Best White Noise Machine – LectroFan High Fidelity Sound Machine
Your dorm will be noisier than a dump truck driving through a tissue paper factory. I can guarantee it. If you need quiet in order to fall (and stay) asleep, buy a sound machine.
This one from Amazon has 20 noises to choose from, including white, pink, and brown noise, as well as typical fan noises. Digital sound machines are tricky, because if patterns of noise are repeated and played on loop, you’ll notice it. And if you’re like me, it’ll distract you from falling asleep. The LectroFan won my money because I’ve never been able to pick up on any distracting repetition in its noises. I just toggle on the optional 60-minute timer, fall asleep, and let it turn off as I slumber.
Best Laundry Bag – Brightroom Mesh Laundry Bag
Don’t spend much on a laundry bag. It’ll get snagged, overloaded, and potentially lost. I’m on my second one of these, and I get two or three years out of each before successive overloading frays them. The drawstring cinches tightly so that I’ve never had anything fall out, and it’s large enough that I’ve been able to get two weeks of dirty clothes, bedsheets, and towels into it. With that much weight in it, just be careful to handle it gently. You can just hang it from a wall hook and use it as your hamper, too.
Best De-Wrinkler – Conair Turbo ExtremeSteam 1875W Steamer
I’m a big fan of steaming clothes—it’s a lot less labor-intensive than ironing, and you won’t need to store a clunky ironing board, either. At 1875 Watts, customers say this Conair steamer is powerful enough to de-wrinkle even thick fabric, and they report steaming up to 10 pieces of clothing before having to refill it with water.
The silicone band on the attachment tool is a rarely seen detail on steamers, and it helps keep the fabric taut so that you don’t accidentally steam wrinkles into it. I’ve had a few steamers that lacked (and desperately needed) that function. Need to pleat your khakis for that presentation on the Anthropocene? There’s a creasing tool for that, too.
Best Shower Sandals – Target-Brand Flip Flops
Grab yourself a pair of the Goodfellow & Co. Brent, in men’s sizing, or Shade & Shore Sydney, in women’s sizing, to wear in the dorm showers so that you don’t end up with a nasty foot fungus (the threat is real).
I bought a pair of the Brents for wearing in campgrounds’ gnarly showers, and while I wouldn’t want to walk any real distance in them, their foam footbeds were plenty comfortable enough standing for a long shower. Water flowed right off their foam and plastic construction (like with the Sydneys), so they dried off quickly after showers.
Best Clothes Hangers – Room Essentials 18-Pack Plastic Hangers
Most hangers have little to distinguish them. These Room Essentials hangers from Target get my recommendation because I’ve never had a problem with them breaking or bending, even after years of use. Unlike hangers without a bottom bar, you can hang pants on them, and they’re strong enough to handle most everyday garments. (Pro tip: Don’t hang up knits, such as sweaters, or leather jackets because they’ll stretch. Fold them instead.) Everything else, though, can go on a hanger.
And for those extra-heavy items, Room Essentials sells an inexpensive five-pack of Super Heavyweight Hangers that hold up my five-pound winter coats without any bending or breaking.
Best Handheld Vacuum – Shark WandVac
Get yourself this cordless hand vacuum for cleaning up small spills and routine messes. Compared to other hand vacs I’ve used, this one had enough power to suck most particulate matter out of mid-pile carpet, from crumbs to sand. It takes up less space than most, too, since it stores vertically in its dock, where it also recharges.
At 1.4 pounds it’s pretty light, and its slim design fits into tight spaces—such as behind bed frames and desks—more easily than other more ungainly hand vacuums are able to. The push of a button opens the dust bin for emptying, and the two tool attachments (brush and wide nozzle) are a nice touch as well.
Best Tool Kit – Amazon Basics Household Tool Set
Whether you’re hanging wall art or putting together your new bed frame, you’re going to need some basic tools at some point. This tool set has everything you’re likely to need in a well-organized carrying case that you can tuck away until needed.
There’s a hammer for nailing up posters and photos, scissors and a box cutter for opening packages, a tape measure for figuring out how to rearrange your room a thousand times, and screwdrivers and hex keys for assembling and periodically retightening furniture—plus a few other items that’ll save you the time spent going door to door asking to borrow a tool, “just this one, last time.”
Best Fan – Vornado 630 Mid-Size Room Fan
This floor fan is one of the best improvements I’ve made to my living room this summer. Circulating air makes a drastic improvement to warm, stuffy rooms, and this model is the best combination of power and quietness.
On low and medium, the Vornado 630 is rather quiet—there’s just a pleasant white noise. If you’re hurting for floor space so badly that you don’t think you have room for it, then buy the Vornado 460 instead. Slightly smaller, it can fit on top of a desk. I also have a 460 that sits on my dresser and moves enough air around my bedroom on the lowest of its three settings, and it’s relatively quiet (until you put it on high).
Best Air Purifier – Coway Airmega AP-1512HH
Large rooms need larger air purifiers, but this bedroom unit is perfect for a dorm room. It’s whisper-quiet, and even six feet from my head at night I have no problems falling asleep to its barely perceptible puffs of air.
It has an automatic mode that ramps up the power when its air quality monitor detects high levels of particulate. Its HEPA filter scrubs the air of 99.97percent of particulate, bacteria, mold, and more, and the carbon filter captures weird smells, which dorms are full of.
