The $20,000 dorm room has arrived. Why Gen Z is taking its home away from home so seriously.

For Julie Beth Fox and Kari Cabale, designing the perfect dorms for their newly minted college freshmen was an act of love.

The two stay-at-home moms from Nashville first met when their kids, now in their 20s, were in kindergarten. They became fast friends, going to church together and supporting one another as they raised their combined six children. After years of coming up with fun and easy crafts and designing decor for various high school events, they were eager to flex their creativity to make their kids' rooms perfect, but within reason.

"I wanted her to be confident, and have all the things," Fox tells me of her oldest daughter, who attended Mississippi State. "But I also knew that I was going to set the precedent with her, and if I blew the budget, I would have to continue that. I spent a lot of time thinking it can be elegant, it can be elevated, but it doesn't have to be expensive."

The friends began helping out other moms in their community who found the process of outfitting a dorm room a bit overwhelming, and they loved it so much they decided to start their own company, which they named Petal and Pine Dorm Design . They weren't sure what to expect when they officially launched in June, but the response and the number of clients they have worked with have been beyond their wildest expectations.

"We're kind of overwhelmed and blown away, to be honest," Fox says. "We just thought we'd throw it out there, and we were quite surprised."

Their success is likely due to the fact that dorm design, as a concept, has gone viral. Gone are the days when you'd roll up at your first college living space with an extra-large twin "bed in a box" from Bed, Bath & Beyond and maybe a cute lamp or a poster and call it a day. Now, a perfectly aesthetic, curated dorm can take weeks or even months to create. Some students go all out, spending big bucks to make it perfect.

Beautifully decorated dorms have been trending on social media, particularly TikTok, for a few years, but this year they've hit the cultural zeitgeist in a new way. After a few TikTok videos of elaborately designed dorms being revealed to their gasping undergrads went viral, the internet at large began to obsess over the perfectly curated color schemes, matching monogrammed pillows and, one can assume, hefty price tags for touches like custom built-ins and a shelf to hold their designer bags .

The fascination follows a broader online trend toward a cultural obsession with big public university culture in the South (see: # RushTok ). But the dorm designers I spoke to also believe that the desire for a custom and comfortable room is unique to the current generation of college students. Sure, they want to post beautiful photos to social media to keep up with their peers, but they also value their personal space in a different way.

"Having a beautiful dorm space helps me to feel more at home," Kamryn Hall, a 19-year-old sophomore at Florida State, tells me. When she's not studying, Hall creates content geared toward other college students and has been sharing her journey of designing her second-year dorm room.

"It isn't necessarily about the aesthetics," she says about her choice to invest in her space, which includes a pink ruffled duvet and a custom LED name sign . "It's more about self-expression and getting to showcase everything that I love in a space that's mine and having some feel of individuality, especially when you're in a shared space."

Shannan Bower has worked as an interior designer in Fort Worth, Texas, for 18 years, and added dorm services to her repertoire several years ago. She thinks the fact that Gen Z spent so much time indoors and at home during the pandemic gave them an appreciation of " how your environment can affect the way you feel."

"It's not just about making something pretty for social media," she tells me. "Students want personalization, comfort and a space they can come back to at the end of a long day and genuinely feel at home in. A dorm doesn't have to just be four walls, a bed and a few posters anymore."

Still, for those of us who grew up in that "four walls and a few posters" era, the juxtaposition between what we had and what we see online now can be hilariously stark. Content creator Melanie Ressa, who is 35, jokingly joined the conversation on Instagram by posting a photo of her old dorm, which had one piece of "art": a beer pong poster. She's endlessly fascinated by the rooms she keeps seeing online, she says, because she considers college to be a time when your life should be anything but curated.

"My hot take is that these girls have their entire lives to be adults," she says. "Dorm rooms are not supposed to be perfectly crafted design spaces. What happened to the display of liquor bottle trophies, stolen street signs and posters bought from Spencer's?"

Then there's the debate over costs. After videos of "dorm reveals" from one designer, Shelly Gates of Mississippi, went viral on TikTok last year, she revealed to People that her services can cost up to $20,000 for a custom room. But Fox and Cabale say you don't have to spend a fortune, and most people don't. The extremes may be going viral, but their clients are shopping on Amazon and at HomeGoods (their consultations start at just $100).

Bower advises her clients to invest the most in the items that will be functional for the most important parts of college life: studying and sleeping (what did you think I was going to say?).

"Invest in comfortable bedding and a good mattress topper because sleep is incredibly important for a college student," she says. "Make sure you have functional storage so you're not constantly living in clutter, and create a study space where you can actually spread out and focus."

Fox and Cabale have found that creating a beautiful living space, with the help of parents and/or a decorator, is often a cathartic experience for their young clients. Leaving home and attending college, after all, is a huge life change, and Fox likes to believe that making something cozy and chic can ease jitters for both moms and daughters before they step into the next chapter.

"We feel like it's giving the moms [a chance to] bridge that gap between them being at home and launching them," she says. "It's also giving the girls a lot of confidence and comfort in their new space. … They're really proud of what they're creating."