Envy Apartment

When Young Huh left for college in the 1980s, she brought “one giant poster of The Cure, bedding from the local bed-and-bath store and maybe some desk accessories.” Like so many Gen-Xers, her one creative touch was asking a supermarket for leftover milk crates to use as bookshelves. Now an interior designer , she has helped her own children decorate their dorm rooms, and she’s amazed at the design expectations among college students . “It’s a level of decorating that did not even exist in my world view when I was in school,” Huh said. Today, there are lots of products “that cater entirely to the college crowd,” she said. Interior designer Jon Call sees the same phenomenon: While his main business is designing luxury homes in Manhattan, he also gets asked to design college living spaces . “This new generation has grown up under the influence of home magazines, HGTV and the virtues of ‘ democratic design .’ They understand the value of creating unique spaces for themselves,” he sai...