We Asked Hundreds of College Students for the 11 Dorm Essentials You Need — Here Are Their Best Picks
See all the dorm must-haves — from mattress toppers to storage — that real college students swear by for making your space cozy and functional. Check out the full list of Dorm Therapy Awards 2025 winners!
Decorating a dorm room so that it’s comfortable, functional, and cute is no easy task. There are so many brands of dorm essentials to choose from, and we’re here to help make the dorm shopping process so much less stressful.
That’s why we put out the Dorm Therapy Awards 2025 survey from May 21 through June 30, where we asked hundreds of real college students to recommend their favorite products — and we’re sharing them all with you.
What Is the Dorm Therapy Awards?
Our first-ever Dorm Therapy Awards is the ultimate guide to shopping for your dorm. We went straight to the source to determine our winners for the Dorm Therapy Awards, surveying more than 360 college students and recent grads to learn about their absolute favorite products they used in their dorms.
We determined a winning product for 11 dorm categories, including the best mini fridge, best twin XL sheets, and more. We chose our product categories by looking at the most important purchases you’ll make for a dorm — from practical needs like bedding to very-nice-to-haves like a coffee maker.
We also identified runners-up for seven of the 11 categories due to the high ratings and number of recommendations, so you can choose what’ll work best for you.
How We Selected Our Winners
As you might expect, there was a ton of variety in the different products that students recommended. To determine the best suggestions for products with a wide variety of recommendations, we first looked at the items with 10 ratings; students rated their recommendations on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being a product they loved and would “definitely recommend.”
From there, we looked at how many students recommended specific models/styles for each product category, and we narrowed down our pool to the most popular picks. We then took into account the average ratings of each product and took into consideration the students’ reviews (and in some cases reviews on retail websites) to determine the winners.
Why You Should Trust Us
Dorm Therapy is dedicated to helping students at every point of their college experience, and that includes shopping for their dorms! We’re a website powered by real college student contributors (who have recently experienced dorm living) and experienced editors, creating service-first content about navigating life at school and sharing vetted product recommendations for dorms and college apartments.
See here for the full list of Dorm Therapy Awards 2025 winners.
