The dorm room planner is a free online tool for designing your dorm room layout in minutes. Drag and drop a Twin XL bed, desk, dresser and mini-fridge, check what actually fits, and share the plan with your roommate — completely free, no download required.
No steep learning curve. No subscription. Just a fast, accurate dorm room layout planner that lets you get on with designing.
Place a Twin XL bed, desk, dresser, wardrobe and mini-fridge with a single click. Snap items to walls and to each other automatically.
Enter your exact room size in feet and inches and every piece is drawn to scale. See instantly what fits before you order a thing.
Open the dorm designer and start planning immediately. Nothing to install, no account to create, no credit card required.
Download your dorm room layout as an image to send to your roommate, your family, or your RA. No reformatting needed.
Beds, lofted and bunked frames, desks, dressers, wardrobes, nightstands, mini-fridges and more — all sized to standard dorm dimensions.
Every item can be rotated, resized and labelled. Test a dozen dorm room layout ideas in minutes without measuring a single wall twice.
Enter your dorm room dimensions in feet and inches to create an accurate to-scale floor plan.
Drag a Twin XL bed, desk, dresser and mini-fridge from the library into your room.
Move, rotate and resize items until your layout works. Snap to walls for precision.
Download your plan or share a link directly with your roommate before move-in day.
Whether you are moving into a single, splitting a shared room with a roommate, or lofting everything to fit a futon, Free Room Planner gives you the tools to plan it properly.
Map out exactly where the bed, desk and dresser will go before you drive to campus with a car full of boxes. Move furniture on screen instead of dragging it across the floor a dozen times.
Two beds, two desks and two of everything else has to fit in one small room. Draw a mirrored or divided layout together, agree on it, and skip the awkward first-day negotiation over who gets the window.
One mini-fridge, one microwave, one rug — not two. A shared plan makes it obvious what the room can hold, so you and your roommate buy once instead of returning duplicates in week one.
When the room is tiny, height is your best friend. Test a lofted bed with the desk tucked underneath, or bunk both beds to reclaim half the floor, and see the result to scale before you commit.
Every item below exists in the planner’s library at these dimensions — so what you place on screen is what you actually have to fit.
Most dorm planning problems start with a guessed measurement. A typical shared dorm room is only around 12 × 15–19 feet for two students, and at that size a few inches decides whether a desk fits beside the bed or blocks the closet door. The good news is that dorm furniture is unusually standardised: schools buy in bulk, so the bed is almost always a Twin XL, the desk and dresser barely change from one hall to the next, and the mini-fridge you bring is a known quantity. Sketch the room with the standard sizes first, confirm the layout works, and only then worry about the exact products — resizing a piece in the planner takes seconds. Always confirm your own room with your housing office, because the numbers below are planning defaults, not promises.
The Twin XL is the standard dorm bed — 5 inches longer than a regular twin, which is why dorm sheets are their own size.
| Twin XL bed | 38" × 80" |
| Lofted bed footprint | 38" × 80" |
| Bunked beds footprint | 38" × 80" |
The desk is usually the second-biggest piece after the bed, and the one most likely to end up under a lofted frame.
| Standard dorm desk | ~40" × 24" |
| Desk chair (approx.) | 18" × 18" |
| Nightstand | ~18" × 16" |
Some halls give you a freestanding dresser, some a built-in closet, and a few a movable wardrobe — plan for whichever you actually get.
| Dresser / chest | 30" × 18" |
| Wardrobe / armoire | 36" × 24" |
| Nightstand | ~18" × 16" |
The stuff you bring yourself. Easy to forget on the plan, annoying to have nowhere to put on move-in day.
| Mini-fridge | ~20" × 20" |
| Microwave (typical) | ~19" × 14" |
| Storage cube / cart | ~14" × 14" |
There is no single standard, but most rooms cluster around these numbers. Measure yours to be sure.
| Shared room (two students) | ~12' × 15–19' |
| Single room | ~10' × 12' |
| Ceiling height | ~8' |
Drag any of these items from the library and it lands in your room at exactly the size shown here. Know the real dimensions of the fridge or futon you are bringing? Select the item and type the numbers in to match it precisely.
Open the furniture library in the planner →A dorm room is one of the smallest spaces you will ever have to furnish, and the fixed pieces — the bed, the desk, the closet — take up most of it before you add anything of your own. The trick is not cramming more in; it is buying back floor area and going vertical. Every idea below takes about two minutes to test in the planner, which is the whole point: try three arrangements on screen instead of regretting one after you have already hauled everything up four flights of stairs.
Raising the bed is the single biggest move you can make in a small dorm. Loft one bed and the desk, dresser or a small futon slides underneath; bunk two beds and you reclaim an entire bed’s worth of floor. Check your ceiling height — usually about 8 feet — and your school’s loft policy first, then draw the raised footprint so you can see exactly what fits below.
Even without lofting, bed risers lift the frame several inches and turn the space beneath into prime storage for bins, drawers and suitcases. It is the cheapest square footage in the room. Mark the under-bed zone on your plan so you buy storage that actually slides in rather than boxes that stick out into the walkway.
The wall above the desk is usually empty and it is the best storage you are not using. A shelf riser, a hanging organiser or a small over-desk hutch keeps books, chargers and snacks off the work surface without eating any floor. Plan the desk against a free wall so you have somewhere to build up.
A room can be full and still feel liveable if there is a clean path from the door to the window. Aim to keep a continuous walkway of around two feet through the middle of the room, and never let a chair, an open drawer or a fridge door swing into it. Because the planner draws to scale, you can measure that gap on screen before anything blocks it.
Over-the-door hooks, an adhesive shoe rack, a corkboard and a full-length mirror all live on surfaces that cost you no floor at all. Stack the mini-fridge and microwave rather than lining them up side by side. Little vertical wins add up fast in a room this size — and none of them show up as clutter on the floor plan.
Because every piece is drawn to scale, you can test a lofted bed, an under-bed bin or a stacked fridge on screen and know it fits — before you carry a single box up the stairs.
Try a small-space layout in the planner →Two people, one small room, and everything doubled: two Twin XL beds, two desks, two dressers. Almost every shared dorm settles into one of two patterns — mirrored or divided — and the right one depends on the shape of your room and how you and your roommate like to live. The best time to decide is before either of you arrives, while it is still a drawing you can change in seconds rather than furniture you have to shove around. Draw a version, send it over, and let your roommate react to something concrete.
Each side of the room is a reflection of the other: bed against one wall, desk at the foot, dresser to match, with an open walkway down the centre. It is the fairest arrangement — both roommates get the same space, the same light and the same distance to the door — and it is the easiest to agree on because neither side is obviously better. Mirrored layouts suit square and gently rectangular rooms best.
Instead of mirroring, you split the room into two zones — often front and back, or left and right — and each person keeps all their furniture together on their side. A wardrobe, a bookshelf or even a curtain becomes a soft divider that gives each roommate a pocket of privacy. It works well in long, narrow rooms and for roommates on very different schedules, where a bit of separation keeps the peace.
Loft both beds along opposite walls, tuck each desk underneath, and the entire centre of the room opens up as shared space for a rug, a couple of chairs and the fridge. It is the most sociable layout and usually the most floor you can free in a shared room — just confirm both beds can be lofted and that you are both happy climbing up to sleep.
The plan is also a conversation starter. Draw two or three options, export them as images, and send them to your roommate over the summer. Deciding the layout and who brings the shared items — one fridge, one microwave, one rug — before move-in day turns a stressful first afternoon into unpacking into a room you have both already agreed on.
Planning a different space? Use the planner built for it — same canvas, same free export.
Find the best bed position and storage configuration for any bedroom.
Draw any room to scale and arrange furniture in minutes.
Arrange sofas, tables and entertainment units for a shared lounge.
Draw whole-floor plans with multiple rooms, walls, doors and windows.