The halls room is a known quantity. Magnolia walls, a single bed, a desk pushed under the window, a radiator with a mind of its own and a ban on anything adhesive. You get it for nine months and you cannot change a thing about it structurally.

What you can change is what you put in it. The list below is not about making a student room look like a shoot. It is about the small number of objects that make a rented box feel like yours by the second week, and that survive the move out, the house share in second year and the flat after that.

Buy fewer things. Buy them once.