In cookie-cutter residence halls where rooms are small, storage is limited and potential for pizzazz is minimal, attempting to personalize living space can feel like a futile exercise, especially for students on a budget.

To solve the drab dorm dilemma, former GW student and budding entrepreneur Thysson Williams plans to launch a dorm design service, Dorm Room Decorators, at GW this fall. The company offers a variety of decorating packages and services to make move-in day less hectic for college students.

“We’re trying to promote individuality,” said Williams, who left GW in 2007 to work for the shoe company, Crocs. “We don’t want everyone’s room to look the same.”

In 2006, Williams used his Crocs paychecks to start Lookout Investment Group, a corporation of four companies targeting the 18 to 35 age range.

Dorm Room Decorators, the group’s newest addition, offers 11 different design packages. These include Global and Green, Island Fever and Preppy Palace, each of which come in two varieties.

While the average university student spends $1200 decorating a living space, Williams said, Dorm Room Decorators’ packages start at just $949. Each package consists of supplies for the bedroom, bathroom, laundry, kitchen and desk.

For a complete solution to decorating and assembling rooms, Dorm Room Decorators offers a move-in service for $90.

“You can walk in with your bed made for you, music playing and fake candles lit,” Williams said. “It would be just like walking into a hotel room.”

Dorm Room Decorators plans to add additional packages for customization but currently only sells complete packages. The company intends to sell each component separately and offer as many as five variations of the same package.

Despite the mass-produced nature of dorm décor, Williams said the company is “trying to maintain its integrity” with edgy, often handmade merchandise.

“We’re trying to be a little more Barneys Co-Op than Vineyard Vines,” he said. “We want something a little more gritty and urban than the big box places.”

Currently, packages include 30 percent handmade products and 70 percent outsourced products. While Lookout Investment Group produces its own textiles, Williams said, “We don’t want to reinvent the wheel and knit our own towels.”

After a two-year test run at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Williams said the demand for Dorm Room Decorators products was high. The company decorated 20 rooms during its first year and 50 rooms its second.

Williams said students appreciated Dorm Room Decorators’ ability to simplify the move-in process.

“Using them saved me a lot of unneeded stress because I already had so much on my plate moving from Georgia all the way across the country to Colorado,” said UC Boulder sophomore Ferris Spain. “My room looked more put together than anyone else’s and I was really happy with the way it all turned out.”

Spain bought the Rasta Refuge package, which Williams said was the most popular at CU-Boulder.

Next year, Dorm Room Decorators will expand to GW and Columbia University. The company will also launch a newly improved website June 1.