Campus housing: How do designers balance privacy and experience for students?
August 18, 2025
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How can universities and designers respond to changing campus housing preferences?
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How can universities and designers respond to changing campus housing preferences? What do private rooms mean for traditional dormitory design?
Picture yourself on a campus tour in the year 2025. Sneaking a peek at the model dorm room—perhaps two or three beds in a room, with a small desk and a wardrobe for each occupant, and not much else. Common showers and bathrooms down the hall, maybe a group study space on the floor. In the past, this dormitory design and spartan living situation might have been an accepted rite of passage. For many of us, it might be a fond memory of our time living on campus. However, student preferences and adaptability have rapidly changed in recent years, shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath.
This has resulted in a starkly different climate and demand for student housing today. Above all, students want privacy.
It seems that this preference may have a lasting impact on universities. A 2025 survey from StarRez shows that at 51 percent of institutions, students rank single rooms as their top choice.
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Arcadia Flats, an upper-level and graduate student housing project at Western Michigan University, was designed to fill the gaps in Western Michigan University’s housing stock. It features five unique unit types, offering students choice in experience and affordability.
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Today, student housing is in short supply on many campuses across the US and Canada. And increased housing demands are spilling over into surrounding communities. With universities taking a closer look at their investments in student housing, which supplements tuition as a key source of income, it’s important to look at what’s changed since the last time they invested in student housing.
In this blog, we’ll talk about these key points:
- Evolving student preferences.
- Tried-and-true campus housing design elements.
- How to balance it all. Especially when considering new or renovated campus housing.
Rethinking a formerly reliable model
The dorm style housing described above has been a campus staple for decades, especially for first-year students. Of course, trends in student housing come and go.
While this model may not be as popular with today’s students, the logic behind it remains relevant. There’s a reason the traditional dormitory design doesn’t offer much private space. With smaller sleeping rooms and a heavier focus on common spaces, it encourages students to get out, socialize, and use the campus and its amenities. Administrators say this encourages connections between students and faculty and the place they’ve chosen to advance their education. Beyond that, it is also the most efficient use of space and budget.
Student success is another driver for on-campus housing. Studies (such as those by Alexander Astin at UCLA and Ernest Pascarella at the University of Iowa) show first-year students who live on campus tend to stay in university longer and complete their degrees. For decades, universities leaned into traditional dormitory design for this reason.
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CU Denver’s City Heights features shared rooms with access to a variety of study and lounge spaces.
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For example, take the City Heights Residence Hall at the University of Colorado Denver, where first-year students are two or three to a room. Rooms are minimal in this dormitory design, but every floor is sprinkled with a variety of study and lounge spaces. These include flexible setups and furniture. Bathrooms are communal. Each bathroom cluster includes fully enclosed compartments with a variety of shower, toilet, and lavatory arrangements. Doors have occupancy indicators for comfort.
Designed in 2019, City Heights welcomed its first residents in 2021. A lot happened in between. During post-occupancy evaluations, residents shared their desire for more privacy. But they also had stories about using the common lounges for weekly game nights. Residents are creating lasting friendships and memories in the residence hall’s social spaces.
Universities with similar facilities are now grappling with marketing the more traditional dormitory design model to prospective students and their parents. Or they may be thinking about how they could adapt or renovate spaces to better fit with incoming student tastes.
What’s new versus what’s tried and true?
Universities have seen these preferential shifts away from traditional dormitory design for many years now. Growing up in the pandemic may have heightened students’ concerns about wellness, increased their social anxiety in large groups, or even contributed to lack of attention in the classroom. And as digital natives, they are accustomed to everything being available online. They can attend classes, order food, even virtually “hang out” with friends without leaving the comfort of their bedroom. This makes isolation all too easy. With mental health issues on the rise for this generation, institutions and designers want to be intentional about encouraging socialization. We can encourage connection in shaping these living spaces.
On the other hand, there are also constants in student housing that won’t budge regardless of student preferences. First, studies show that the socialization and community building inherent in student housing play a large role in the social and academic success of students. This leads to increased graduation rates and higher GPAs.
Furthermore, universities will always need a positive business case to build or renovate their housing stock. Higher-density plans are the most economical to build. And the cost to build is only going to get more expensive over time.
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Students enjoy updated housing at Shafer Hall at Eastern Connecticut State University. An adaptive reuse project turned a 1946 building into student housing, which uses single, micro-studio lofts.
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So where do we go from here in campus housing design?
Universities investing in housing, whether building new or renovating existing facilities, have difficult decisions to make. They must look at the housing type and design that is going to resonate with incoming students and stand the test of time.
How do they support students entering higher ed who express these post-pandemic preferences? How can they encourage student interaction and face-to-face social connections? But not turn off the next generation?
Below are six points to consider when planning a responsive campus housing solution.
1. Start with a program analysis
Program analysis is an important first step in student housing planning and design. This analysis should combine quantitative and qualitative data. When we do this, we look at demographic trends, enrollment, and student satisfaction. We also look at retention and graduate rates.
We drill down into housing demand, occupancy by housing type, waitlists, and student preferences. The result, combined with an off-campus market analysis, gives universities a clear view of their housing needs.
" }With smaller sleeping rooms and a heavier focus on common spaces, it encourages students to get out, socialize, and use the campus and its amenities.
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2. Learn from upper-level and graduate housing
Typical upper-class and graduate student housing tends to allow more room for different lifestyles and independent living. There is less focus on community spaces. Today’s incoming freshman and underclass students will find this apartment-style living more appealing in terms of privacy. The lack of social space, however, may be detrimental to their overall experience.
While universities may feel the pressure to add all private rooms, they should look toward creating what my colleague Travis Sage has dubbed “the efficient middle.” We know that the cost of renting a bed at a university have been rising. Designs like the efficient middle can help the university deliver “bed equity” (meaning affordability) while giving students the lifestyle they desire.
To design the efficient middle, we create compact footprints for dwelling units. They look like urban lofts and studios. They push the living space to the interior of the building, creating deep units that extend from exterior wall to corridor. This allows designers to shrink the typical circulation space needed in the building’s apartments. We took this approach on Arcadia Flats at Western Michigan University. The most space-efficient units—a two-bed studio suite, two-bed flat, and one-bed studio—give space back to common areas for study, play, and socializing.
3. Embrace flexibility and adapt existing spaces
Here is the reality: Many universities have existing residence halls that are high-occupancy, low-privacy models. They likely won’t be able to fully convert these to suites or apartments. So, what can be done to enhance them?
One of the simplest options is to look at furniture solutions. Provide flexible furniture that gives students choices and allows them to easily arrange spaces to suit their needs, especially in common areas.
Moveable screens and partitions can quickly and easily repurpose a space. Having a variety of group and individual seating areas in the same space allows students who may have more social anxiety to ease into social situations or participate in ways that feel comfortable to them. In shared living units, consider creative furniture solutions. These will provide some privacy without taking up precious floor space. This might include lofted beds with desks below or screens with built-in nightstands like the ones we used in Arcadia Flats.
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Bedrooms at Arcadia Flats feature privacy screens with built-in nightstands.
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4. Pick your moments for privacy
Whether building new campus housing or renovating an existing facility, emphasize privacy where it makes the greatest impact.
For example, common bathrooms tend to be a particularly sore spot for students these days. Private in-unit bathrooms might be out of reach due to space or budget constraints. But designs can focus on groupings of full-enclosed individual restrooms that are shared on each floor, similar to the City Heights model.
Perhaps the primary need is private bedrooms. If so, consider super-efficient unit types. These are more compact and have fewer square feet per bed; they allow for the expanded common areas that we see at Arcadia Flats.
5. Don’t let the campus housing pendulum swing too far
As each campus ties to balance students’ desire for privacy, the need for socialization, and the cost to build, it’s important to not overreact. Reaching too far in either direction—toward all new private rooms or all new dorms—is risky.
Universities need to keep an eye on the bigger picture. They should look for balanced offerings that acknowledge preferences and varying student needs to create positive experiences.
6. Variety and choice provide long-term flexibility
The university that overreacts to fleeting preferences runs the risk of creating a housing portfolio that needs an update with every new trend. On the flip side, if it fails to thoughtfully respond to student desires, it could drive potential residents off-campus. These students could miss out on on-campus opportunities that help them thrive.
Universities should pursue long-term flexibility that can weather the trends. To do so, they should focus on providing an efficient variety of unit types. Unit types should support various lifestyles, preferences, and price points. And residences should still feature critical spaces for studying and socializing.
Universities should seek a holistic campus housing portfolio. This can come through simple interventions or significant renovations and new builds. In this way, as students’ desires change, the school will be ready to adapt.
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