Mom Charges $20K for Viral Dorm Room Makeovers (Exclusive)

Shelly Gates, a mom of three based in Madison, Miss., knows how hard it is to send your kid off to college — her youngest is an incoming freshman at LSU this year. She also knows how much of a hassle it can be for a parent to help set up a dorm room on move-in day.

Because she “always loved design,” Gates tells PEOPLE, when her daughter was heading off to college in 2020, she helped plan and install an entire room makeover. 

“I just put it on Facebook, you know, bragging as a mom — and it went crazy,” she says of the photos. “I thought, ‘I could do this. This could be like a fun little summer job.’ ”

Fast forward five years, and Gates has officially quit her position as an elementary school teacher of 13 years to design dorm rooms full-time through her business, Mary Margaret Designs.

For the 2025-2026 school year, Gates tells PEOPLE, she has designed dorm rooms for roughly 15 students — primarily students at the University of Alabama, University of Mississippi and Louisiana State University — giving them top-to-bottom makeovers that can cost over $20,000. Included in the fee is furniture, carpeting and curtains, as well as Gates’s trusty team of movers to install it all for the students before they arrive.

For one Bama student this year, Gates layered velvets, silks and linens to create a “lush” look for the dorm room, complete with several baby pink accents: a custom pink painting, a pink throw pillow and even a pink chandelier hanging over the bed.

In another video, she shows off a decked-out college apartment for students at Ole Miss, transforming the bare-bones space with bright pink, peach and blue furniture, monogrammed towels and even “Hotty Toddy” decorations in the kitchen.

When Gates is working with a new client, she first sends them a questionnaire to assess their personal style, and they meet to start discussing designs. 

“The girls send me a Pinterest and most of the time they all look exactly the same,” she adds with a laugh.

Then it’s time for Gates to start working her magic.

“I start pulling fabrics,” she says. “Everything starts with the fabrics.”

“I will sketch everything out for them to see how everything looks in real time,” continues Gates. And then she starts working on the smaller decor pieces — sconces and mirrors and bar carts and lamps.

For another Bama room she designed this year, she went for a Hollywood mirror on the vanity, a pink neon sign that spells out the word “love” in cursive lettering, and a pearly bow over the window.

As she continues to build out her design for the room, she’ll keep the student and their parent in the loop — often asking the student their preference between furniture pieces and making sure the parent gives an OK on the price. (“I’m an excellent mediator between the two,” she jokes.)

But beyond her work picking out the perfect vanity or finding the right wall art to match the color scheme, she’s also there to support the parents through a challenging transition.

“It’s so much more than coming up with a physical design for the room,” says Gates. “For a lot of these moms, this is their first time sending a child to college — and certainly their first time to navigate the university experience of dorms, which is not clear.”

“People my age, when we went to college, we really did live in the prison cell,” Gates continues. “So I think my generation doesn’t want their kids to have that. They want their kids to have a beautiful little nest. It’s their first little home.”

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When she’s finished with a room, though, Gates says she often keeps in touch with her clients — even years after.

“I love my moms and my girls — I really do,” says Gates. She adds that she even helped throw a bridal shower for one of her first dorm room clients, who tied the knot in June: “We were so excited because that’s my first dorm child getting married!”

But, she says, nothing beats the feeling of seeing a kid and their parents’ reaction to their designed dorm on move-in day. (In one video from Bama move-in this year, a mother-daughter duo reacted with gasps and cheers when they saw the final reveal.)

“I did a dorm last year at Ole Miss that went viral, and I loved them,” remembers Gates. “The mom was nervous — it was her only child that she was sending off. And it was so nice to allay her fears and make sure that everything was in place for her.”