Allyson Ellis poses in a spandex chair and rest her feet on a fuzzy backrest in the campus shop at the JC Penney store in Lewisville, Texas. College students are preparing for dorm room decorating. (AP Photo/Ron Heflin) NEW YORK — Denim fash-ions may be all the rage this fall, but Erica Green cares more about dressing up her dorm room than dressing up herself. Green, an incoming junior at Goucher College in Baltimore, Md., plans to spend more than $500 on furnishings, from bright blue butterfly chairs and rugs to a TV-DVD combo unit.

‘‘I can envision the room. I have been thinking about it for days,’’ said the 19-year-old Columbia, Md., resident.

Plenty of college students are joining Green in the fun of dorm room decorating. The trend has been a boon to home furnishings stores and big chains such as Target Corp. and J.C. Penney Co. Inc., who are all expanding their dorm room decor beyond the basic lamps and boring white organ-izing bins.

Retailers are offering a brightly colored array of prod-ucts and high-tech furnishings like ottomans that vibrate to music. Even dorm room basics have undergone makeovers — backrests and bean bag chairs now come in lime green faux fur and milk crates have been replaced by aqua blue mesh cubes.

‘‘They are used to having a lot of their own stuff, and they kind of expect to bring that personalization to college,’’ said Susan Schulz, editor-in-chief of teen magazine CosmoGIRL! College students have grown up customizing their cell phones and web pages and are used to having furniture collections designed for them, she said.

‘‘These kids really have the tools to express themselves and create their own style,’’ said Schulz.

The biggest spenders tend to be freshman and juniors, many of whom move into sin-gle rooms or off-campus apartments..

Penney’s hot sellers so far include bright blue curved rockers in cotton fabric, hot pink paper lamps and boom cube ottomans, which feature built-in speakers that vibrate with sound, according to Debra Schweiss, trend direc-tor for Penney’s home divi-sion. At Target, popular items include what the store calls ‘‘chef-made dorm fridge pack-ages’’ that combine a mini refrigerator, hot pot, iron, cof-fee maker and sandwich maker. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is doing well with such items as storage boxes in suede, pillows in faux poodle fur and micro-suede comforters.

Still, while there’s a lot of excitement over decorating, students are stressing out over how to cram all their belong-ings into small rooms.

‘‘We only have one desk, and everything I have has to fit into it,’’ said Peter Austin, 18, an incoming freshman at Rowan University in Glass-boro, N.J. He hopes to be able to fit his new laptop computer, printer, keyboard and lamp on the desktop.

Austin — who’s coming from West Deptford, N.J., sev-eral miles away — is also won-dering where he’s going to put his TV, mini-fridge and stereo. Not to mention the DVD play-er he’s thinking about buying.

‘‘They have more of a chal-lenge because they have more stuff, and they want to bring it all, ‘‘ said Casey Priest, vice president of marketing at The Container Store.