Dormitory

A dormitory is a room that sleeps multiple people. It may also refer to a building primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people such as student accommodation for university or college students, or, with reference to military personnel, a barracks.
A building providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people may also be called a house, or a hostel.

Types of dormitory

Barracks

Boarding school dormitories

Boarding schools generally have dormitories for at least junior or younger children around age 4 to 9 years of age. In classic British boarding schools these typically have bunk beds that have traditionally come to be associated with boarding schools. The Department for Children, Schools and Families, in conjunction with the Department of Health of the United Kingdom, has prescribed guidelines for dormitories in boarding schools. These regulations come under what is called as the National Boarding Standards.
The National Boarding Standards in the UK have prescribed a minimum floor area or living space required for each student and other aspects of basic facilities. The minimum floor area of a dormitory accommodating two or more students is defined as the number of students sleeping in the dormitory multiplied by 4.2 m², plus 1.2 m². A minimum distance of 0.9 m should also be maintained between any two beds in a dormitory, bedroom or cubicle. If students have individual sleeping cubicles, each student must be provided with a window and a minimum floor area of 5.0 m². A bedroom for a single student should have a floor area of at least 6.0 m² and have a window. Sleeping accommodation should be separated by age group and gender. Dormitories should also provide a shower or bath for each ten students and a toilet or urinal for each five students.

Cold-air dormitories

Cold-air dormitories are found in multi-level rooming houses such as fraternities, sororities, and cooperative houses. In CADs and in hostels, the room typically has very few furnishings except for beds. Such rooms can contain anywhere from three to 50 beds. Such rooms provide little or no privacy for the residents, and very limited storage for personal items in or near the beds. Cold-air dorms get their names from the common practice of keeping the windows open year-round, even in winter. The practice emerged based on the theory that circulation and cold air minimizes the spread of disease. Some communal bedrooms keep the name cold-air dorms or cold dorms despite having modern heating or cooling.

Dormitory ship

Prison dormitories

Housing units in prisons that house multiple inmates in a single large room are referred to as "dormitories". This style of housing is generally used in the US at low security federal prisons. These rooms normally house 50 to 100 prisoners in bunk beds.