Walmart is rolling out two new ways to shop home furnishings, with a focus on small living spaces, just in time for the back-to-school season when students are heading off to college and looking for dorm decor.

The efforts build on Walmart's previous investments in its website and promises of more to come. The retailer just finished an overarching redesign of Walmart.com — incorporating Hudson's Bay's Lord & Taylor — and has since been focused on beefing up categories within the site, particularly home and fashion.

The back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons appear to be creeping earlier and earlier each year, with Kohl's announcing Wednesday its plans to kick off seasonal hiring "earlier than ever." Amazon meanwhile has rolled out dedicated back-to-school and off-to-college pages on its website. More deals are expected to pop up around Amazon's Prime Day event, which is typically held in July.

Starting Thursday on Walmart.com, shoppers will be able to take a virtual tour of an already designed apartment room that features roughly 70 items for purchase — both from Walmart's private labels and from national ones. Customers will be able to buy pieces directly from the room and shop different-styled rooms, like bohemian chic.

Then, starting next month, shoppers will be able to "buy the room" — or add all the items in a space curated by Walmart to their shopping baskets at once, if they see a look they really like. For dorms, Walmart said it will start with five rooms, "with each room featuring up to 20 of the most sought-after items college students search for and purchase." The company will benefit from using its vast database of sales data and search history.