Residence hall rooms do not have to be drab and impersonal. With a little creative effort, students can add flair and transform their rooms into vibrant spaces, which reflect their unique tastes and character. In the fifth annual Better Rooms Contest on Friday, students living in the residence halls got to show off their interior design skills.
“With a little imagination, it’s amazing what these students can put together,” said University Housing executive assistant Janice Langis, who was one of the contest’s judges.
This year’s competition drew 16 contestants, and rooms were judged in three categories: Most Creative Use of Space, Best Use of Space and Best Coordination.
According to University Housing spokeswoman Tenaya Meaux, the competition allows people to see how students make the best use of fairly small rooms.
Amber Newby’s room won the Most Creative Use of Space award. The room quickly grabs attention with its strands of blinking colored lights and a flood of purple things. A purple floor rug and a sheer purple cloth with yellow moons and stars on the ceiling. A purple feather boa across the room. Purple chair, phone, bedspread, lava lamp, table clothes and wall hangings. Then there are the giraffes. Stuffed, wooden and origami giraffes. A giant poster of an adult giraffe planting a kiss on a baby giraffe’s head on one wall. On another wall is a massive
collage of Duck football newspaper clippings.
“I’ve been told that my room reflects my personality 100 percent,” Newby said. She describes herself as colorful, energetic, happy and fun. And, of course, she is a dedicated football fan.
Westmoreland Housing area director and contest judge Candace Cardiff said she felt Newby’s personality was “bursting at the seams” throughout the room.
“I could have stood in there for an hour just looking,” Cardiff said. “Everything was placed to have
an effect.”
Newby said everyone who walks by the room does a “double take.”
“People come in here to get away,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like a dorm room.”
Carla Sertic and Jana Hardwick, in Barnhart Hall, were judged to be the most coordinated roommates. Their room transported the judges into a Morrocan-like belly dancing haven complete with beads hanging in the doorway, a plush red bedspread and belly dancing music playing in the background. Sertic and Hardwick even put on belly dancing attire for the occasion.
“I saw the harmony of these two people being able to live together and enjoying it,” Langis said.
Andrew VanDyk and Max Goins, who live in the Walton Complex, scooped the Best Use of Space honors. The two freshmen built their own beds, which tower high above the floor, with desks that neatly fit under the beds. Shoes are carefully stacked on a shelf by the window, next to a couch made up of three mattresses and a high shelf holding a television.
“We just wanted to be efficient and have a lot of space,” Goins said.
The high beds do have disadvantages. Goins said he has hit his head against the ceiling several times, especially when something startles him.
Still, he said others like the idea, and two other students in the hall have built similar beds.
“If we can do this with a dorm room, imagine what we can do with something bigger,” he said.