Residence Life has announced the winners of this year's room decorating contest.
This is the second year that Residence Life has held the contest and the number of entries for this year has "more than tripled," according to Aly Bolin, administrative graduate assistant with Residence Life.
Bolin said it was "a little tricky" trying to narrow down the winners of the contest.
"Even though we did have a lot of entries--because there were so many categories--it was a little easier to make a choice [on winners]," Bolin said.
After seeing the competition online, Alex Swilley, freshman in pre-business, and her roommate, Avery Henson, a freshman in apparel merchandising, entered themselves in the contest.
They won the "Community Favorite Award" and two $10 pizza gift certificates. Swilley said it was "the perfect thing for me to do." Swilley said she'd always had an interest in design.
"I considered doing interior design as my major," Swilley said, "but I just wanted to do a project and see if I could make it happen in my own dorm room."
"I knew that my room was pretty good," Swilley said. "I knew that I had decided that I wanted to do this as a project for myself and so I submitted."
Swilley said she used "pictures online from Pinterest [and] Google Images" to plan out her design. She said her goal was to make her dorm room in the Hill "homey" because "it's not really the most, you know, cozy."
Most of the winners received gift cards to local restaurants as their prizes. Swilley said she thinks more of her prize is "getting acknowledged" for her design.
"It makes me feel good that somebody actually recognized my room as the favorite room," Swilley said.
Julianna Dinsmore, freshman in pre-business, said it was her suitemate who showed the contest to her.
"I told Meredith [Dinsmore's roommate] about it and we just got interested and looked it up," Dinsmore said.
Meredith Watford, a freshman in pre-chemical engineering, said she and Dinsmore wanted to do a different take on the "classic orange and blue for Auburn" when designing their room.
"[We] put a different spin on it by making it more like a pale orange and pale blue," Watford said. "After picking out fabrics and stuff, we went from there."
Watford and Dinsmore, who both call their room "Unique Chic," won the "Best Female Room" award from the Women's Resource Center.
"We came up with our own term because we like [things to be] classy and not like a bunch of stuff," Dinsmore said. "Our colors go well together."
Watford said this experience brought the two of them together.
"We had a lot of fun talking about it and getting excited over it," Watford said. "Putting the room together from the beginning definitely was such a great way to have fun."
For a complete list of winners, please see Residence Life's website here.
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