Forget posters, plastic storage bins and dry-erase boards. University of Mississippi students Abby Bozeman and Lindy Goodson transformed their freshman dorm room into a lavish sanctuary complete with a faux fur rug, matching monogrammed pillows, handmade velvet headboards and patterned curtains.
After Goodson shared their sanctuary on Twitter, Buzzfeed picked up the story and it quickly went viral. Now the girls are spilling their budget-friendly decorating secrets with Us Weekly.
Goodson, 18, tells Us that the lamps were on clearance from Hobby Lobby, while the plush stools were from HomeGoods; she just added blue ribbon for aesthetic appeal. “I made the curtain on the dresser out of a hand towel from the clearance aisle at T.J. Maxx,” the Maryville, Illinois, native says. Bozeman, also 18, found the dresser at an antique shop.
“It was originally brown and had a missing drawer,” Bozeman, who hails from Brookhaven, Mississippi, tells Us, from her University, Mississippi, room, “so we had a man refurbish it and paint it white. Then we added crystal knobs from Home Depot.”
Both had the same goal when furnishing the space. “Since we’re going to be here all year we wanted it to feel cozy and like home,” says Goodson. And when classes start on Monday, August 22, “it will be nice to have a pretty place to come back to and unwind,” notes Bozeman.
But according to the roommates — who both plan to major in integrated marketing communication — their plush pad is nothing out of the ordinary at Ole Miss. “The whole dorm building looks like ours. It’s a Southern thing,” Bozeman explains to Us. “It’s super competitive and we had to join in on the competition!”
Adds Goodson: “No one here understands why we’re going viral!”