If you go to Providence College, you will certainly agree that housing is not the best. Most of the dorms are tiny, dirty, and in dire need of renovation. Lucky for my roommate and I, we were able to live apartments for our sophomore year. The only downside of this situation was having to move from one apartment to another at the end of the first semester. Regardless of the hassle, we made the most out of the situation, decorating our rooms to the best of our ability.
Davis Hall
First semester, we lived in Davis Hall. This was my favorite apartment since we really took control of decorating the whole place. Before we moved in, the place definitely had a weird vibe to it. Our room was on the first floor so anyone could easily look into our rooms and there wasn’t much lighting throughout.
After a lot of time and decorating later, our room finally felt like home. To add more life to the room, my roommate created a flower wall on her side of the room. This definitely helped to hide the ugly, prison-like concrete walls. On my side of the room, I hung a poster of Italy (I bought this from Society 6) which tied in the dusty pink, neutral color scheme. We also added a sheer curtain to prevent people from looking into our room without taking away the natural light. The nightstand was also a great addition as it allowed us to add some plants and a diffuser to make the room feel more like a home than a dorm. We also made sure to cover the entirety of the floor with area rugs to avoid having to walk on the original carpets (I doubt that they have ever been cleaned…ew). The addition of the string lights also gave us an alternative lighting source rather than using the ugly, overhead, hospital-like one (if you know, you know).
For our sink area, we added some fake plants to add some life into the area. We also put our hand soap in wooden dispensers which definitely added some decoration to the area. If we were in this apartment for the full year, we definitely would have added something to the back wall.
For our common area, we hung two posters to the wall to hide the ugly concrete walls. The simplistic and cozy style of the room definitely created a good workspace throughout the semester. My roommate and I definitely spent A LOT of time on the chairs and couch doing homework and watching TV. Similar to the carpets, we covered all the furniture to avoid sitting on filth (lol) and we added a plant to add some color to the area.
We didn’t do anything too special with the kitchen. I hung up a poster I got in Denmark and we added a few placemats.
As soon as November 1st hit, our room transitioned into a full on Christmas zone. I think the pictures speak for themselves…
I had a few pillows… (lol)
We definitely went all out with our night table decor. My favorite part was definitely our large assortment of Christmas-scented candles.
Mal Brown Hall
Unfortunately, we were only in this apartment for little over a month. Since there were already girls living in the place when we moved in, we only decorated our individual room. I will not feature the before pictures of this room because they were actually disgusting (food wrappers, nail clippings, crumbs, you name it, it was there). Not much changed with our room decorations with the exception of a few components. Personally, I liked this room better because of the view. We were on the 6th floor and had a direct view of the city. I loved going to sleep each night being able to see the Providence city buildings from my own bed. Although the layout of the room was a little funky, we made it work as well as we could.
This corner area was my favorite part about the room. My roommate added the glass vase and the ladder which definitely made the room feel more homey and cozy. We also makeshifted a step stool as a night table to hold a much needed light source (there were no lights in this room for some odd reason).
If you look closely at this picture, you can see my stash of cookies hiding in my night table (gotta have easy access!).
Here is what I call our “candle sanctuary”. I can confidently say there were definitely no shortages of candles in our room (lol). My roommate also hung up a sign she made which added a very cozy vibe.
Thanks for reading!
-Aria 🙂
