Morgan Simianer is officially calling Dallas — and a gorgeous new apartment — home!
The 23-year-old Cheer star recently moved into her very first post-college space and gave PEOPLE an exclusive inside look at her chic new digs.
"I love Dallas. It's so pretty and I have a lot of people that I know here, so that's why I decided to move," says the former college cheerleader, who tumbled into fame on the Netflix hit last spring, of relocating from Corsicana, Texas, where she attended Navarro College.
"I didn't really know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go," she tells PEOPLE. "It was just a very convenient place for me and I was comfortable with it. So it was a very good decision."
After signing her first lease, Simianer turned to Dallas-based Hannah Miller, a designer with the online decorating service Decorist, for some help outfitting her blank-canvas apartment.
"Once I moved into my own apartment, I wanted to make sure that it was like me and felt very homey," she says. "I got connected with Hannah and we talked about what I liked and what I didn't like and everything just came together."
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Working together, the duo put together a "Boho, modern space" for Simianer using furnishings and decor from Bed Bath & Beyond. "It turned out absolutely amazing!" the recent college grad gushes to PEOPLE.
According to Miller, the project took nearly a year to complete due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, with a lot of virtual back and forth and plenty of mood boards.
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The designer tells PEOPLE that while Simianer let her take the reigns, the Netflix star still had a hands-on role in the design process.
"You could tell that she was just very open to letting me do my own thing, but I really wanted to make it her space," Miller says. "She was very humble about the whole process."
Among the elements Miller brought into the apartment is a banana leaf print peel-and-stick wallpaper (from $59.99) in the living room — a favorite feature of both the designer and client.
"My favorite was the wallpaper wall in the living room. We had to fight for that a little bit because she lives in an apartment, but what's great about it is it's peel-and-stick," Miller tells PEOPLE of the easily removable product. "It just really transformed the living space into its own character and personality."
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Another fun item that Miller says she encouraged Simianer to incorporate is the forest green upholstered armchair and matching ottoman ($589.99).
"I think that one, she was a little bit like, 'I'm not quite sure,'" the self-taught designer recalls. "I think we pushed her a little bit. She was very trusting."
Simianer also remembers being hesitant about the bold chair at first.
"I used to have just plain, simple colors, so I was nervous a little bit," she says. "I don't think I ever would have bought a green chair on my own, but she put it in and I was like, 'I absolutely love that.'"
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The cheerleading champ was also nervous about having a live palm tree in her living room, joking to PEOPLE that she's "not very good with plants."
"I have to be careful and not kill this one," she says.
She notes that plants add a nice touch to the space, as did an ED Ellen DeGeneres chandelier ($449.99) and gold floor lamp ($95.99) Miller suggested.
"All the extra lighting makes it so that it doesn't feel like a little dungeon," Simianer says.
Miller tells PEOPLE that one of her top tips for decorating a small space is to focus on lighting before anything else. "I think that does make a lot of difference. We changed out her kitchen lighting and her living lighting," she says.
Now that her apartment is complete, Simianer is excited for the day she is finally able to host a housewarming.
"I'm looking forward to hopefully being able to share my apartment with my friends and be able to have them all there," she says.
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