How Michelle Obama helped give the White House Dining Room a makeover
Update cements US first lady's design legacy
The White House's State Dining Room, a grand and historic space that has hosted kings and queens, Nobel Prize-winners, military families and A-list Hollywood stars, is not a room whose redecoration is taken lightly. Yet it gets a lot of wear and tear, with all those high heels digging into the rug and martinis accidentally spilling onto the curtains.
After three years of work by US first lady Michelle Obama and the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, a new look has been unveiled that will be a design legacy of the Obama years.
The major new statement is at the windows: elegant, sumptuously swagged striped draperies in bold peacock blue and ecru, suspended from thick carved, gilded poles. These colours should go nicely, by the way, with the new Obama state china service in Kailua blue, unveiled in April.
The design of the 34 new stately mahogany chairs is based on chairs bought for the East Room by President James Monroe in 1818 from cabinetmaker William King Jnr. They are upholstered with period-appropriate horsehair fabric in a brown grid pattern, trimmed with brass nailheads. A blue-green rug, intricately woven with wreath motifs and oak leaves inspired by the stunning ceiling plasterwork, was installed in 2012 at the start of the project.
A subtle yet stately feature of the room: the walls and detailed mouldings, artfully repainted and glazed in several shades of white to highlight the architecture. In all, it looks like a room rocking an awesome new party dress.