Aides say Donald Trump has spent hours poring over the details of his $250 million White House facelift—breaking for impromptu design sessions, interrupting meetings, and fidgeting with 3D models over meals.
Trump is “literally the project manager,” one person close to Trump told Axios, as the president personally chooses marble patterns, lighting, and floor layouts across 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
They are all part of a splashy remake anchored by a new ballroom budgeted at $200 million by the White House in July, though advisers now peg it at about $250 million, the outlet reported.
The administration insists private donors, not American taxpayers, will fund it.
Staffers told Axios that Trump drops into ad-hoc design huddles—even pausing an Oval Office meeting with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg to show off a new Rose Garden Bang & Olufsen system. “We have a great speaker system,” the website reported Trump as saying on Sept. 5 when he christened a “Rose Garden Club” for loyal officials and lawmakers.
The makeover tour has become a presidential obsession.
After what Axios described as Trump “strong-arming” Benjamin Netanyahu into a Gaza ceasefire two weeks ago, he gave the Israeli leader a 40-minute renovation tour.
Finland’s President Alexander Stubb got the same treatment last week, aides told Axios. Florida lawmakers were even asked to “pick a tile” for a new patio, one said.
Aides say the president tinkers with 3D-printed dioramas of the grounds in the dining room, moving miniature pieces “the tenser things are,” and weighing whether columns should be Doric, Ionic, or—per one official’s verdict—“more of a Corinthian” vibe.
He has gilded the Oval Office, rehung portraits in gold frames along the Colonnade, and ripped up the Palm Room floor for statuary marble with bookmatched veins, flanked by two Schonbek chandeliers.
However, Trump’s ambitions extend beyond the White House fence.
He’s circulated three scaled models of an “Arc de Trump”—a privately funded triumphal arch he wants near Memorial Bridge, riffing on the Paris Arc de Triomphe—and shared a rendering by Washington architect Nicolas Leo Charbonneau on Truth Social, the costs of which Axios says are “unclear.”
Preservation experts have raised alarms over the broader overhaul, with The New York Times dismissing the aesthetic as “a gilded Rococo nightmare,” but Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has said the White House is committed to safeguarding the mansion’s history.
The White House’s July 31 media release put the measurements of the ballroom at roughly 90,000 square feet with seating for 650, led by McCrery Architects and built by Clark Construction, with completion targeted “long before the end of President Trump’s term.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
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