When King Charles III and Queen Camilla arrive at the White House on Monday, President Donald Trump hopes to flaunt his latest White House renovation: a new black granite path that the royals are expected to take to the Oval Office.
“It’s called charcoal,” Trump told reporters Thursday, touting the contrast with the White House’s white walls.
The renovation project was begun last month, with the president eager to replace decades-old beige Tennessee flagstone with his handpicked dark granite slabs before the royal visit, said two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe White House operations.
All modern presidents have used the Oval Office as a tool of power and diplomacy, showing off their personal touches to the world’s most famous workspace. Trump has gone further, transforming parts of the West Wing and its environs with a distinctive aesthetic that he displays to foreign dignitaries and other VIPs.
Gold lettering, evoking the signs at Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties, now welcomes visitors to “The Oval Office” and “The West Wing.” A row of plaques, celebrating some Republican presidents and mocking Democrats, including Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, now line the pathway along the colonnade outside. Several signs highlight the changes overseen by the president, including new fixtures and lights, and he has repeatedly touted them in public remarks.
“Such attention to detail is rarely seen in the modern era!” reads a plaque written by Trump, celebrating the marble flooring he installed in the Palm Room.
The president has personally inspected the renovations and offered feedback to workers, drawing on his experience as a builder, say current and former officials. He has interrupted policy meetings to extol the changes — a phenomenon captured on camera Thursday, when he repeatedly encouraged reporters attending a drug price announcement in the Oval Office to look at the new granite floor outside.
“It’s a beautiful job, and it’s going up nice,” the president said.
Trump’s West Wing renovations have also assumed some personal importance given the lengthy time needed to build his planned White House ballroom — currently a large hole where the East Wing used to sit. Historic preservationists have sued to halt the project, which probably faces years of work. It is not yet clear whether the president will get to enjoy the facility before his term ends in January 2029.
But Trump can remake the West Wing now — and has, repeatedly.
Administration officials have hailed renovations they say are long overdue and have touted Trump’s own projects. “The President is restoring the White House to its proper glory, as only the Builder-in-Chief could,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement.
Some past White House officials fret over changes to what they characterize as the timeless nature of a building known as “The People’s House.” Presidents over generations appear in pictures juxtaposed against the same familiar backgrounds that are now not-so-subtly changed.
“When you look back at the photo evidence of this time, it will feel like Donald Trump’s office, not the Oval Office, and that’s depressing to me,” said Rufus Gifford, who helped plan major events as the White House’s chief protocol officer under President Joe Biden.
Others call Trump’s renovations tacky, pointing to the gilding in the Oval Office, the paved-over Rose Garden and other changes that they say clash with the classical architecture of the nation’s capital.
“Labeling the West Wing with lettering calling it ‘The West Wing’ is simply tragic. As are so many of Trump’s signature gilded flourishes,” Graydon Carter, the former editor of Vanity Fair, wrote in an email. Carter, who as editor of Spy magazine helped coin the infamous epithet “short-fingered vulgarian” to describe Trump in the 1980s, also warned against importing his style.
“We already have a Las Vegas. We don’t need another one on the Potomac,” Carter wrote.
Tevi Troy, a presidential historian who served as a top policy official in the George W. Bush White House, said that he understood some of Trump’s structural changes to improve the building. Troy reflected on working in cramped offices, using “shoddy” restrooms and dealing with pest problems like flies.
“It’s not necessarily befitting the seat of power,” Troy said. “I think that’s bothered Trump and explains some of his efforts to spruce it up.”
Trump is set to receive Charles and Camilla on Monday on the South Lawn, as he has greeted other dignitaries. Their time with the U.S. president is likely to include the following stops.
The Palm Room
Long considered a minor stop on White House tours — and used as a staging room for larger events — Trump has turned the space into a showpiece intended to help welcome dignitaries and VIPs. The president replaced the tiled floor with marble that he said he personally paid for, put in new chandeliers and restored the walls.
“To come to the Oval Office, you had to go through this room. It was an embarrassment,” Trump told Fox News in November. “And I took it down and rebuilt it.”
The room has since been decorated with pictures of Trump at the White House and around the world, including photos of him alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese Prime Minister Xi Jinping and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Post reporter saw this month. One wall displays a picture of the president and the first lady at Windsor Castle with Charles and Camilla last year.
“It is an important space in that it serves as a transition from the White House to the West Wing, and its very historic Oval Office, definitely the most powerful space anywhere in the World!” reads a plaque written by Trump and hung in the room last year.
The ‘Presidential Walk of Fame’
For centuries, presidents have walked a path under a colonnade initially conceived by Thomas Jefferson that winds from the executive mansion to the present-day West Wing and Oval Office. Foreign dignitaries, family members and others have joined them for some of the most iconic images of the nation’s leaders.
“The colonnade walk is one of those things that every foreign leader wants. They want that photo op,” said Gifford, citing past examples of officials negotiating for that appearance.
Now the path is lined with plaques installed and largely written by Trump, memorializing past presidents. One mocks “Sleepy Joe Biden” as “the worst President in American history” and has an image of an autopen in lieu of Biden’s photo. A plaque for Obama characterizes his health care law as “the highly ineffective ‘Unaffordable’ Care Act” that cost Democrats control of Congress.
“The Presidential Walk of Fame was conceived, built, and dedicated by President Donald J. Trump as a tribute to past Presidents, good, bad, and somewhere in the middle, who served our Country, and gave up so much in so doing,” reads a sign added by Trump last year. “The Presidential Walk of Fame will long live as a testament to the Greatness of America!”
Trump has shown off the new plaques to foreign leaders, including Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who appeared to laugh at the Biden plaque, according to images released last month. The Japanese Embassy did not respond to questions about Takaichi’s reaction.
Trump has also considered building a second story to the colonnade to mirror the planned two-story corridor that would lead to his future East Wing ballroom.
The Rose Garden
The president last year paved over the Rose Garden’s grass, saying that bad weather had too often rendered the garden too muddy to host events. He added tables and chairs along with striped umbrellas that resemble those at his Mar-a-Lago Club.
“It was unusable before, and now we can use it,” Trump said last October as he hosted Republican senators for lunch.
The president also has installed several statues, including ones honoring the nation’s founding fathers, which he has displayed to visitors. The most recent addition is a sculpture by artist Chas Fagan depicting America’s Revolutionary War. It’s unknown whether Trump plans to display it to the great-great-great-great-great-grandson of King George III.
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