With President's Day upon us, we thought we'd take a look at some of the many wonderful interior design details of the most popular home in the United States. The White House keeps much of its operations and inner workings under wraps, but we're drawing back the curtain to take a peek inside.
Several White House public rooms on the State Floor of its Residence section are named after their color scheme. As the most well known parlor in the home, the Green Room got its name and much of its redesign ideas from Mrs. Kennedy in the 1960s. Jackie O is something of a style icon; this room shows her taste in action. The focal point of this room is its Empire-style chandelier. We didn't just import ideas about a fair and just government from France, we also looked to them for lighting!
This chandelier is a French design, which the lines of our Danville mimics. Both pieces feature hanging crystals and rounded bottoms. Our Danville—like many of our fixtures—removes a lot of baroque ornamentation, expressing a "less-is-more" aesthetic with fewer decorative accents and stronger focus on premium materials. With crisp apple-green walls and carpet, and eye-popping red furniture topped with a gorgeous chandelier, the Green Room is the perfect room to serve as a meeting place for tea and receptions.
Our Danville chandelier in aged brass finish
The Red Room serves a similar purpose, as guests mingle here after dinner and during receptions. The Crimson Plush furniture and red satin wall coverings bring personality and pizzazz back to a room that was once known for its musical performances and cigar-smoke ambiance. The chandelier in this room has an abundance of scrolling arms, which is one of the key features many lights in our Classic Heritage style seeks to replicate. While our use of lamp shades and a two-tiered urn-shaped body make our Charleston chandelier clearly different, detailed scrollwork on each arm and the use of long, candle-shaped stems evokes a certain similarity.
Our Charleston chandelier in aged brass finish
The formal reception room is better known as the Blue Room. This oval room is adorned with blue carpet, blue wall accents, and gilded blue furniture from the 1800s. Its herringbone wood floor feels jsut right. Aside from formal receptions, the Blue Room also holds a special place as the home of the White House Christmas tree each holiday season.
Our final room is the China Room. Used as an exhibit of sorts, the China Room displays china, glass, and silver tableware in chronological order from the White House's earliest occupants. During Jackie O's time, the room was painted in its current style. The intricate paneling is softened by the white wall color, while the simple shelves pop because of their red design. A beautiful red ottoman often sits in the center of the room, furthering the red color scheme.
Each of these rooms share dramatic color schemes, vivid rugs and drapery, and particularly gorgeous, extravagant light fixtures. We'd love the opportunity to add some of our own fixtures to these rooms. Along with Danville and Charleston, here are a couple others we think could be at home in the "People's House."
Our Jefferson family takes its name from Anti-Federalist, Constitution drafter, author of the Declaration of Independence, architect, and inventor of the decimal system, and third PotUS, Thomas Jefferson.
Our Bethesda chandelier in aged silver finish
Which room do you like best?
For more Presidential Style and inspiration, check out oru Pinterest board on FDR and his house in Hyde Park here.
Note: White House images from www.whitehouse.gov unless linked otherwhere. A version of this post was previously posted a couple of years ago, but did not survive the transition to the new website. This is a new version.
