Design Happens

What’s your opinion of designer Michael Smith’s redesign of the Oval Office? Gone are the traditional golds of George W. Bush’s office, replaced with warm beiges and browns.

Everyone from political pundits to high-end interior designers has been dishing out their two cents on the Commander-in-Chief’s new digs and the consensus seems to be, “I don’t hate it.”

Arriana Huffingtion, Editor in Chief of The Huffington Post says, “…the decision to festoon the new carpet with quotes from Lincoln, F.D.R., J.F.K., Teddy Roosevelt and Martin Luther King seems a tad Hallmark-y, and a little prepubescent — something Sasha’s fellow fourth graders might suggest (Malia’s seventh-grade friends would probably find it “lame”). What’s next, adding the doodle of a heart with “Barack + Michelle”?”

Decorator Miles Redd was less harsh, saying “It is certainly not a paragon of chic, but it hardly could be. What we Americans want is good solid comfort, and I think the room delivers.”

Read more opinions from Anne Coulter and Sheila Bridges in the New York Times piece, The Audacity of Taupe.

See how the Oval Office has changed through the years.

And have you ever wondered, “What if Ikea designed the President’s office?”