Plenty of difficult questions are swirling around DC these days, but here’s one that seems easy to the point of absurdity: What color is the White House? Well, Kyle Dugdale would like to challenge the answer you’ve almost certainly come up with. A senior critic at Yale’s architecture school, he’s the author of a new book, Coloring the White House, which explores the hues of the President’s home. It’s a more complicated topic than you think, as suggested by the translation of the book’s Latin dedication: “To all who see the colors of the White House.”
I am not one of those people, I confess: The place looks pretty white to me. What is Dugdale getting at? “I guess I mean it on a few levels,” he says. “First off, white is never actually white,” since we lump together a wide range of shades under that description. (The Off-White House would probably be more accurate.) “Secondly, the white is only a superficial layer onto a much more interesting material reality,” meaning the sandstone underneath. “We could talk about the contrast between the exterior and the interior, which is decidedly not white, right? There’s a Red Room and a Blue Room and a Green Room. We could talk about the longer history of classical architecture and how this house fits into that story.”
Published by the White House Historical Association, the book is being framed as a coloring book, though it’s considerably more involved and thought-provoking than your typical fill-in-the-pictures throwaway. “As an academic, I don’t normally write books quite like this,” Dugdale says. “I’m trying to find a way to tell better stories and maybe also to reach a broader audience.”
But sure, go ahead and crayon it in if you like. On each left-hand page, Dugdale offers some history and his insights, along with a palette of relevant colors to serve as inspiration. On the right, you can do your own thing: paint the White House black or red or whatever psychedelic swirl might excite your retinas. The current occupant, of course, prefers gold.
Speaking of that guy, I was curious what Dugdale thinks about this design-obsessed President’s recent proposal to paint the adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building a blinding white. Would it ever make sense to do something similar to the President’s home? It seemed a perfectly relevant question for the author of a new book about color and government architecture. But apparently this is an awkward time to be the White House Historical Association; before I could finish the query, a minder from the organization cut in, scolding me for coloring outside the lines, even though I hadn’t agreed to any limitations on what had previously been an engaging conversation. “Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt,” she interrupted. “I just wanted to make sure we stay on the topic of the coloring book.”
This article appears in the February 2026 issue of Washingtonian.
Rob Brunner grew up in DC and moved back in 2017 to join Washingtonian. Previously, he was an editor and writer at Fast Company and other publications. He lives with his family in Chevy Chase DC.
