As of noon yesterday, the White House has adopted a new logo that will appear everywhere from the administration’s website to official letterheads and the backdrop of press briefings. And, for a small symbol, the logo says a lot about how President Donald Trump is branding his second term in office.
Adjusting the White House logo is nothing new. Over the past several years, each incoming administration has introduced its own updates to the design, which traditionally depicts the White House’s north facade. All of these iterations have generally amounted to small tweaks among administrations, but Trump’s new logo is perhaps the most particularized overhaul in a long time. The new design’s emphasis on classical architectural detail is emblematic of Trump’s agenda of conservative values and the nebulous “golden age of America” that has become a central pillar of his personal branding.
The new design is a white line drawing on a dark-navy background. Unlike any other recent version, it includes flourishes that depict the moulding around the building’s front door, the decorative detail at the top of its columns and around its windows, and even the outline of individual flagstones on the front porch. Most notably, the logo shows the American flag on top of the White House rendered in color, a detail that hasn’t been included since the early aughts.
A history of logo modernization
The past several administrations have slowly modernized the White House logo. Obama’s team, for instance, removed the words “The White House” and “Washington” from the previous Bush iteration; in 2017, Trump adopted a simplified, two-dimensional layout and scrapped a dated oval frame; and Biden’s version cleverly highlighted columns and windows through a more contemporary use of negative space. In contrast to both Trump’s first logo and Biden’s most recent iteration, Trump’s new logo has bucked the trend of paring down the symbol by significantly dialing up the attention to detail.
Trump’s 2025 design actually bears a striking similarity to some of the earliest illustrations of the White House—including Samuel Blodget’s “North Front of the President’s House,” circa 1800, and James Hoban’s “elevation” drawing, circa 1793—which are rendered in a similar line-drawing style with a focus on small details. It’s likely that the colorful flag is a nod to Ronald Reagan’s administration, which used one of the first versions of the White House emblem during press conferences and also displayed the flag in color.
A new logo that returns to the past
These historical influences seem to underscore Trump’s intent to be seen as a leader who restores America to a previous, more conservative era of prosperity, a notion defined by his ubiquitous campaign slogan Make America Great Again. The theme continues on the updated White House website, with such messages as “America is Back” and “making all Americans safe and secure once again.”
His use of these aesthetic architectural constraints perhaps harkens back to the country’s founding. Yesterday, the president signed an executive order called Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture, which endorses the use of “traditional and classical architectural heritage” in civic buildings. Early in his first term, Trump enacted a similar order to ban civic buildings from being built in brutalist or deconstructivist styles, which former President Biden killed in 2021.
While it’s unclear exactly how the new civic architecture order will be enforced, it’s evident that Trump plans to rebrand Washington in his own image—starting with a logo that has more in common with the founding fathers than the modern era.