Master Bedroom

The President's Bedroom

Used as a first lady's suite by Jackie Kennedy and other first ladies (the president often slept next door in what is today the Living Room), this room is traditionally the Master Bedroom of the White House and part of the master suite. A small dressing room and bathroom adjoin to the west.

The room has closets in the rounded north wall on either side of the door to the West Sitting Hall, installed as part of the Truman reconstruction (and duplicated in the Private Dining Room). The closet doors are disguised and papered and paneled like the rest of the wall. Another disguised door on the east wall leads to the Living Room.

This room is the "real" Lincoln bedroom. Abraham Lincoln slept here, though not in the Lincoln bed (that was for guests). In Lincoln's day, the north end of the room was partitioned off. First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln slept in the bedroom next door (today's Living Room). The Lincoln bed did serve a president in this room at one time, however. President Wilson and second wife Edith used it in what is today the Living Room.

During the Kennedy time in the White House, Jackie redecorated this room frequently, but always maintained her bed as two twin beds pushed together (JFK liked a very hard mattress for his back).

During the 1980s, this room was papered with antique Chinese wallpaper, chosen by the Reagan family, which featured birds and butterflies frolicking among bamboo shoots. This was replaced by the Clintons with more traditional decor by Kaki Hockersmith and changed again by the second Bushes, but no photos from either era have been released.

Adapted from America's First Families: Chapter 3, A Home Within a Symbol:

Since the 1902 renovation, the southwest suite has remained fixed as the president's bedroom. The Theodore Roosevelts slept in the Lincoln bed; the Tafts put it in storage and used twin mahogany beds. The twin beds were used by Woodrow and Ellen Wilson, who painted the room blue and white; Ellen Wilson died in this room. Wilson's second wife, Edith, brought the Lincoln bed back here for their use. The Hardings banished it and brought in Nellie Taft's twin beds. Here Florence Harding also had a special closet made for her large collection of shoes.

The Coolidges returned the Lincoln bed for their use—and the Hoovers put it in another room and didn't use it. Eleanor Roosevelt and then Bess Truman used it as a sitting room, the former hanging hundreds of framed pictures, the latter painting the walls lavender and gray. Mamie Eisenhower used it as her bedroom, in multiple shades of pink with an enormous pink bed and pink pin-cushioned headboard. [Ike kept the room next door as his room, but used it primarily for naps and when he was "in the doghouse."]

Jackie Kennedy redecorated it in powder blue and white, placing a pastel portrait of her daughter on the wall, with a favorite terra-cotta bust of a child on the mantelpiece. She had double beds pushed together as one, draped by a powder blue tapestry. Since the Fords the room has been shared by the spouses. The Reagans covered the walls in hand-painted Chinese paper with a design of small birds; the Clintons chose similarly patterned floral paper.