Behind Trump and Melania's separate White House bedroom doors: Missing decorations, simmering tension and the habit that stunned staff

By NIKKI SCHWAB, CHIEF CAMPAIGN CORRESPONDENT Published: 21:02, 18 June 2026 | Updated: 21:25, 18 June 2026 Call it the battle for the better bedroom.  It's long been lore that President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump keep separate quarters on the second floor of the White House residence. But New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan revealed new details about the Trumps' living arrangement on the pages of their forthcoming book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. The Daily Mail obtained a sneak peek.  The President had bequeathed his wife the traditional master bedroom and taken over the space next door, often labeled the second-floor 'living room' on White House maps, situated next to the more well-known Yellow Oval, according to the authors.  Historically, JFK and Jackie had the same set-up. Melania's room had an en suite dressing room and bath.  But when the President moved back into the White House in January 2025, according to the book, he appeared to want to outdo her - with decor.  President Donald Trump (left) and First Lady Melania Trump (right) walk through the White House's Cross Hall last month. A forthcoming book details how the President spirited away items his wife picked out for other parts of the mansion to decorate his bedroom Your browser does not support iframes. 'In the early weeks of the new administration, items were spirited from the second-floor corridor into the President's bedroom,' Haberman and Swan wrote. 'Sometimes Trump carried the objects in himself, rearranging things across the private quarters on a whim.' Melania, at the time, wasn't spending much time at the White House - and wasn't around to consult as objects 'vanished' into the President's bedroom. 'Once, when staff gently reminded the President that he was taking things from the Center Hall his wife had personally selected, he made clear he didn't care,' the authors wrote.  'He seemed almost to be competing with her - determined to have the better room,' they noted. Some of the items Melania had picked out also ended up in the Oval Office or outside of it.  The enormous 'selfie' mirror that was hung alongside Trump's outdoor 'Presidential Walk of Fame,' where former President Joe Biden is depicted as an autopen, had been a centerpiece in Melania's first-term redesign of the Queen's Bedroom.  'The President's redecorating generated such a flurry of activity that staff often felt caught between the two Trumps, who were the only presidential couple to regularly use and maintain separate bedrooms since Richard and Pat Nixon,' the journalists wrote. To make up for the missing items, White House staff would photograph replacements and send pictures to the First Lady for approval.  'Trump's obsessive focus on interior decorating made the staff yearn for the First Lady to return and hopefully rein him in,' Haberman and Swan said.  A photograph of President John F Kennedy's White House bedroom, the same room President Donald Trump claimed for his own chambers, which traditionally serves as a second floor living room The White House's master bedroom as seen during President Ronald Reagan's administration, as he poses with wife, First Lady Nancy Reagan. First Lady Melania Trump occupies with larger space that has an en suite dressing room and bath  Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump will be released on June 23 The authors also revealed an odd Trump design quirk: the President preferred a carpeted bathroom.  Carpeted bathrooms were trendy in the 1970s in the US and the United Kingdom, but eventually gave way to a desire for cleanliness.   Trump's proclivity for carpeting dated back to his first term. On inauguration day 2025, the carpet for Trump's private bathroom returned.  'The portion nearest the shower would often be soaked through; the staff was never quite sure why, but they worried about mold growing underneath,' Haberman and Swan wrote. 'The solution was to lay a small piece of the same carpet - never an actual bath mat - over the larger one.' 'Several of these pieces were kept in rotation, swapped out and dried,' they added. Besides keeping an eye out for wet carpet, White House staff also had to monitor the President's bedroom mess.  'A nighttime snacker, the President would frequently leave an array of empty potato chip bags, Starbucks wrappers, and ice cream cartons in the trash, or on the floor,' Haberman and Swan wrote.  First Lady Melania Trump (left) sits with First Lady Michelle Obama (right) in the Yellow Oval, the second floor room that is adjacent to President Donald Trump's bedroom. The family's private residence is rarely photographed compared to the White House's state floor Regime Change detailed how the White House Rose Garden project ended up being a compromise between the Trumps, with only the grass replaced with patio stone and the rose bushes kept untouched  First Lady Melania Trump lost the larger battle of the ballroom, with President Donald Trump ordering the White House's East Wing, which housed the First Lady's offices, to be demolished in October to make way for the ballroom project  'The staff had to begin monitoring the trash after it was discovered he was sometimes throwing out White House sterling silver utensils,' they said.  The President's bedroom improvement campaign was a microcosm for Trump's bigger White House projects.  First, the Rose Garden, which Melania had redesigned during the President's first term. The authors reported that 'when early talk made the rounds that Trump now intended to turn the garden into a version of the Mar-a-Lago patio, word came back from the First Lady's team that she was very unhappy.'  'The compromise solution was to pave over the grass with white stone; the rose bushes would remain intact,' they said.  There was less of a compromise when it came to the East Wing - where the First Lady traditionally had her offices - which Trump had demolished in October to clear the way for his ballroom project.  'Mrs. Trump, who preferred a quiet environment with minimal disturbances and objected to living in a construction zone, had repeatedly expressed concern about the size and location of the ballroom,' Haberman and Swan wrote. 'For several weeks in early 2025, White House aides had tried accommodating the couple's competing desires about the future of the complex.'  But as the Daily Mail previously reported, Trump had wanted there to be a White House ballroom as far back as 2010. He even called President Barack Obama's adviser, David Axelrod, to pitch it to him.  'Mrs. Trump would soon lose a larger battle over what would become the President's signature project, which he announced in July: a White House ballroom that, like a sponge in a glass of water, continued expanding until by early 2026 it was expected to be larger than the White House building itself,' Haberman and Swan said.  The comments below have not been moderated. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? 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