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Did Trump pick the right blue for the Reflecting Pool? We asked a pool guy.

Last Thursday in a Washington courtroom, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols spent the afternoon trying to parse just how blue “American Flag Blue” could be.

This is the shade that President Donald Trump has selected for the fresh paint currently being applied to the Reflecting Pool, the aqueous link between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.

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Lawyers for the Cultural Landscape Foundation, an education and advocacy organization seeking to halt work on the Reflecting Pool, argued that their client had suffered an “aesthetic injury” from the paint job, and that the government did not undertake required federal reviews. Lawyers for the government argued that if the blue pool remained as reflective as it had been with its previous gray-brown surface, there is no injury.

But blue is a color we associate with injury: Think of the mottled black and blue of a bruise. It is the color of authority and stereotypical masculinity; of depression, but also tranquility; of cleanliness; of cold; of winning first prize.

And so we must ask: What is American Flag Blue?

Let’s start with what it is not, which is aquamarine, another shade in the panoply of blues on the Pantone scale. That was the color that the president initially wanted for the Reflecting Pool - “like in the Bahamas,” he said - and the color of an AI-generated image he has posted on Truth Social of himself lounging in it, as if it were a Boca resort on Constitution Avenue. (Swimming in the Reflecting Pool is both prohibited and likely knee-scrapingly unenjoyable, given its maximum depth of 30 inches.)

No, American Flag Blue, which Trump has said a contractor encouraged him to use, is more like a dark navy. It’s technically called Old Glory Blue, according to the flag color code. It’s darker than Nautical Blue, but more vibrant than Navy Peony; less saturated than International Klein Blue but more chromatic than Poseidon.

“When it’s finished, it’ll be beautiful. It’ll be blue water, dark blue,” the president said on Thursday. “American flag blue, can’t do better than that.”

Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, helped design the Great Seal of the United States in 1782, assigning symbolic meanings to our national colors: Red meant valor, white was for purity, and blue, “the color of the Chief ... signifies vigilance, perseverance & justice,” he wrote.

But the reason those colors were chosen was a pretty mundane one, says Jim Ferrigan, protocol officer of the North American Vexillological Association (vexillology - yes, it’s a mouthful - is the study of the history of flags).

“Red and blue were simply the two most durable dyes in the 18th century,” says Ferrigan, which explains their use in flags of Russia, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, from whom our flag is a descendant. (Union Jack Blue is just a smidgen lighter than American Flag Blue.)

Ferrigan suspects that the Reflecting Pool won’t precisely match the color of the flag: Trump “may just be using the term indiscriminately.”

It’s a marketing word, says Marc Walton, a professor of museum studies at the University of Hong Kong and expert on the history of blue.

“Historically, blue and purple hues have symbolized royalty or were reserved for emperors, such as in Ancient Rome,” Walton says in an email. “As a symbol of power and legitimacy, its use in the reflecting pool aligns with familiar themes in leadership symbolism.”

In other words, the administration wants “to put their stamp on as many things as possible,” says Ferrigan, who then cited the adage “What man can do, man can undo.”

Whether man can, in fact, undo is the subject of the Cultural Landscape Foundation’s lawsuit, too. Harm has already been done, said the organization’s founder, Charles Birnbaum, a renowned expert in landscape architecture.

“The achromatic grey color of the basin causes it to recede and allows the monument and memorial it reflects to be the center of attention. In contrast, painting the basin blue would cause it to compete for attention and fundamentally alter the existing harmony, solemnity, and dignity of the current memorial landscape,” said Birnbaum, in a prior declaration to the court.

In other words, the point of the Reflecting Pool is to invite and allow the observer to reflect.

The Justice Department argued that the court should not halt the paint job because it could always be painted over in the future, and the judge seemed to agree.

“It seems to me the result is that if there’s any harm at all, it is both reparable and temporary,” Nichols said.

But the temporary state of things down at the Mall isn’t great, either.

“Different sections of the basin floor display visibly different shades of blue‚” wrote Birnbaum in a declaration to the court filed before Thursday’s hearing, and a visit to the site confirmed this. The paint job seems awfully patchy.

Some parts of the pool appear American Flag Blue, but others seem to range from charcoal gray to cerulean, depending on how the light hits them. The ends of the Reflecting Pool have not yet been painted, and are still their gray cement color, framed by tarps crumpled up like bedsheets along the edges of the pool.

On a recent Wednesday morning, a lone worker suited up in protective gear was manually spraying blue paint from a hose that another worker was wrangling. The closest bodies of water - the fountains at the World War II Memorial and the Constitution Gardens Pond - appear grayish-blue and moss green, respectively.

In his remarks on Thursday, President Trump upped the price of the job, which has been part of a vast beautification push across Washington. “I originally thought I’d do it for $2 or $3 million,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “Just do a base. But now we are fixing up the exterior of it so we will probably be in it for less than $20 million.”

The Reflecting Pool job, he has said, was prompted by a friend from Germany who called the water “filthy, dirty … disgusting looking.” It has experienced issues with leaks, algae, and is occasionally a bathroom for area geese.

Just because American Flag Blue looks good on a flag, it doesn’t mean it will necessarily look good slathered on a length of more than 2,000 feet, says Jill Morton, a professional color consultant.

“The context of a color is what matters,” says Morton. “That dark blue, if it is that dark, oh man, that’s going to look very, very dismal.”

There is another shade of blue we haven’t yet discussed, which is Swimming Pool Blue, the color that critics have accused the president of choosing for the Reflecting Pool. There were a few reasons for that confusion: First, the president himself had alluded to such a shade in his initial conversations about the job and touted his real estate expertise at building “more than 100 swimming pools” and his hiring of “a guy who’s unbelievable at doing swimming pools” as his contractor. Some eyewitnesses captured some early photos of a base coat of paint that appeared to be a much lighter color.

“The new coloration will cause the pool to resemble a large swimming pool rather than the reflective civic landscape it was designed to be,” lawyers for the Cultural Landscape Foundation wrote in their complaint, dated May 11.

So maybe we need to talk to a swimming pool expert.

Steve Goodale, who goes by “Swimming Pool Steve” online, is Canadian, so he doesn’t have a vested interest in the state of our Reflecting Pool. He has some good news.

“It’s not really going to end up looking like a swimming pool,” says Swimming Pool Steve.

A dark swimming pool liner actually makes the water’s surface more mirrorlike, he says - which is why dark colors aren’t used often in swimming pools (It’s harder to see the bottom).

Could American Flag Blue actually look ... good?

It’s “going to very likely be a more sharp and accurate reflection versus the original gray color,” says Goodale. “What you’re going to see is a higher contrast to the light of the sky and clouds.”

That said, he’s not sure it’s a great idea to change it so dramatically. Dark pool colors have a tendency to fade, he says, and if the paint job remains as patchy as it appears to be now, that would be visible even when filled with water.

Which brings us back to Nichols’s courtroom. The judge questioned Justice Department lawyers on whether the pool would look significantly different when filled with water compared to its pre-renovation appearance, saying it “could be relevant to compare what the Reflecting Pool looks like with dark blue.” A ruling is anticipated soon.

“The president has described this as a significant change,” said Joseph Mead, an attorney for the plaintiff. “I think we can take the president at his word.”

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