President Donald Trump has signed an executive order declaring the Oval Office, and some surrounding rooms, a national monument in a bid to stop future presidents from undoing his changes to the West Wing.

The move follows a highly visible redesign that filled the Oval Office with gold accents and a broader project that tore into the East Wing to make space for a large ballroom. Critics have already challenged parts of that building work in court, and Congress never gave a clear green light for the scale of the renovation. By wrapping the rooms in monument status, the White House is trying to raise the legal bar for anyone who wants to strip the decor back out.

The order is not an absolute freeze. It still lets a sitting president redecorate, swap furnishings and make security modifications so long as those changes do not substantially impair the historic structure. In practice that leaves room for taste and security upgrades while aiming to block a wholesale reversal of Trump's imprint.

Monument designations are normally used for landscapes, battlefields and cultural sites of lasting public value. Applying the tool to working rooms inside the White House is unusual and will invite fresh lawsuits from preservation groups and political opponents who say the president is using heritage law as a shield for personal style.

Allies cast the order as protection for a restored grandeur they say visitors and history will remember. Detractors call it an attempt to constitutionalise one administration's aesthetic after midterm losses that already weaken Trump's hand with Congress.

The practical test will come later. A future president who wants a plainer Oval Office will have to argue that new furnishings or a different colour scheme leave the historic fabric intact, or else spend political capital trying to unwind the designation. For now the public facts are clear enough: the Oval Office and named adjoining spaces sit under a new monument order, the ballroom project remains contested, and the White House insists day to day working changes are still allowed.