Kamala Harris Is ‘Challenging What Power Looks Like’ with Her Pink Library (Exclusive)

Kamala Harris is rethinking the color pink.

The first female vice president in US history significantly changed the “other” House of the People — the vice president’s residence in Washington, DC.

The home library, for example, now has pink-hued walls, which Harris, 59, chose on purpose.

“This room had very dark forest green and then lime green striped wallpaper for years,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively. “And I decided to change it a bit. I think this color, which is almost a fuchsia pink, is also a power color and it’s warm. And so, in a way, I guess we were challenging notions of what power looks like.”

All about the Vice President’s rarely seen residence, one lap of the observatory

Vice President Kamala Harris in the fuchsia library of her official residence in Washington, DC

Ysa Perez

Harris, of course, has challenged long-established, deeply entrenched power structures throughout her ceiling-shattering career.

Her nine-year marriage to Doug Emhoff, 59, marks another series of firsts: Emhoff is the first second gentleman and the first Jewish woman among the “big four” in the White House. (A small silver mezuzah, a symbol of the Jewish faith, was attached to the door of the residence for the first time.)

Standing in the library, Harris points to a book called Our vice presidents and other ladies, noting that now “it won’t just be a new addition to that book. There will be a new book.”

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Doug Emhoff and Kamala Harris are hosting an event at their residence to mark the 50th anniversary of hip-hop on September 9, 2023.

Kevin Dietsch/Getty

One of Harris’ goals, she says, was to make the historic house — which sits on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory — feel welcome and included to those who visit.

“I was very determined to bring a real diversity of American art with a lot of young artists,” she says. “So we not only have art from the 1800s, but also contemporary art [too].”

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She and the other gentleman — who have hosted everything from world leaders to local school children to Pride events and Diwali celebrations — “feel it’s important to make this house reflect who we are as America,” she says, “and to make it available to the different people that we are.”

Personally, she says that she, Emhoff and their blended family enjoy gathering in the home library: “It’s really one of my favorite rooms. My family, we play cards here, we play games. So it’s nice when the family is here.”

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Source: HIS Education