Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool Gets a New Look 

The iconic pool has been drained, scrubbed, painted “American flag blue,” and refilled in a fast-tracked renovation tied to the nation’s semiquincentennial. Not everyone is pleased.

One of Washington’s most photographed landmarks has quietly reemerged from a months-long closure with a striking change: the floor of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is now painted a deep shade of navy blue — a hue the project team calls “American flag blue” — as part of a sweeping, fast-tracked restoration tied to the United States’ 250th anniversary celebrations.

The pool, a 2,029-foot-long basin stretching from the Lincoln Memorial toward the Washington Monument, was drained in late April 2026 and began refilling in early June. What crews found beneath the water’s surface told a familiar story of deferred maintenance: cracked granite, leaking structural joints, and years of accumulated debris — twelve truckloads of it, according to the White House.

The renovation was executed under a no-bid contract awarded to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia-based firm specializing in industrial waterproofing. Crews sandblasted the pool’s outer ring, regrouted and repaired the aging granite edging, sealed the concrete slab joints that had allowed water to seep through, and applied an industrial-grade waterproof coating throughout the basin.

The colored finish — chosen both to cover the coating and to evoke patriotic imagery ahead of the nation’s semiquincentennial — is the renovation’s most visible and contested element.

“This project sealed crevices in the stone to prevent leaks, and removed 12 truckloads of garbage from the pool.”— President Donald Trump.

In mid-May, the nonprofit Cultural Landscape Foundation sued the administration to stop work on the pool, saying it had bypassed federally required historic preservation reviews. A judge heard arguments later that month, but hadn’t made a decision by the time the administration informed the court on Wednesday that work had been completed.

The Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Mall, has acknowledged that the pool has continued to suffer from broken pipes and chronic water loss requiring costly emergency refills since its last major overhaul, which took place between 2010 and 2012. However, it remains unclear whether this renovation addressed the underlying pipe failures — as opposed to the surface-level joint sealing and coating work that crews visibly performed.

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Wayne Creed

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