Glencoe House has quietly completed a refurbishment worth pausing for. The Scottish Highland hotel, set in a grand Baronial mansion built in 1896-97, has reworked its public rooms and suites with a bespoke wallcovering scheme that pulls the scenery outside straight onto the interior surfaces.
The house itself has a good story. It was built for Donald Alexander Smith, later Lord Strathcona, as a gesture of devotion to his wife Isabella — their initials are still worked into the architecture. Edinburgh-based Malcolm Duffin Design, a studio focused on restoring historic properties, led the redesign, partnering with Welsh wallcovering maker Newmor on everything from custom murals to adapted stock collections.
The centrepiece is a scenic mural in the reception, grand hall and staircase. Layered trees and foliage in deep blues and greens climb the timber staircase, framing the double-height windows so the Highland view keeps going indoors. Because the design was digitally printed, Newmor could tailor it precisely to the stairwell's dimensions, letting it flow unbroken from reception to the upper floor. A second bespoke piece — a stone-block pattern framing the reception bay window — adds structure without fighting the original woodwork.
Off-the-shelf designs fill out the scheme: a large-scale Morris damask in Sage and Bluebell (plus suite-specific colourways), the subtle Herringbone in connecting spaces, the woven-looking Hessian, and Tussah, a raw-silk effect with metallic threads that catch the light. The overall effect is interiors that acknowledge the building's Victorian bones without feeling like a museum.
For travellers, this matters more than a design trade story might suggest. Glencoe House is one of Scotland's most distinguished luxury stays — suites rather than standard rooms, full of period character — and the refurb signals a property investing seriously in atmosphere as well as comfort. If you're planning a Highland escape where the hotel itself is part of the experience rather than just a base for hiking Glencoe's glens and ridges, this is the kind of detail that separates a memorable stay from an anonymous one. Suite choices now come with their own tailored colourways, and the staircase alone justifies arriving before dinner.
It's also a neat case study in how heritage hotels modernise: digital print technology lets a designer treat a stairwell like a canvas, while stocked collections keep the wider scheme cohesive and on budget. The result, by all accounts from both studios, is a house that feels connected to its dramatic setting without veering into tartan cliché.
Glencoe House's reimagined interiors show what happens when a designer, a manufacturer and a 19th-century love story all pull in the same direction.
