Tartan Is Having an Interior Design Comeback

When Queen Victoria and Prince Albert made their first visit to the Scottish Highlands in 1842, they discovered a “dear paradise” where “all seemed to breathe freedom and peace”—a refuge where even the world’s most powerful monarch could “forget the world and its sad turmoils.” Soon, the couple purchased Balmoral Castle, where they decked nearly every room in tartan native to the country’s mountainous north as well as a grey-purple “Balmoral” tartan designed by Albert to honor the region’s heathery terrain. “The curtains, the furniture, the carpets, the furniture [coverings] are all of different plaids,” noted Lord Clarendon when he visited the castle in 1856. Evidently, the abundance of Royal Stewart and tartan linoleum in the servants’ quarters was too much for the then-secretary of