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 state.
Over the next century, Victoria and Albert’s affinity for tartan precipitated what scholars refer to as a “Balmorization” of fashion and home design. Plaids and checks belonging to the Campbell, MacKenzie, and Douglass clans popped up in coats, gowns, and children’s garments while tartan became a mainstay of British and American interiors. As twentieth century textile designers Anni Albers, Mary Storr, and Dan Cooper sought to create affordable tartan fabrics and wallpaper, Dutch architect and Benedictine monk Hans van der Laan elevated tartan as an exemplar of “spatial superposition,” as reflected in his design of the St. Benedictsburg Abbey at Vaals between 1968 and in 1986. In 1991, Ralph Lauren became the most famous name associated with tartan interiors when he launched his own line of tartan fabrics, china, mirrors, napkins rings, and mahogany furniture. For Lauren, “tartan is not just a fabric,” reported The New York Times of the new collection. “It is a way of life.”
While the timelessness of tartan ensures that it will never go out of style, it’s clear that it is resonating with people more than it has in years. Following Dior’s inventive line of reinterpreted tartans, tweeds, and knits debuted at Scotland’s Drummond Castle last June, Celine, Valentino, Ferragamo, Chloe, Loro Piana, and Bottega Veneta have all embraced tartan as part of a broader “countryside style”—an aesthetic that we are seeing be echoed by brands like Hill House Home and Boden, which just launched its playful “Tartan Time” collection this fall.
At the same time, tartans, tweeds, and checks have started to permeate home design. “The inevitable crossover from fashion to interiors is not surprising,” says interior designer Stephanie Hunt, who encourages her clients to “dress like you decorate, and vice versa.” Out is the minimalist, modern farmhouse style, she says, and in is the layered, colorful, and print-heavy, making tartan a no-brainer.
Of course, designers have always loved working with tartan, regardless of whether it is “in” or not. Many designers I spoke for this story say they appreciate the cloth’s durability, especially for clients with pets or young families. “Because of the pattern and the repeat and the multiple colors, you’re going to hide stains and wear and tear,” explains designer Katie Davis of Houston, Texas.
For Davis and others, what’s even more appealing about tartan is the creative experimentation that it allows for. Within a single pattern, contemporary tartans from Holland and Sherry, Schumacher, Mulberry Home, Fabricut, Loro Piana, Pierre Frey, and Abraham Moon Sons often contain five or more colors, serving as “a bridge to bring the palette together,” explains Boston designer Katie Rosenfeld. “You’re able to get what I call ‘a tie that binds,’” echoes New York’s Corey Damen Jenkins, who recently used tartan on the ceiling of his equestrian-inspired study at the 2025 Flower Magazine showhouse in Nashville, Tennessee. In this way, says Katie Davis, tartan functions almost like another solid. “It makes a fun backdrop,” Tony Baratta, one of the most iconic purveyors of tartan, tells Vogue. “Things always look better on it.”
Across the board, interior designers and manufacturers say there has been a noticeable surge in requests for tartan. “It seems like there’s a really strong pull, not only in fashion but also in design, to going back to classics,” observes designer J. Randall Powers of Houston—a “trend” he credits to the era we’re living in. “In tumultuous times, we often go back to tradition, and there’s something about tartan [that is] protective and authentic and comforting,” echoes Mhairi Maxwell, a curator of contemporary history at the National Museum of Scotland, where she and her colleagues oversee one of the most significant collections of tartan in the world.
Creative director of Mulberry Home Ann Grafton says that part of this comfort stems from tartan’s “deeply rooted associations with rural life,” which evoke a certain “durability” and “warmth” akin to an episode of Downton Abbey or All Creatures Great and Small. Certainly, there is something about wrapping a room in tartan that makes it feel like a cozy hug with a side of hot chocolate. Tony Baratta and J. Randall Powers attribute this feeling to the gridlike structure and visual symmetry of tartan. Add color and shadow to the mix, and you get what Mhairi Maxwell calls a “magical complexity” that’s impossible to resist.
If designed poorly, tartan interiors can occasionally come across as overdone or even gimmicky—like a Christmas catalogue on steroids. During our conversation, Mhairi Maxwell explained how this “commodification” of tartan distorts its historical purpose as an ancestral textile and a symbol of Scottish resistance against foreign rule. After defeating an army of tartan-clad Jacobite rebels at the infamous Battle of Culloden in 1746, the English outlawed tartan, kilts, trowse, and philibeg in an attempt to erase all vestiges of Highland life. It was only until Queen Victoria visited the Highlands a century later that tartan was permitted and later repackaged, trademarked, and marketed as its own “brand.”
Fashion designers like Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen have long used tartan as a way to turn this commodification on its head, featuring torn, deconstructed, and even bloodied tartan as a badge of rebellion. In similar ways, today’s interior designers are striving to honor tartan’s “multiple narratives” by pushing the envelope, says Abraham Moon Sons brand director Joe McCann. “What’s happening now isn’t just nostalgia. It’s a return to something layered and enduring,” he says. “[It] also signals disruption,” adds Mulberry Home’s Ann Grafton. Certainly, today’s tartan manufacturers are experimenting with reinvented patterns and fresh colorways, producing cloths checkered in shades of turquoise, peach, lavender, orange, indigo, lime, and hot pink. In addition to embracing these colors, designers are incorporating tartan in unexpected ways, using it on rugs and lampshades as well as upholstery for modern furniture pieces. Still, for Tony Barrata, there is nothing like covering walls in tartan. “For me,” he tells Vogue, “that is the ultimate.”
When working with tartan, the designers and manufacturers I interviewed for this story stressed the importance of scale, particularly for large walls or ceilings, where a densely packed tartan can appear pixilated. Beyond that, they agree that there aren’t any rules for designing with tartan. “It’s a tradition that can take a bit of reinvention” and “room to breathe,” says Joe McCann. “There’s really no boundary on bringing tartan successfully into interior design,” seconds Corey Damen Jenkins. “The sky is the limit.”
Historically rich yet adaptable and inclusive, tartan is something that means something different to everyone. “From time immemorial, [tartan was] worn by the laborers, the ghillies, [and] the working class as well as the lairds, the elite, and the landowners,” reflects Mhairi Maxwell. Centuries have passed, and still it is embraced by royals, punk rockers, festival goers, Christmas enthusiasts, and Catholic school kids alike. Perhaps that is why tartan continues to epitomize such a rich sense of place and home, even for those of us without a trace of Scottish ancestry. Each of our different histories adds a new layer to the textile, creating endless permutations of color and shadow, as its grid extends into infinity, offering an atmosphere of comfort and—just maybe—an escape “from the world’s sad turmoils.”