The Balmoral has stood at the eastern end of Princes Street since 1902, its clock tower — famously set three minutes fast to help guests catch their trains from Waverley Station below — one of Edinburgh's most recognised landmarks. Rocco Forte Hotels has owned and operated it since 1997, building the property into one of Scotland's leading luxury hotels through a combination of consistent investment and a food and beverage programme anchored by Number One, which has held a Michelin star since 2002.
The £30 million refurbishment programme confirmed this week is the most comprehensive investment in the property since a substantial renovation in 2018. It will touch all 168 bedrooms and suites — 130 bedrooms, 38 suites across the hotel's upper floors — and introduce a reimagined bar concept on the ground floor that will sit alongside the existing Number One and Brasserie Prince by Alain Roux.
The Rooms Programme
The bedroom and suite refurbishment, being designed by the Edinburgh-based studio Graven, takes The Balmoral's existing visual identity — the warm, dark, baronial palette that references Scottish craft traditions without dressing in tartan — and evolves it toward a lighter, more contemporary register suited to the hotel's current guest profile. The brief, as Graven has described it in preliminary conversations, centres on "luxury without weight": rooms that feel generous and well-made without the heaviness that characterised earlier interpretations of the Scottish grand hotel aesthetic.
Materials throughout will include Scottish-sourced wools, tweeds and leather alongside bespoke joinery in Scottish oak. The suite tier — particularly the two signature suites on the upper floors with views across to the castle — is being given the most significant spatial reconfiguration, with sitting areas redesigned to prioritise the view and bathroom layouts expanded to include a dedicated dressing space.
The phased approach, as with most major hotel refurbishments, will allow continuous operation throughout: rooms being worked on are blocked from the booking system while the rest of the hotel remains fully operational. The first completed rooms are targeted for autumn 2026.
The Bar
The new bar concept is the element of the programme that Rocco Forte Hotels is most visibly excited about. The existing Scotch Whisky Bar — a small, well-regarded space but one with limited seating capacity and a relatively narrow offer — is being replaced with a more expansive bar designed to operate as a destination in its own right rather than a hotel amenity.
The new concept, whose name has not yet been announced, will occupy an expanded footprint on the ground floor and will carry what the hotel describes as "the most serious Scotch whisky programme of any hotel bar in Scotland" — an ambition that, in a city with several strong contenders, will require genuine depth of range, educated service and pricing that reflects the quality of the collection rather than defaulting to standard hotel margin structures.
Edinburgh's cocktail and spirits scene has developed significantly in the past decade, and the city's bar culture is no longer simply an adjunct to its restaurant scene. The Balmoral's investment in a serious bar concept reflects an understanding that international visitors to Edinburgh now arrive with expectations informed by the world's leading hotel bars, and that a hotel of The Balmoral's standing needs to meet those expectations in the drinks space as consistently as it does at the table.
Number One restaurant, under executive chef Stuart Muir, is not part of the current programme and will continue to operate without interruption throughout the refurbishment.