Balmoral (Royal)
This is one variant — a specific cloth: this exact thread count and colourway, with its own provenance below. It is one weaving of the sett (the scale-free proportion — the same cloth at any scale or shade), whose colour order is pattern RWKWBWBWKBWRW.
Part of the Balmoral tartan — the named design grouping this sett with its other cloths.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 13 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=182
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1853 — Balmoral (Royal) (register-of-tartans, record)
This is the original Balmoral as designed by Queen Victoria's husband. Prince Albert in 1853. While predominantly grey with overchecks of red and black the background contains threads of black and white yarns twisted together to achieve the appearance of the rough hewn granite so familiar in Royal Deeside. It is worn by HM Queen herself as a skirt and several members of the Royal Family but only with the Queen's permission. The only other approved wearer of the Balmoral Tartan is the Queen's personal piper (the Estate workers and Ghillies wear the Balmoral Tweed). D W Stewart wrote in 'Old and Rare Scottish Tartans' (1893), 'Her Majesty the Queen has not only granted permission for its publication here, but has also graciously afforded information concerning its inception in the early years of the reign, when the sett was designed by the Prince Consort.' There is also a smaller sett that was woven for the children's clothes. Checked against original cloth sample woven by Kinloch Anderson, holders of the Royal Warrant. The Balmoral was originally woven only by Romanes & Paterson of Edinburgh. - 1853 — Balmoral (Royal) (tartans-authority, record)
This is the original Balmoral as designed by Queen Victoria's husband. Prince Albert in 1853. While predominantly grey with overchecks of red and black the background contains threads of black and white yarns twisted together to achieve the appearance of the rough hewn granite so familiar in Royal Deeside. It is worn by HM Queen herself as a skirt and several members of the Royal Family but only with the Queen's permission. The only other approved wearer of the Balmoral Tartan is the Queen's personal piper. (The Estate workers and Ghillies wear the Balmoral Tweed). D.W.Stewart wrote in his book, 'Old and Rare Scottish Tartans' (1893), ''Her Majesty the Queen has not only granted permission for its publication here, but has also graciously afforded information concerning its inception in the early years of the reign, when the sett was designed by the Prince Consort.'' There is also a smaller sett that was woven for the children's clothes. Checked against original cloth sample woven by Kinloch Anderson, holders of the Royal Warrant. The Balmoral was originally woven only by Romanes & Paterson of Edinburgh.
Dataset — provenance for this record, inherited from the source manifest
- source
- Scottish Register of Tartans
- data captured from
- https://github.com/thetartan/tartan-database/blob/master/data/register-of-tartans/data.csv
- data date
- 1853 (this record)
- licence
- Crown copyright
Capture chain — the hands this data passed through, oldest first; each capture carries its own licence
- Scottish Register of Tartans · Crown copyright
the living register — still published by National Records of Scotland - thetartan/tartan-database 2016-2017 · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Levko Kravets's frozen compilation — the capture we vendored, and where its CC licence text came from - this dictionary captured 2026-06-10 · commit 5bf86c7566
each re-capture is a git commit to data/sources
Register references
External register numbers recorded for this tartan.
- Scottish Register of Tartans: 182
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 1300
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 1300
Thread count
LB/10 R6 LB48 N14 K12 LB6 N6 LB6 N22 LB12 K6 LB6 R/6
One full sett is 304 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| K | #000000 #000000 | oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0) |
| N | #636363 #636363 | oklch(50.0% 0.000 89.9) |
| LB | #B5BBDE #B5BBDE | oklch(79.9% 0.050 277.6) |
| R | #D60020 #D60020 | oklch(55.2% 0.224 25.5) |
Sample pattern
Compared to the master
This cloth is one sett of its design; the master sett (the exemplar the design is anchored on) is below for comparison.
Its ΔTartan distance from the master is 0.60 — the same measure the nearest-tartans table ranks by (0 is identical; a re-scale of the same cloth is near 0, a recolour or a different proportion further).
this sett
master sett ★Nearest tartan variants
The nearest existing variants by ΔTartan distance, with this cloth at the top so the swatches line up against it.
Neighbour map
Every grey dot is one of 13621 variants placed by the first two principal components of the ΔTartan feature space (42% of its variance). Red is this tartan; blue dots are its nearest — click one to open its page.
ID: /variants/s13/lb5r3lb24n7k6lb3n3lb3n11lb6k3lb3r3~x2/