Can you stay in the Traitors castle?

You can stay overnight at Ardross Castle, but only by hiring the whole estate rather than a single room. According to the castle's wedding pages, exclusive hire typically includes accommodation for up to 41 guests across two nights, usually the night before and the night of an event, with extra nights available on request.

The castle has 15 bedrooms plus estate cottages, and the Great Hall can seat up to 130 guests for a wedding breakfast, again according to the castle's own site. Hire is on a bring-your-own-caterer basis: guests arrange their own catering, bar and tableware rather than choosing from set packages.

This means Ardross works for a wedding party or a large group booking, not for a couple wanting a single night in the building where The Traitors was filmed. If you want to sleep inside a real castle in the Highlands without hiring an entire estate, see the individually bookable castle hotels further down this guide.

The Ardross estate has roots in the late 18th century, when the 1st Duke of Sutherland acquired the land and built a hunting lodge there. In 1845 the 2nd Duke sold the estate to Sir Alexander Matheson, a merchant whose company had traded in tea and opium and operated banking business across India and China.

Matheson spent the following years developing the grounds, adding tens of miles of dykes, fencing and roads and planting trees across the estate, and commissioned the architect Alexander Ross to remodel the house. The current castle largely dates from 1880 to 1881, when around 30 rooms were added in the Scottish Baronial style, incorporating the earlier mansion rather than replacing it.

Ownership changed hands again in 1898, when C. W. Dyson Perrins bought the estate, and the property was subdivided and sold on in 1937. The McTaggart family bought Ardross in 1983 and restored the gardens, and the estate remains privately owned today.

Although the castle appears on screen as the contestants' home for the series, they do not sleep there. Reporting on the show says contestants are housed at the Courtyard by Marriott Inverness Airport, a four-star hotel some distance from Ardross, so that they cannot mix or talk off camera between filming days.

Series winner Hannah has said the separation is there so that everything shown on camera is genuine, and a contestant on the US version has described the hotel accommodation as functional rather than glamorous, noting the rooms lacked bathtubs. The castle interiors seen in the show are used for filming during the day, not as overnight accommodation for the cast.

This is a common arrangement for period drama and reality filming on private estates: the building supplies the setting on screen, while cast and crew are housed separately in ordinary hotels nearby. It is worth knowing before planning a trip to the area, since it means there is no version of the castle's interior that a paying guest can currently book to sleep in.