Kyle House

A wonderfully exposed designer cottage built of stone and lime plaster, Kyle House is purist. A door step nature sanctuary cloaked in the wilderness for those seeking more than just a holiday home in the Highlands of Scotland.

Shortlisted for the 2021 RIBA House Awards, Kyle House was considerately restored and reconfigured by Scottish architectural studio, GRAS. A luxurious hideaway, designed with quality, detail and durable materials in mind, GRAS added cutout windows to bring in light without losing the aged cottage silhouette of the original building.

Though it blends in perfectly into its raw surroundings – at the southern tip of the Kyle of Tongue, it’s engulfed by the region’s wild hilly landscape – Kyle House is a luxurious, hideaway holiday home where quality, detail, and superior materials set the tone. Containing just one tailor-made double bedroom, Kyle House is small but perfectly formed. Conceived as a series of finely detailed oak boxes, each living space is spacious yet sparsely furnished with either modern contemporary Danish furniture or new design pieces, like Ilse Crawford’s. In a toned-down material palette of stone, timber, metal and glass, each item is carefully considered. In the living room, a large window lets the raw landscape in, framing it in oak. The open fire there utilizes wood sustainably sourced from the estate; the heated floor is made of locally-mined Caithness stone. Danish oak reappears in the simple and sturdy kitchen, which offers panoramic views on the outside through a narrow ribbon window. A rain shower and a window-side bath are the two relaxing options in the spacious bathroom.

The designers, who are the familiar faces from Killiehuntly Farmhouse and Kinloch Lodge, are committed to rethinking how guests can experience the solitude and beauty of simple nature, and with Kyle House, they’ve created an exceptionally serene living space ideal for a reclusive two-person retreat. Kinloch Lodge is close at hand and can be booked together for small groups, as indeed food and supplies can be delivered from the main house.

In this private-hire bolthole, there’s one utterly enchanting bedroom in your style recluse just for you. In keeping with the rest of this chic hideaway your bedroom is as deeply comfortable as it is stylish using a pared-back palette of materials that includes stone, timber, metal and glass.

A timbered picture window that sits against a smooth concrete wall allows uninterrupted gazing from bed down to the often mist-cloaked Kyle of Tongue, perfectly positioned and framed. The bed is swathed is luxurious quilts and underfoot, locally mined polished stone is heated to keep those feet cosy warm. Furniture in the bedroom is kept to a minimum in keeping with the less-is-more aesthetic. The bathroom by contrast is all about indulgence with both a rain shower and free-standing tub with views to Ben Loyal

At the northwestern tip of Scotland’s splendid highlands, Kyle House can be found in the county of Sutherland – a dramatic locale where the mountains meet the sea. Within that rocky coastline, Kyle of Tongue is a shallow sea loch that, together with its surrounding landscape forms a National Scenic area. This exceptional scenery of meadows, grasses and heaths is home to a variety of fauna: salmon, sea trout, ravens, oystercatchers, grey herons and golden eagles.