Where Did The Outlander Director Shoot Scottish Highland Scenes?

I love that the filmmakers behind 'Outlander' made the choice to film so much of the Highland material out in the actual country instead of relying only on soundstages. I’ve chased down a handful of those locations myself on a road trip and can still feel the wind off the ridges — many of the sweeping, broody wide shots were filmed across classic Highland landscapes: Glencoe and Glen Etive are obvious standouts, with their knife-edged ridges and deep valleys giving that epic, lonely feeling the show leans on. The area around Loch Lomond and the Trossachs also provided some of the greener, wetter Highland vibes used for travel and camp scenes, and the production dipped into Perthshire and Stirling-shire for forests, rivers and those atmospheric passes. When you watch Jamie and Claire crossing moorland or standing on cliffs looking out over nothing but mist, a lot of that is real land you can visit.

On the practical side, I’ve heard from local guides and production notes that the crew mixed genuine Highland filming with carefully chosen historic sites and private farmlands. Sometimes they’d use an actual historic site for authenticity, other times they’d build village bits like Lallybroch on location or dress existing farmhouses and stone circles. The Culloden/Clava area and surrounding moors were used for battle-y, ancient-ground sequences and for memorial-type shots that needed authenticity. Weather was often the real star—cloudbanks, sudden rain, and shifting light gave scenes a raw, tactile feel. I also noticed that as the series progressed, parts that needed to read like Scottish Highlands were recreated farther afield; the production started doing more work in North Carolina, using the Appalachian ranges and scenic rural areas to double for Scotland when logistics and budgets demanded it.

All that said, what hooked me was how much the show leaned into place: you can tell when they’ve shot in Glencoe versus a backlot. Walking the trails afterwards, I’d point out a bend or a cairn and think about how different lighting, an overcast sky, and a smart camera move turned a familiar ridge into a scene that felt mythic. It made me want to go back to rewatch episodes on location, and that’s the kind of travel itch good filming can give you.

I’ll cut to it: the Scottish Highland scenes in 'Outlander' were mostly shot on location across real Highland country — think places like Glencoe, Glen Etive and the Loch Lomond/Trossachs areas — with crews also filming in Perthshire and other moorland spots. The production loved the dramatic terrain: steep passes, mist-filled valleys and river crossings that give the show its rugged, roomy atmosphere.

An important piece to add is that, for later seasons, the team started doubling some Highland-looking shots in the US (the Appalachian ranges in North Carolina) because it was easier for scheduling and budgets. So while the opening seasons relied heavily on authentic Scottish sites, later work blended on-location Scotland with smart American stand-ins and constructed sets, which is why the Highlands sometimes feel both impossibly vast and intimately staged — I find that mix kind of charming.