Best of Scotland 2025: Discover the charming Scottish town named one of the most colourful places on the planet

The colourful houses along the waterfront of Tobermory, the main town on the island of Mull, are instantly recognisable to people who grew up in Scotland as the home of the iconic children’s television series Balamory.

But now it’s been featured in a global list of destinations by travel insurance company Staysure, as part of a growing travel trend called “ChromaTravel” - where people are choosing travel destinations based on their colourful, eye-catching palettes.

The company’s data team created the ChromaTravel Index using daylight images of each destination, and analysing them for saturation, vibrancy and hue variation. Every destination was given a score out of 100 based on its visual vividness.

Top of the index with the highest score is Chefchaouen in Morocco, nicknamed the ‘Blue City’ for its stunning, sky-coloured streets. It scored 73 out of 100.

Nyhavn, Copenhagen’s popular harbour district, ranked second with a score of 72. Its bold, cheerful coloured buildings make for a picture-perfect trip to the Danish capital.

Also in the top ten were Burano, a small island off Venice, Kampung Pelangi in Indonesia and the Balat neighbourhood in Istanbul.

Tobermory was ranked 11th in the list, with a score of 65. The experts commended the cheerful display of colour on the harbourfront “create a sense of warmth and welcome even on the coldest days”.

The town, one of the prettiest ports in Scotland, rose to fame in the early 2000s. The success of Balamory, which attracted a weekly audience of two million people at its height, turned the small community into a tourism hotspot in the west of Scotland.

Fans have visited to seek out the different coloured homes of characters including nursery teacher Miss Hoolie, PC Plum, Edie McCredie, Archie the inventor, Spencer the painter, Josie Jump, Suzie Sweet and Penny Pocket ever since the show first aired in 2002.

Last year, the BBC announced plans to revive the show after twenty years with two new series for its CBeebies channel. Filming took place earlier this year with the reboot set to return to our screens next year.

Besides the nostalgia the town invokes among generations of Scots, the town has lots to offer for visitors stopping by.

Main Street offers a good selection of places to eat, hotels and guest houses, and shops selling local arts and crafts.

It’s an ideal location for wildlife watching, with thousands arriving every year in the hope of spotting rare Golden and White-tailed Eagles, while the seas off the coast of the island are important feeding areas for whales, dolphins and basking sharks.