Where Was The Shining Filmed? The Real Overlook Hotel

Where was The Shining filmed? Almost entirely in England, on sets at EMI Elstree Studios near London. The Overlook Hotel’s outside is Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood, Oregon. The opening drive was filmed from a helicopter in Glacier National Park, Montana.

That’s the short answer. The Overlook you remember, from the lobby to the maze to Room 237, never existed as one building. Stanley Kubrick built it piece by piece in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, and sent small crews to America for the mountains.

This guide counts down the 10 places behind The Shining, from the Colorado hotel that inspired the book to the Oregon lodge that played the Overlook. Then it covers how Kubrick built the hotel, where Doctor Sleep was filmed, and how to visit.

#	Real place	What it gave the film	Where	Can you visit?
10	The Stanley Hotel	Inspired the book. Not in the film	Estes Park, Colorado	Yes, it’s a hotel
9	The Ahwahnee	The model for the Colorado Lounge	Yosemite, California	Yes, it’s a hotel
8	The Gold Room and red bathroom	Jack’s drinks with Lloyd and his talk with Grady	Elstree Studios, England	No. It was a set
7	Room 237 and the hallways	Danny’s Big Wheel rides, the twins	Elstree Studios, England	No. It was a set
6	The Colorado Lounge	Jack’s typewriter, Wendy’s discovery	Elstree Stage 3, England	No. It burned down
5	The hedge maze	The chase in the snow	Borehamwood backlot and Stage 1	No. It was a set
4	The Overlook facade	The hotel front in the snow	Elstree backlot, England	No. It’s gone
3	Going-to-the-Sun Road	The yellow VW climbing into the mountains	Glacier National Park, Montana	Yes
2	Saint Mary Lake and Wild Goose Island	The opening shot	Glacier National Park, Montana	Yes
1	Timberline Lodge	The outside of the Overlook	Mount Hood, Oregon	Yes, it’s a hotel

The 10 Shining Filming Locations

The countdown starts at a hotel Kubrick never used and ends at the lodge that became the most famous hotel in horror.

10) The Stanley Hotel, Colorado: The Hotel That Inspired the Book

Stephen King found the Overlook here, but Kubrick never filmed a frame of it.

In late September 1974, Stephen King and his wife Tabitha checked into the Stanley Hotel the night before it closed for the winter. They were the only guests, and they stayed in Room 217. King said the hotel felt like the perfect setting for a ghost story. That night, he dreamed of his young son being chased through its halls. By morning, he had the bones of the book. The Stanley opened in 1909, built by F.O. Stanley of the Stanley Steamer car.

Plenty of sites still say Kubrick filmed here. He didn’t. The Stanley was used for the 1997 ABC miniseries, written by King himself, which shot there from March 1996. The hotel added a hedge maze in 2015, picked from 329 designs sent in from 31 countries. In May 2025 it was sold to a public partnership, which is now building the Stanley Film Center, due to open in early 2028.

9) The Ahwahnee, Yosemite: The Model for the Colorado Lounge

The Overlook’s great lounge was copied from a real hotel in Yosemite National Park.

Kubrick wanted a hotel that looked real, not like a spooky movie hotel. Production designer Roy Walker toured American hotels and photographed their interiors, and Kubrick picked the rooms he liked. The Stanley Kubrick Archive in London still holds research photos of the Ahwahnee’s interiors. Its Great Lounge has the same round chandeliers you see in the film.

Gilbert Stanley Underwood designed the Ahwahnee. He was also the consulting architect on Timberline, which Forest Service architects drew up. So the same man shaped both hotels behind the Overlook. It’s the kind of research a good location scout does before a single set is built.

8) The Gold Room and the Red Bathroom: Elstree Studios

Jack’s drinks with Lloyd the bartender and his chat with Grady were shot on sets in England.

The Gold Room is the Overlook’s ballroom bar, where Jack sits down with Lloyd, played by Joe Turkel, and the hotel’s 1920s party comes to life. In the film, the bathroom where Grady tells Jack to “correct” his family is a short walk away. In real life, it was built in the Elstree workshops, because every stage was full. Its crimson walls against white floors and ceiling make it the most famous bathroom in horror.

You’ll read that the bathroom was based on the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. We found no production source for the Biltmore link. Wright didn’t design the Biltmore either. He only consulted, and its architect was Albert Chase McArthur.

7) Room 237 and the Hallways: Elstree Studios

The hallways where Danny rides his Big Wheel ran between stages so the camera could keep rolling.

To follow Danny’s Big Wheel, Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown mounted his rig on a modified wheelchair, with the lens as low as an inch from the floor. A grip pushed the chair, and after a tyre blew out they switched to solid tyres. Danny Lloyd could only work 40 studio days a year, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Even so, Brown says they shot at least 30 Big Wheel takes.

The orange and red hexagon carpet is “Hicks’ Hexagon”, a 1960s pattern by British designer David Hicks. Hicks never worked on the film. The Kubrick archivists found no record of an order, so it was bought off the shelf or copied. Room 237 itself is a book change, and the reason for it is at number 1.

6) The Colorado Lounge: Elstree Stage 3

The Overlook’s giant lounge, where Jack types the same sentence for weeks, burned down during filming.

The lounge was one of the biggest sets ever built at Elstree. Cinematographer John Alcott lit its windows from outside, with 860 lamps of 1,000 watts on 40 ft scaffolding behind an 80 by 30 ft diffusion screen. That’s why the room glows like a winter afternoon. It’s also where Wendy finds the pages that read “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”.

On 24 January 1979, the crew was shooting next door on Stage 4. That day’s production report reads “STAGE 3, INT. LOUNGE, BURNED DOWN.” Variety put the damage at about $2.5 million. Kubrick rebuilt part of the burned set to shoot three close-ups of Shelley Duvall. Stage 3 was rebuilt taller, and Steven Spielberg used the extra height for the Well of the Souls in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

5) The Hedge Maze: Borehamwood

The maze was never a hedge. It was pine branches stapled to plywood.

In King’s book, the hotel has hedge animals that move. Kubrick swapped them for a maze. Garrett Brown wrote that it was first built outdoors on the old MGM lot in Borehamwood, where Kubrick had shot 2001: A Space Odyssey. Alcott placed it on the Elstree backlot, next to the hotel front. It was then rebuilt indoors on Stage 1 for the snowy chase. The walls were pine boughs stapled to plywood, so the crew could move them.

The snow was salt and crushed Styrofoam, and Brown later said the film used about 900 tons of salt. Smoke was pumped into the maze 8 hours a day. The crew got lost inside it, and Brown said Kubrick’s laughter seemed to come from everywhere. There’s no maze at Timberline, and fans often ask.

4) The Overlook Facade: Elstree Backlot

The hotel front where Wendy and Danny escape was a giant facade in England, modelled on Timberline.

Timberline gave Kubrick the look of the hotel, but he needed the front for night scenes in a blizzard. So the crew built a giant facade of the Overlook on the Elstree backlot. Alcott studied the Timberline footage before he lit it, so the two would match. Producer Jan Harlan called the real Overlook “a titchy little hotel from the outside which could never contain these rooms.”

That’s the secret of the film’s layout. The inside of the Overlook is far too big for the outside. Elstree is still a working studio, but much of the old site was sold, and a Tesco superstore was built on part of it in 1991.

3) Going-to-the-Sun Road, Glacier National Park: The Drive

The yellow Volkswagen’s climb into the mountains is one of the most famous roads in America.

Camera operator Jeff Blyth says the crew got one conference call from Kubrick. They could shoot anything, as long as the yellow VW with Colorado plates kept heading up into the mountains. Blyth filmed from a mount under the helicopter carrying two 35mm cameras. Greg MacGillivray, of the IMAX film studio MacGillivray Freeman, ran the unit. Accounts differ on who drove the VW.

The crew was based at St. Mary, just outside the park’s east entrance, and shot for about a month in September and October 1978. Along with the lake at number 2, they shot the road’s bends and tunnels on either side of Logan Pass. It takes about two hours to drive without stopping, and it’s one of the great drives in North America.

2) Saint Mary Lake and Wild Goose Island, Glacier: The Opening Shot

The film’s first image skims across a lake toward a tiny island, and you can see the same view from the roadside.

The opening is one long glide over Saint Mary Lake toward Wild Goose Island, with Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind’s score booming over it. The park service calls this view “perhaps one of the most recognizable scenes in all of Glacier.” On location, the crew never saw their dailies. The film went back to England undeveloped.

Kubrick used only a few minutes of what they shot. Ridley Scott asked him for his outtakes, and the aerial shots at the end of Blade Runner’s 1982 cinema cut are unused Shining footage. The shots of Deckard and Rachael in the car were filmed separately. Doctor Sleep reused three of the Glacier shots too, made night and covered in digital snow.

1) Timberline Lodge, Mount Hood, Oregon: The Overlook Hotel

The real Overlook is a working ski lodge on the side of a volcano, and it’s the reason the haunted room is 237.

Timberline Lodge only appears in a handful of shots, the establishing shots that tell you where you are. A small second unit filmed it. The car’s final drive up to the door wasn’t shot by the Glacier team. Kubrick directed the whole film from England. Workers from the Works Progress Administration built the lodge in about 18 months, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated it in September 1937.

In the book, the haunted room is 217. Timberline has a real Room 217, and the managers worried guests would refuse to stay in it. So they asked Kubrick to use a number the lodge doesn’t have, and he picked 237. Today, according to the lodge, 217 is its most requested room. Its website also says, “Rest assured, Timberline is not haunted!”

How Kubrick Built the Overlook in England

Kubrick lived in Hertfordshire, near London, and he disliked flying. So he brought the Overlook to him.

• The shoot: Filming started in May 1978 and ran for roughly a year, against a plan of 17 weeks. The overrun held up other films waiting for Elstree’s stages, reportedly including Raiders of the Lost Ark and Reds.
• The Steadicam: Garrett Brown spent most of that year at Elstree. He wore stilts fitted with Danny’s shoes for the shot of the footprints in the snow.
• The doors: Kubrick’s official social account says about 60 doors were destroyed over three days for Jack’s “Here’s Johnny” scene.
• The numbers: The film cost about $19 million. It opened in the US on 23 May 1980 and made about $44 million in its first US run. The Numbers puts it at about $57 million worldwide to date.
• The awards: It got no Oscar nominations. Its one Saturn Award went to Scatman Crothers for Best Supporting Actor. Shelley Duvall’s Razzie nomination was withdrawn in 2022.

The 127-Take Myth

You’ve probably read that the baseball bat scene on the stairs took 127 takes, a world record. It didn’t. Lee Unkrich, who has the shot logs for the whole film, says no set-up in that scene went past about 15 takes.

Kubrick did shoot a lot. Garrett Brown counted 36 takes of Wendy climbing three flights of stairs, and about 30 of a lobby shot on his first day. The real record, from Unkrich’s logs, is 66 takes for the dolly shot into the Gold Room.

Where Was Doctor Sleep Filmed?

Doctor Sleep (2019) brought Danny Torrance back to the Overlook, so its crew had to rebuild Kubrick’s hotel.

Director Mike Flanagan’s team built the Overlook again on Stage 7 at Blackhall Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, now called Shadowbox Studios. Warner Bros. still had Kubrick’s blueprints. /Film said the crew rebuilt the hotel “brick-for-brick and plank-for-plank.”

They rebuilt the Colorado Lounge, the staircase, the hallways, Room 237 and the hotel’s snowy front, all on stages. Most of the rest of the film was shot in and around Atlanta. For the drive back to the hotel, they reused three of Kubrick’s Glacier shots, made them night, added snow and changed the car.

How to Visit The Shining Locations

You can visit five of the 10. They’re in four places, all in the American West. Give Glacier a full day.

Timberline Lodge, Oregon.

1. Drive just over an hour east of Portland on US 26. At Government Camp, turn up Timberline Road for the last 6 miles.
2. Book a room or stop for lunch. You’ll see the front from the film, but the inside looks nothing like the Overlook.
3. Book Room 217 early if you want it. There’s no Room 237, and no maze.
4. Each Halloween, the lodge has run a Shining package. In 2026 it was on 30 and 31 October, with a room, two Jack Torrance cocktails and a 10 p.m. screening. Check the lodge’s website for next year’s dates.

Glacier National Park, Montana.

1. Enter at St. Mary on the east side and drive Going-to-the-Sun Road west.
2. Stop at the Wild Goose Island Overlook pull-out to see the opening shot.
3. Carry on over Logan Pass. The full road is usually open from early July to the third Monday in October. In 2026, Glacier dropped vehicle reservations, and summer parking at Logan Pass was limited to 3 hours. Check the park’s road status page before you go.

The Ahwahnee, Yosemite. You don’t need a room to see the Great Lounge. Its public spaces are open to visitors.

The Stanley Hotel, Colorado. It’s in Estes Park, about 70 miles from Denver. The Shining tour ends at a copy of the Room 237 bathroom, and Room 217 books up as much as a year ahead.

More Shining Filming Locations

Place	Scene
Elstree Stages 8 and 9	The Torrance apartment in Boulder
A warehouse at Elstree	The Overlook kitchen, where Hallorann gives Danny ice cream
A set at Elstree	Hallorann’s apartment in Miami
A road near Timberline (unconfirmed)	Hallorann’s snowcat climbing to the hotel

FAQs About Where The Shining Was Filmed

The Final Cut on Where The Shining Was Filmed

So where was The Shining filmed? In a studio in England, with the outside of Timberline Lodge in Oregon and a helicopter over Glacier National Park in Montana. The Overlook was never one building. It was a lodge on a volcano, a lounge from Yosemite and a maze made of pine branches, joined together in the edit.

You can’t check into the Overlook, but you can stay at Timberline and drive the road from the opening. Which would you do first?

For more Halloween viewing, see our best 2000s horror movies, our movies to watch alone at night, more great movies based on books, or browse all our film locations.