No, Ardour is disgustingly ugly, so is Gimp and other FOSS apps stuck in the 90s. Some people dig that though I guess.

Also isn’t the case with Ardour that they essentially want you to pay for the binary because compiling it is a PiTA and there are no instructions on how to do so?

You're not alone, I'm also constantly pixel peeping and disappointed with the UIs of many open source (and closed source!) tools.