The best hotels in London according to the editors of Condé Nast Traveller
All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.
There are approximately 123,000 hotel rooms in London. Nobody knows for sure exactly how many. You would think that, as with schools or hospitals or public swimming pools, there would exist a definitive and up-to-date list of the city’s hotels. Apparently not. In any case, 123,000 was the figure that some diligent scholar of the hospitality sector came up with back in 2010. A decade later, that number has no doubt increased considerably.
Still, a shortlist of hotels in London is plenty to be getting on with, especially 30 that are as diverse, exciting, innovative, sumptuous, original and surprising as these. While it is true that certain other great cities of the world are, in hotel terms, similarly blessed – Paris and New York, undoubtedly; Hong Kong and Geneva, possibly – none is more so than London.
How we choose the best hotels in London
Every hotel on this list has been selected independently by our editors and written by a Condé Nast Traveller journalist who knows the destination and has stayed at that property. When choosing hotels, our editors consider both luxury properties and boutique and lesser-known boltholes that offer an authentic and insider experience of a destination. We’re always looking for beautiful design, a great location and warm service – as well as serious sustainability credentials. We update this list regularly as new hotels open and existing ones evolve.
What area in London is best to stay in?
If it’s your first time to the capital or you’re looking to stay among the action, most of the best hotels in London tend to surround the West End in areas such as Soho, Piccadilly, Mayfair, and Covent Garden. For a stay that sits alongside greenery, some of London’s smartest high-end hotels neighbour Hyde Park or Green Park, with grand landmarks like Buckingham Palace and Harrods located nearby. To be closer to London’s creative, music and nightlife hub, head to East London, where there are a number of smart hotels in Shoreditch.
Other places to stay in London
To help you narrow down your search, we also have the following recommendations:
- The best boutique hotels in London
- The best family-friendly hotels in London
- The best affordable hotels in London
- The best dog-friendly hotels in London
- The best hotels near Buckingham Palace
Firework content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
hotelClaridge's, Mayfair
Featured in our Gold List of the best hotels in the world 2024
Founded in 1812, frequented by Queen Victoria and listed by 1878’s influential Baedeker’s guide as “the first hotel in London,” Claridge’s could easily rest on its storied laurels. But it has always kept ahead of the rest, enlisting the likes of Guy Oliver and Diane von Furstenberg for face-lifts over the decades to ensure it bestrides the classic and modern in a way few hotels manage. The lobby captures the art deco glamour of the Jazz Age when flappers hobnobbed with royalty. Its checkered-floor expanse buzzes with an international motley crew of Hollywood stars, brides and business types catching up over zesty Ginger John cocktails in the 1930s-style Fumoir bar. The pick of the new suites is the Georgian, an impeccable meld of English heritage and subtle chinoiserie. There’s a Steinberg baby grand piano, silk de Gournay panels in the dining room and a kitchen with a 24-hour butler. The hotel’s expansion into the next-door building created space for suites such as the Mayfair, where designer Bryan O’Sullivan (The Berkeley Bar) has ingrained modernity through scalloped mohair furniture in coral and pastel-green palettes. Claridge’s has also dug deep to impress guests with its subterranean spa. Designed by André Fu (the Maybourne Bar in Beverly Hills), its limewood and stone textures and dreamy peachy hues are the backdrop for bamboo-stick massages and Cryo Oxygen Shot facials. The pool ripples beneath a vaulted ceiling, surrounded by stone columns and cushy cabanas. Claridge’s is no longer the only show in town, but it’s with good reason that every other heritage hotel in London still sees it as the benchmark. Noo Saro-Wiwa
Price: Rooms from around £842 per night.
Address: Brook St, London W1K 4HR
Closest tube station: Bond Street
Mark ReadhotelThe Dorchester, Hyde Park
Featured in our Gold List of the best hotels in the world 2024
Not to be outdone by arrivistes thudding onto the top-end scene, the Dorch has been shaking her tail feathers with the biggest refurb in three decades: public spaces supercharged, and two floors of new rooms and suites revealed. Penthouses and a rooftop remain under lock and key until later in 2024. The hotel where Elizabeth Taylor signed her Cleopatra contract in the bath remains out-and-out fabulous – but with a Pierre-Yves Rochon uplift. The Artists’ Bar sparkles with a mirrored ceiling, Lalique crystal pillars girdling the bar and Liberace’s mirror-ball-clad baby grand. This is the spot for caviar, native oysters and Petal Head cocktails (Stoli Elit vodka, kumquat, Aperol and passion fruit) served from a trolley. A hoard of London-centric art glints on the walls: Ann Carrington’s Elizabeth II silhouette in mother-of-pearl buttons, Sue Arrowsmith’s delicate silver leaf with coral branches. Martin Brudnizki’s Vesper Bar invites intimacy with its smoked glass and scalloped armchairs, and the spa (best for Dr Uliana Gout’s new medical-grade facials) is a pink girly haven. The Grill by Tom Booton, a fun slice of British culinary theatre, has a fresh menu: don’t miss the squid bolognese à la Koffmann, given the tick of approval by Pierre Koffmann himself. The new suites have the palettes of an English garden, in leaf green, rose, and heather. If Hôtel Plaza Athénée is the American fantasy of Paris, then this Park Lane dame’s new rooms are the American fantasy of Britishness – one we are happy to buy into. Lydia Bell
Price: Rooms from around £902 per night.
Address: 53 Park Ln, London W1K 1QA
Closest tube station: Marble Arch
John AthimaritishotelRaffles London at The OWO hotel, Whitehall
Featured in our Hot List of the best new hotels in the world 2024
The most talked-about hotel to have opened in London this century faces off the mounted cavalry troopers of The King’s Life Guard with reborn aplomb. From 1906 to 1964, this was the War Office, where Winston Churchill boomed out briefings to staff on the wraparound Grand Staircase while secretary of state for war; where D-Day was planned; and where the spies had their own entrance. In 2016, the Empire struck back when the lease was purchased by the Mumbai-founded Hinduja Group, which sank £1.5 billion into the building and brought Raffles on board. It took seven years and an 80-foot excavation to create the 120 rooms and suites, nine restaurants, three bars, 20-metre pool and 27,000-square-foot Guerlain spa by design firm Goddard Littlefair (Gleneagles, Villa Copenhagen). Grand state offices have become plum suites, including The Haldane in smart red damask, once Churchill’s office. OWO’s interiors impresario, Thierry Despont, sadly died last summer before the final unveiling, but he conceived its look of regal masculinity wrapped in a palette of blazing red, which references the Household Cavalry. Three of the restaurants are by Argentine chef Mauro Colagreco, including a fine-dining spot, a private-table option and Saison, the all-day space. Best for boozing and schmoozing is the Guards Bar, which heaves with gossipy politicians and media types; and the tiny Spy Bar, occupying an old interrogation room in the basement, is a good evening bookender with its red velvet banquettes and half of the car from No Time to Die on the wall. Lydia Bell
Price: Rooms from around £1,100 per night.
Address: 57 Whitehall, London SW1A 2BX
Closest tube station: Charing Cross
Will PrycehotelThe Peninsula, Belgravia
Featured in our Hot List of the best new hotels in the world 2024
It’s a sign that a hotel opening is a real event when even the taxi driver excitedly explains the subtly marked genders of the lion
statues outside (hint: look for the egg). The Peninsula London has been 30 years in the making, with the Hong Kong brand spending decades looking for a goldilocks site before opting to knock down an office block that housed the headquarters of building company Sir Robert McAlpine, overlooking the Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner. For all the staff buzz (just ask any of them about the feng shui), the sense inside the new eight-storey edifice is of a frictionless bubble. The creamy seven-star cosseting feels distinctly Asian, despite the red buses and daily Household Cavalry horses outside. All the key brand markers are here: the Rolls-Royces in Peninsula green; the tinkly underwater pool music; the afternoon teas in the vast lobby; the robo-loos and drawers with nail dryers; and Cantonese classics at Canton Blue and its adjoining Little Blue bar, with sultry interiors inspire by the 19th-century Keying trading junk. There’s also a nostalgic Britishness at play, from the de Gournay wallpaper depicting the Royal Parks to the Brooklands restaurant-bar inspired by the UK’s golden age of flying and motor racing. It’s already Michelin-starred for its modern British dishes by Bibendum’s Claude Bosi, and has rare views across the parks to the London Eye. This is a hotel for a new London: global, solvent and demanding only the best. Toby SkinnerPrice: Rooms from around £1,300 per night.
Address: 1 Grosvenor Pl, London SW1X 7HJ
Closest tube station: Hyde Park Corner
hotelThe Emory, Knightsbridge
Looking across from Hyde Park, The Emory is a glassy box with protruding steel outriggers, somewhere between nautical and industrial. No red brick or Portland stone here, among so many other stalwart London hotels. The entrance to this one, down the Old Barracks Yard side street, is barely marked. Reception is just a little glass box, which most guests will arrive at in a virtually silent electric BMW i7. This is the latest offering from Maybourne, behind Claridge’s, The Connaught and The Berkeley next door. It’s remarkable for being London’s first all-suite hotel, and a departure of sorts for a group known mostly for heritage grandiosity.
But The Emory is most notable as one of the last projects of the late Pompidou architect Richard Rogers, who came up with the plan almost two decades ago with former Maybourne head Paddy McKillen. Six renowned interior designers were involved, with public spaces by superyacht designer Rémi Tessier. Four designers were given two floors each – André Fu (Claridge’s Spa), Pierre Yves Rochon (The Savoy), Alexandra Champalimaud (Raffles Singapore) and Patricia Urquiola (Six Senses Rome) – while the 300sqm penthouse is by London-based Rigby & Rigby. The Emory isn’t messing about, but it’s not shouty either. The word everyone uses is “discretion”, with guests able to rent out whole floors – something Louis Vuitton has already done for its top brass. One of the other main talking points is the longevity-focused Surrenne holistic spa, where guests and members have access to nutrition programmes by model-turned-nutritionist Rose Ferguson and skincare products and treatments by New York’s favourite plastic surgeon, Dr Lara Devgan, while trainers at the futuristic gym can go deep on biohacking or the function of the vagus nerve. Toby Skinner
Price: Rooms from around £1,440 per night.
Address: Old Barrack Yard, London SW1X 7NP
Closest tube station: Knightsbridge
hotelBroadwick Soho, Soho
Featured in our Hot List of the best new hotels in the world 2024
This Martin Brudzinski-designed hangout on the corner of Berwick Street and Broadwick Street is no elegant grand dame or glassy international transplant. Instead, the 57-room hotel owned by a group of friends throws patterns (leopard print, zebra stripe, geometric lines), textures (cork panelling, glitter DJ booths, silk walls) and colours (flamingo pink, maroon, aquamarine) together to create a joyful place to stay. As is Brudzinski's way, spaces here are hardly shy and retiring. The designer's trademark maximalist vibe naturally draws comparisons to his other projects, especially Annabel's, but Broadwick is her own person entirely. Two enormous elephants hover above the street-level entrance in top hats and bow ties, while bedrooms pick up the motif and run with it by placing handcrafted Jaipur elephant mini bars front and centre and decking the walls in shimmering elephant-print wallpaper. A hotel this fun, of course, needs sharp public spaces for merrymaking: Flute is the disco-chic rooftop bar; Dear Jackie is a sultry, dimly lit restaurant with an impeccable Sicilian-inspired menu; and little sister Bar Jackie is a more casual café with strong coffee for soothing weary heads the morning after the night before. Then there's The Nook, a guests-only den for nightcaps or afternoon snoozes. The result is a hotel that feels fresh while simultaneously fitting right into the London scene; a space that trades heavily on its glamour and distinctly Soho soul. Sarah James
Price: Rooms from around £464 per night.
Address: 20 Broadwick St, London W1F 8HT
Closest tube station: Piccadilly Circus
hotelChelsea Townhouse, Chelsea
Featured in our Hot List of the best new hotels in the world 2024
If you know London, you also know how prized its private communal gardens are to the residents lucky enough to live by them. The Cadogan Place Gardens in Sloane Square, with their mature trees and gated railings, are among the most prestigious – and the newly opened Chelsea Townhouse gives its guests access to that rarified local perk. The 36-room hotel – the third London property and the sixth hotel in the Iconic Luxury Hotels collection—sits across from three redbrick Victorian townhouses and includes roomy, ground-level suites with French doors that open directly into the garden. The decor here leans antique but is light-touch and chic – think botanical prints, pleated lampshades, velvet headboards, and the odd porcelain figurine. Much of the period furniture has been repurposed from its predecessor, the Draycott Hotel, but the redesign has breathed new life into its spaces, which are bathed in restful shades of grey and cream. Its communal areas include a fire-warmed dining room and bay-windowed library, made cosier with staff who anticipate your needs. Once nestled in this cocoon, it’s easy to forget the abundance at your doorstep: Stylish sister property 11 Cadogan Gardens – with a clever little gym that’s available for Townhouse guests – is around the corner, as is Pavilion Road, a pedestrian mews street with indie restaurants, bars, and design shops. Further out in Chelsea and Kensington, opportunities abound for a great night out; but as you wind your way back to this comfy, tucked-away sanctuary, you’ll be ever glad to be home. Arati Menon
Price: Rooms from around £455 per night.
Address: 26 Cadogan Gardens, London SW3 2RP
Closest tube station: Sloane Square
Simon UptonhotelNomad London, Covent Garden
Best for: showmanship
Despite the Ace Hotel’s departure from the city, there’s something of a USA revival going on in London, with The Standard landing in King’s Cross and the Mondrian just launched in Shoreditch. And earlier this year, the first NoMad outside the States opened in a palatial former magistrates’ court opposite the Royal Opera House. It came with some expectation – after all, the original put a whole New York City neighbourhood on the map, its Dirty Martini-fuelled bar an overnight sensation – but has hit the ground running. The centrepiece restaurant, in a luminous, almost neoclassical atrium draped with greenery, was booked up for weeks, a see-and-be-seen destination. There’s plenty of showmanship here, but it’s more Noël Coward than PT Barnum: vintage chandeliers, brass and crimson, mohair and damask, mural painters from the opera house involved in the decor. In the bedrooms, bathrooms nod to golden Twenties Art Deco and the main spaces to a sort of transatlantic connoisseur spirit, with big-brushed abstract expressionism propped up on the floor, Hopi kachina dolls beside the fireplace and a blend of Victoriana and art history on the walls (we perhaps have hotelier Andrew Zobler’s grandmother, who owned an antiques shop, to thank for this). The Library bar has shelves and shelves of books, though the prominent criminology section can’t match a tour of the adjacent new Bow Street Police Museum, birthplace of London’s first force, which has seen the Krays, Oscar Wilde and Emmeline Pankhurst pass through its cells. Shakers rattle like sidewinders in the tavern-esque Side Hustle, mixing up fancy American-style cocktails. This is a big-thinking but surprisingly intimate hotel that deserves a standing ovation.
Price: Rooms from around £499 per night.
Address: 28 Bow St, London WC2E 7AW
Closest tube station: Covent Garden
hotelThe Connaught, Mayfair
Best for: one of the world's best bars
The Connaught has stood on the corner of what is now Carlos Place since the early 19th century; these days, it's surrounded by the super-smart shops and restaurants of Mount Street. Despite the new Asian-style influence, the solid Englishness of the place remains intact – a quality embodied in the celebrated central staircase (dark and woody of bannister, bright and stripy of carpet), which apparently drove Ralph Lauren into such a fit of longing that he commissioned a replica of it for his Madison Avenue shop. Restored to its former glory and simultaneously whizzed into the 21st century a little over a decade ago with the addition of a newer, minimalist, Asian-inspired wing and an exquisite Aman spa, this hotel, part of the Maybourne Group (Claridge’s, The Berkeley) is a Mayfair landmark.
The late David Collins and interior designer Guy Oliver are behind the contemporary classic look of the rooms. Some pair walnut parquet flooring and silver-grey velvet chaises longues; others have duck egg-blue walls and traditional wooden panelling. In 2024 the hotel unveiled The King's Lodge, a passion project for Guy Oliver in collaboration with Turquoise Mountain, a charity founded by King Charles that supports artisans across the Middle East, Afghanistan, Myanmar and India. The Connaught Bar is a mini Art Deco masterpiece and our pick for the best bar in London. Both Hélène Darroze's three Michelin-starred restaurant and the less formal Jean-Georges at The Connaught are outstanding too (the latter with a view onto a magical Tadao Ando water sculpture outside).
Price: Rooms from around £1,050 per night.
Address: 16 Carlos Pl, London W1K 2AL
Closest tube station: Bond Street
Milo Brownhotel1 Hotel Mayfair, Mayfair
Best for: sustainability
This nine-storey hotel is a sustainable sanctuary slotting naturally among London’s oldest hospitality icons just across the road from The Ritz and The Wolseley. Inside, you are greeted by a giant suspended plant chandelier, a reception desk hewn from the trunk of a giant oak tree in a Sussex forest and a wall of Yorkshire stone, tactfully slotted together with no additional materials by a father and son carpentry stonemason duo. It’s an unexpectedly soothing space amid London’s busiest shopping district; inside, the noise of Piccadilly fades away, absorbed by thousands of plants (1,300 to be exact – including 200 local and regional species) and raw materials sprinkled throughout the hotel. The reception’s tranquil aesthetic extends into each of the 181 bedrooms. Sandy hues and creamy tones come in the form of linen-covered cushions, soft furnishings and oak flooring, and each room has a living moss wall, further emphasising the hotel’s dedication to bringing the outdoors inside. Downstairs the hotel also has is a cafe and co-working space by day which transforms into a wine bar by night, as well as an elegant, low-lit cocktail bar area leading on to London’s most talked-about new restaurant, Dovetale.
Price: Rooms from around £454 per night.
Address: 3 Berkeley St, London W1J 8DL
Closest tube station: Green Park
.jpg)
The Twenty TwohotelThe Twenty Two, Mayfair
Best for: privacy
This previously residential Edwardian manor house has been turned into a 31-room hotel and member’s club by former Blakes owner Navid Mirtorabi, with the help of business partner Jamie Reuben, a scion of a family that owns swathes of Mayfair. In a marble-floored lobby that smells of churchy frankincense, guests are greeted by a cape-wearing doorman and a row of staff in Charlie Casely-Hayford suits. A pervasive friendliness cuts through the velveteen quality of a place that feels more like a louche Parisian hideaway than most smart new London hotels, which tend to fit into Hoxton or Heritage pigeonholes. Most rooms are understatedly plush, painted an elegant blue that’s on the sensual side of Edwardian; former Arbutus chef Alan Christie hits the key modern British notes in the dining room. Some of the prices are shiver-inducing, but then this is Mayfair, and The Twenty Two is offering something different – something sexier and more fun, which might just be a marker point for the area’s future.
Price: Rooms from around £540 per night.
Address: 22 Grosvenor Sq, London W1K 6LF
Closest tube station: Bond Street
Adam LynkhotelThe Mayfair Townhouse, Mayfair
Best for: decadent design
The brains behind classic country-house hangouts Cliveden and Chewton Glen have whisked up a sharp new city offshoot for any of their loyal troupe of guests wanting to overnight in a London hotel. But there’s no whiff of a rural familial connection. Instead, the Half Moon Street address pays tribute to the frilly artistic folk of the 19th century: there’s a playful dose of Alice in Wonderland meets The Importance of Being Earnest (the play is set on the same street), with nods to the flamboyance of Oscar Wilde’s characters and quirky coloured graphic art referencing motifs from down the rabbit hole. It could all add up to something distinctly gimmicky but a sense of restraint and a Claridge’s-like appreciation for Art Deco has resulted in rooms that are moody, masculine and smart. Some have a tiny quiet garden terrace to retreat to – a rare thing indeed for central London – while others major in marble. The building spreads grandly across 15 converted Georgian houses, a few Grade II-listed, and a lucky handful of the jewel-toned suites come with views over leafy Green Park below. But the real high point is The Dandy Bar on the ground floor – a shiny mirror-and-plush-leather speakeasy serving up a smooth menu of cocktails alongside dishes such as chicken cobb salad and steak frites. If you can prise yourself off your bar stool, Shepherd Market with lovely Kitty Fisher’s restaurant is just around the corner, the Royal Academy is a brisk 10-minute walk down Piccadilly and 5 Hertford Street is a late-night stumble away. A brilliant new spot in a location that already knows how to have fun.
Price: Rooms from around £540 per night.
Address: 27-41 Half Moon St, London W1J 7BG
Closest tube station: Green Park
hotelThe Standard London, King's Cross
Best for: Coal Drops Yard cool
Having cracked Manhattan, Miami and Hollywood since it was founded 20 years ago, when The Standard London opened in 2019 it brought a much-needed edge to King's Cross. Its Brutalist building and former annex of Camden Town Hall was much maligned by locals who nicknamed it the egg box. Now, with its red-pill-shaped lift that scales the Euston Road façade, it more than squares up to the splendid Gothic Revival St Pancras station nearby. Inside, American designer Shawn Hausman, a long-time Standard collaborator, created all the spaces with a decade-switching look that is mind-boggling and fabulous. Utilitarian civic signage meets Seventies Milanese terrazzo and tiling: Transport for London’s colour palette inspired the loud carpets; and the colourways, shapes and humour of Italian design movement Memphis permeate everything. Rooms range from about £199 for a single, aimed at students and early-bird Eurostar travellers, to about £729 for a terraced room with an outdoor bathtub overlooking St Pancras. Expect Memphis design meets Miami with a mix of bright colours and pastels, crazy carpets and tiles. Furniture is both vintage and bespoke and all the rooms have great views. The hotel's 10th-floor restaurant Decimo continues to be one of the hottest tables in town, where Michelin-starred chef Peter Sanchez-Iglesias highlights Spanish dishes with a Mexican twist and a cocktail menu full of margaritas. The downstairs cocktail bar Double Standard serves burgers, fish and chips and pints, while next-door Isla offers seasonal British small plates.
Price: Rooms from around £239 per night.
Address: 10 Argyle St, London WC1H 8EG
Closest tube station: King's Cross
hotelThe Hari, Belgravia
Best for: romantic liaisons
With the flurry of London openings in recent years, you’d be forgiven for overlooking hotels such as The Hari, but this is a contemporary bolthole with an artistic temperament and loft-style bedrooms that are a pleasure to dawdle in. And while many of London’s classic hits are a stroll away, staying in for an evening isn’t to be sniffed at either, drifting on a little passeggiata from the bar with its riffs on classic cocktails down to the restaurant for authentic Italian dishes. There’s a real sense of being tucked away here, of bedrooms being chic dens from which you can peek out at London, with decor mixing Starck-like polish with just a little burlesque (a waft of gauze, a lingerie-clad portrait) and lithographs such as Tracey Emin’s ‘She Lay Down’. For a personable, well-connected London base tucked away in Belgravia – this feels like a secret hotel for romantic liaisons or a weekend break taking in a show or exhibition, shopping on Sloane Street then stretching out for an indulgent Sunday morning.
Price: Rooms from around £378 per night.
Address: 20 Chesham Pl, London SW1X 8HQ
Closest tube station: Knightsbridge
hotelThe Lanesborough, Hyde Park
Best for: Regency grandeur
Minimalists, modernists, fanciers of all things sleek, shiny, geometrical and monochrome – this is not the place for you. The Lanesborough was always an unrepentant riot of Regency splendour. In 2015 it reopened more unrepentant, riotous and Regency-splendid than ever. The Royal Suite, at £26,000 a night, is supposedly the most expensive in London – guilty as charged – but certain of the Junior Suites are among the most charming and cleverly contrived hotel rooms you will find anywhere. The celebrated Library Bar and cigar terrace are still there, little altered. The main restaurant, The Lanesborough Grill, deserves mention as one of the most spectacular dining rooms in town, where executive chef Shay Cooper serves intricate plates of food as the restaurant transforms from a brightly-lit space by day into a seductively glowing supper spot come evening.
Price: Rooms from around £930 per night.
Address: Hyde Park Corner, London SW1X 7TA
Closest tube station: Knightsbridge
hotelThe Berkeley, Hyde Park
Best for: Seventies style
Part of the Maybourne Group, which also manages Claridge's and The Connaught, The Berkeley is a bit like both but not much like either. A child of the early 1970s, there are no heritage trappings; instead, the look is cool, low-key, non-specifically modern. With their refined neutral palettes, subtle pops of colour and bathrooms awash with marble, rooms are stylish and classic. Soothe your aching muscles and achieve a state of serenity at the Blue Bar, or at the health club, home to one of the best spas in London. The views over Hyde Park are excellent; the rooftop pool is itself as pretty as a picture, though too small to be of much use to anyone who actually wants to swim. By way of compensation, there is Andre Fu's 278-square-metre Opus Suite – a spectacular space boasting more impressive vistas. For a sweet treat, the hotel is arguably the buzziest address in town, with a queue regularly snaking its way between the dark mahogany tables and rattan chairs of the pâtisserie Cédric Grolet at The Berkeley.
Price: Rooms from around £930 per night.
Address: Wilton Pl, London SW1X 7RL
Closest tube station: Knightsbridge
hotelNobu Hotel Portman Square, Marylebone
Best for: foodies
Nobu Hotel Portman Square spills out onto a cool, cosmopolitan terrace reminiscent of New York (fitting, perhaps, considering Lower Manhattan was where the legendary Nobu restaurant first opened in 1994) and builds on Nobu’s Park Lane legacy while adding fresh, minimalist rooms and chill-out spaces to complete the picture. There are no frills or fancy here – it’s all smooth urban energy with design-led chairs and sleek tables where London’s glitterati fine-dine on signature dishes such as black cod miso and yellowtail sashimi, sizzling wagyu beef, Chilean sea bass and wasabi lime miso. As one of the best restaurants in London, the space (and omakase multi-course tasting menu) feels grown up, sexy even, with flashes of diamonds, stilettos and red lacquered chopsticks, while the bedrooms demonstrate Japanese minimalism in its purest form: clean lines, muted woods, restrained natural fabrics. For a near-mythical, indulgent (and mind-blowingly tasty) lunch or supper experience, followed by a calming sleep in the bedrooms, this is a hotel that’s earned its spot occupying the corner of one of Marylebone’s handsomest patches. Staying without booking a table in the restaurant is akin to visiting The Ritz and forgoing their famed London afternoon tea.
Price: Rooms from around £399 per night.
Address: 22 Portman Square, London W1H 7BG
Closest tube station: Bond Street
hotelBeaverbrook Town House, Chelsea
Best for: a country house in the city
A smart offshoot of the Surrey Hills original, this property has taken over a pair of restored Georgian townhouses in a prime position near Sloane Square. It feels like a joyous and timely celebration of the capital – especially on the stairs where an extraordinary collection of artwork has been cherry-picked by creative director and advertising legend Frank Lowe: old posters for the Boat Race, Brooks’ Peckham Brewery and Kew Gardens. Just as bedrooms in the country mansion pay homage to former owner Lord Beaverbrook’s friends and guests, here each one is named after a London theatre, with framed programmes of past productions and books on opera and Laurence Olivier. Interior designer Nicola Harding, who previously worked on the estate’s Garden House, has used a bolder, more playful palette for this spin-off, lending it a grown-up urban edge. Four-posters and fringed velvet sofas sit alongside antique desks, patterned lampshades and cushions made from vintage fabrics by Penny Worrall; bathrooms are equally colourful, with glassy tiles in rich apple green and bottle blue. On the ground floor, a Japanese apothecary cabinet at the entrance of the arsenic-hued, Art Deco-detailed bar marks a shift to the East. The best spot in the Fuji Grill restaurant, helmed by ex-Dinings SW3 chef Alex Del, is at the counter, where a sensational 20-course omakase supper is prepared, combining traditional techniques with modern European elements for dishes that might include tuna dry aged in house and hamachi sashimi with smoked aubergine. This standout addition to the area – where the Cadogan reopened under Belmond in 2019 and At Sloane opened in 2023 – is part of a new chapter for Chelsea.
Price: Rooms from around £399 per night.
Address: 22 Portman Square, London W1H 7BG
Closest tube station: Bond Street
hotelThe Ritz, Piccadilly
Best for: a grand dame
There have been a few changes at The Ritz in recent years. Above all there was the renovation of the Rivoli Bar (which serves the best-presented cocktails in London) and the acquisition of the magnificent William Kent House next door (César Ritz's dream ever since he built the hotel in 1906). Yet the main public spaces – including the adored Palm Court and dining room, aligned along the sumptuous gallery that runs the length of the building, from Arlington Street at one end to Green Park at the other – remain little changed. Here you still have a sense, enhanced by the rich, warm, golden glow of this part of the hotel, of having found yourself preserved in amber. No celebrity interior-designers have been let loose on the rooms, which retain their original Louis XVI style and a lustrous palette of pinks, yellows and blues. Ravishing.
Price: Rooms from around £999 per night.
Address: 150 Piccadilly, St. James's, London W1J 9BR
Closest tube station: Green Park
hotelThe Shangri-La at the Shard, London Bridge
Best for: the views
Never has a traffic jam on the Old Kent Road looked so enchanting – everything seen from The Shangri-La looks enchanting. The hotel occupies floors 34 to the 52 of Renzo Piano's 87-storey London landmark. The rooms (contemporary, creamy, Asian-influenced), restaurants (especially the romantic Ting) and bar (gin and rosemary – divine) are all fantastic, though nothing can compete with the extraordinary views over London, which turn every guest into a slack-jawed infant, lost in wonder, gazing out, palms to the window, all day long. At night, sitting cross-legged on the bed with the blackout blinds open is like being on a magic carpet, floating high above the ceaseless glow of the great city.
Price: Rooms from around £638 per night.
Address: 31 St Thomas St, London SE1 9QU
Closest tube station: London Bridge
hotelThe Savoy, Covent Garden
Best for: Art Deco vibes
Though people tend to think of it as monolithic and unchanging, The Savoy has something of a split personality and has in fact changed a great deal over the years. It's decorated in Edwardian style on the Thames side – from which Monet and Whistler painted the river – but it's quintessentially Art Deco on the Strand side. Rooms are large and traditional but never frumpy; and in a world of shrinking bathtubs, The Savoy's remain satisfyingly deep. The Savoy Grill is excellent and The River Restaurant by Gordon Ramsay brings the best of British seafood and shellfish; and the hotel is blessed with two of the finest watering holes in London, The American Bar, granddaddy of London's cocktail bars, and its younger, sassier sibling, The Beaufort Bar. So don't even try to make it an 'either/or' proposition – it must be an 'and'.
Price: Rooms from around £712 per night.
Address: Strand, London WC2R 0EZ
Closest tube station: Temple
Mark HazeldinehotelThe Beaumont, Mayfair
Best for: art aficionados
This used to be a multi-storey car park, you may be surprised to learn. The Beaumont is named after Jimmy Beaumont, a fictional character from Prohibition-era New York. Hence the Art Deco trimmings, wood panelling, vintage photos, and red-leather banquettes in the Colony Grill Room, where the shrimp cocktail is as good at the steak. In this context, Antony Gormley's astonishing 'Room' literally sticks out like a sore thumb – a three-storey sculpture extruding from one side of the building, which also happens to contain a suite.
Price: Rooms from around £680 per night.
Address: 8 Balderton St, Brown Hart Gardens, London W1K 6TF
Closest tube station: Bond Street
Jack HardyhotelCorinthia Hotel London, Trafalgar Square
Best for: the spa
As delicious as the huge slice of cake that it resembles when seen from the right spot by the Thames. No fewer than 1,001 Baccarat crystals illuminate the double-height, Victorian-pillared lobby, whose parquet floors and elegant palette of creams, caramels and charcoals with splashes of lime-green hint at the splendours beyond. Guests with a list of London landmarks to be checked off will find this a convenient base, within striking distance of Downing Street, Trafalgar Square, the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Theatreland and the South Bank (if you take one of the top-floor suites with a terrace, you can save yourself some time and see all of them at once). The ESPA Life spa occupies four levels, with 15 treatment 'pods', a marble-and-leather spa lounge, glass-encased sauna and steel-lined pool.
Price: Rooms from around £755 per night.
Address: Whitehall Pl, London SW1A 2BD
Closest tube station: Embankment
hotelDukes, Mayfair
Best for: a Martini, shaken, not stirred
Practically hidden down a barely existent alleyway between St James's Street and Green Park. Practically hidden is how they like it here. Hushed, discreet, cosy and ever-so-English – yet by no means sombre, stuffy or stuck-up. How could anyone remain sombre, stuffy or stuck-up after a martini perfectly prepared by Alessandro Palazzi in one of the greatest bars on the face of the earth? This was supposedly where Ian Fleming first envisioned James Bond ordering his favourite drink 'shaken, not stirred'. The GBR (Great British Restaurant) is delightful; so is the entirely chic Cognac and cigar garden.
Price: Rooms from around £365 per night.
Address: 35 St James's Pl, St. James's, London SW1A 1NY
Closest tube station: Green Park
hotelHotel Café Royal, Piccadilly
Best for: shopping getaways
This revamped Regent Street landmark combines fin de siècle opulence with streamlined modernity. There are subtle references to its storied past – vases filled with tulips are a silent salute to Oscar Wilde, who once drank so much absinthe in the Grill Room that he hallucinated he was cavorting in a field of the flowers. The Grill Room has been turned into a bar, and its opulent gilt and mirrors have been sexed up with a frankly immodest blush of red furnishings. Recover your composure downstairs at the Akasha spa, which specialises in watsu aquatic-massage treatments.
Price: Rooms from around £721per night.
Address: 10 Air St, London W1B 5AB
Closest tube station: Piccadilly Circus
hotelThe Langham, Marylebone
Best for: Victoriana
If it feels as though The Langham has been there forever, that's because, in hotel terms, it pretty much has. But a century and a half on, it's looking grand, as sophisticated and elegant as it did when Napoleon III spent the night. These days the Victoriana and chinoiserie are offset by smooth, occasionally quirky contemporary elements – notably in the award-winning Artesian bar, with its timber chandeliers, imitation-snakeskin flooring and resin-topped tables. It would be difficult to name a finer hotel restaurant than Chez Roux, where Michel Roux Jr pays hommage to his childhood memories and his father Albert Roux OBE, who worked as a private chef for the Cazalet family, and created first menus from Le Gavroche in 1967.
Price: Rooms from around £721 per night.
Address: 10 Air St, London W1B 5AB
Closest tube station: Piccadilly Circus
Nicolas KoenighotelThe London Edition, Fitzrovia
Best for: party people
A restaurant with rooms? That wouldn't be entirely fair, but there's no escaping the fact that chef Jason Atherton's ground-floor Berners Tavern is the palpitating heart of the hotel. The lobby cocktail bar, oak-panelled, reservation-only Punch Room and nightclub Basement only increase the pulse-rate. Once upon a time this was five lovely 1835 townhouses, which were combined in 1910 to create the Berners Hotel. Fast forward to 2013, it was taken over by Ian Schrager’s fast-growing Edition brand, with a design by the prolific and influential Canadian design firm Yabu Pushelberg, which brought in Christian Liaigre furniture and mod stylings but kept the Edwardian grandeur of the facade and public spaces. Pushelberg imagined the 173 rooms as like cabins on a yacht. They’re clean, crisp and wood-panelled, with a vague sense of the midcentury and gilt-framed portraits by the Dutch photographer Henriks Kerstens: think Girl With a Pearl Earring reimagined by a Noughties Shoreditch creative studio. They are also marvellously quiet, a perfect antidote to the hubbub below.
Price: Rooms from around £409 per night.
Address: 10 Berners St, London W1T 3NP
Closest tube station: Tottenham Court Road
hotelMandarin Oriental Hyde Park, Knightsbridge
Best for: walks in the park
The Queen learnt to dance in the ballroom of this splendidly florid pile. A great deal has changed since then. There's now an award-winning, state-of-the-art spa, a restaurant from Heston Blumenthal alongside the buzzy Aubrey, and perpetually packed bars (not one, not two, but three, and all terrific in their very different ways). In June 2018, straight off the back of the biggest refurbishment in this Hyde Park hotel’s history, a major roof fire kept the hotel closed for another 10 months. Reopening in April 2019, the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park retains elements of its gentler, more cosily traditional past, but with interiors that have had a modern makeover, and are significantly lighter and brighter. Meanwhile, the clippity-clop that rises faintly from the Hyde Park side as horses from the Household Cavalry make their way past the hotel never gets old.
Price: Rooms from around £930 per night.
Address: 66 Knightsbridge, London SW1X 7LA
Closest tube station: Knightsbridge
Durston SaylorhotelRosewood London, Holborn
Best for: a glossy stay
With their first foray into London, Rosewood has created not just a magnificent new hotel but a whole new neighbourhood: 'Midtown', previously known, without any of that implied New York spunk, as plain old Holborn. Yet the location is extraordinary, starting with the most unexpected of courtyards, like a mini Somerset House, from which a kind of country-house vibe emanates – a country house, however, with a tremendous sense of wit and panache. The style of the interiors is difficult to characterise, by turns demure and decadent, muted and glossy, traditional and contemporary. The overall effect is dazzling. The perpetually jammed Scarfe's Bar and the elegantly elongated Mirror Room are at either end of an exquisitely lit bronze corridor that insulates the lobby from the outside world. The Holborn Dining Room adds a lively brasserie buzz, particularly on Sundays when they serve up trad roasts. Sitting outside in the courtyard terrace in summer with a glass of something chilled is a joy.
Price: Rooms from around £612 per night.
Address: 252 High Holborn, London WC1V 7EN
Closest tube station: Holborn
hotelBulgari Hotel and Residences, Knightsbridge
Best for: a taste of Italy
Just when you thought the vita in this part of town couldn't get any more dolce, along came this gem from the great Roman jewellery house. It's all very hard-edged and stealthily spoiling, but softened and enlivened with thoughtful design touches such as bedside lamps inspired by Bulgari's classic silver candlesticks. The clever use of subterranean space is one of The Bulgari's distinguishing features – there's a serious screening room, the swimming pool is positively radiant with golden mosaic tiles, and the spa is among the biggest and best in the city.
Price: Rooms from around £790 per night.
Address: 171 Knightsbridge, London SW7 1DW
Closest tube station: Knightsbridge
hotelFour Seasons Hotel Park Lane, Mayfair
The proverbial oasis of calm over the Circus Maximus that is Hyde Park Corner. Trust Four Seasons stalwart Pierre-Yves Rochon to keep things elegant but well and truly on the down-low. There are no expressive upheavals or synapse-battering splashes of colour here. The most conspicuous decorative features are the use of discreet walnut and sycamore panelling in the rooms, and the large-format black-and-white fashion photos from Vogue in the corridors. Otherwise expect spacious marble bathrooms – kitted out with everything you need – in the rooms, as well as that Four Seasons bed, which is one of the most comfortable around. The hotel's destination spa on the tenth floor has serene park views, and perpetuates the chilled-out ambience. The restaurant, Pavyllon, is one of the hottest tables in town, with French chef Alléno modernising French cooking, earning a Michelin Star in 2024.
Price: Rooms from around £1,050 per night.
Address: Hamilton Pl, Park Ln, London W1J 7DR
Closest tube station: Hyde Park Corner