The 32 Best Hotels in London
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 the best 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 review on this list has been written by a Condé Nast Traveler journalist who knows the destination and has visited that property. When choosing hotels, our editors consider properties across price points that offer an authentic and insider experience of a destination, keeping design, location, service, and sustainability credentials top of mind.
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 neighbor 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.
Read our complete London travel guide here.
All products and listings featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. If you purchase something through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Will Pryce/Chelsea TownhousehotelChelsea Townhouse
$$$ |
Hot List 2024If you know London, you also know how prized its private communal gardens are to the residents lucky enough to live by them. The Cadogan Place Gardens in Sloane Square, with their mature trees and gated railings, are among the most prestigious—and the newly opened Chelsea Townhouse gives its guests access to that rarified local perk. The 36-room hotel—the third London property and the sixth hotel in the Iconic Luxury Hotels collection—is stitched across three redbrick Victorian town houses and includes roomy, ground-level suites with French doors that open directly into the garden. The decor here leans antique but is light-touch and chic—think botanical prints, pleated lampshades, velvet headboards, and the odd porcelain figurine. Much of the period furniture has been repurposed from its predecessor, the Draycott Hotel, but the redesign has breathed new life into its spaces, which are bathed in restful shades of gray and cream. Its communal areas include a fire-warmed dining room and bay-windowed library, made cozier with staff who anticipate your needs. Once nestled in this cocoon, it’s easy to forget the abundance at your doorstep: Stylish sister property 11 Cadogan Gardens—with a clever little gym that’s available for Townhouse guests—is around the corner, as is Pavilion Road, a pedestrian mews street with indie restaurants, bars, and design shops. Further out in Chelsea and Kensington, opportunities abound for a great night out; but as you wind your way back to this comfy, tucked-away sanctuary, you’ll be ever glad to be home. —Arati Menon
Price: Rooms from around $579 per night
Address: 26 Cadogan Gardens, London SW3 2RP
Closest tube station: Sloane Square
Courtesy Maybourne Hotel GrouphotelClaridge's
$$$ |
Gold List 2019, 2024 
Readers' Choice Awards 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023Founded 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 (of 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 (of 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 $1,071 per night
Address: Brook St, London W1K 4HR
Closest tube station: Bond Street
Courtesy The DorchesterhotelThe Dorchester, Dorchester Collection
$$$ | Gold List 2024 Readers' Choice Awards 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023Not to be outdone by arrivistes thudding onto the top-end scene, the Dorch has been shaking her tail feathers with the biggest refurb in three decades: public spaces supercharged, and two floors of new rooms and suites revealed. Penthouses and a rooftop remain under lock and key until later in 2024. The hotel where Elizabeth Taylor signed her Cleopatra contract in the bath remains out-and-out fabulous—but with a Pierre-Yves Rochon uplift. The Artists’ Bar sparkles with a mirrored ceiling, Lalique crystal pillars girdling the bar, and Liberace’s mirror-ball-clad baby grand. This is the spot for caviar, native oysters, and Petal Head cocktails (Stoli Elit vodka, kumquat, Aperol, and passion fruit) served from a trolley. A hoard of London-centric art glints on the walls: Ann Carrington’s Elizabeth II silhouette in mother-of-pearl buttons, Sue Arrowsmith’s delicate silver leaf with coral branches. Martin Brudnizki’s Vesper Bar invites intimacy with its smoked glass and scalloped armchairs, and the spa (best for Dr. Uliana Gout’s new medical-grade facials) is a pink girly haven. The Grill by Tom Booton, a fun slice of British culinary theater, has a fresh menu; don’t miss the squid bolognese à la Koffmann, given the tick of approval by Pierre Koffmann himself. The new suites have the palettes of an English garden, in leaf green, rose, and heather. If Hôtel Plaza Athénée is the American fantasy of Paris, then this Park Lane dame’s new rooms are the American fantasy of Britishness—one we are happy to buy into. —Lydia Bell
Price: Rooms from around $1,146 per night
Address: 53 Park Ln, London W1K 1QA
Closest tube station: Marble Arch
John Athimaritis/Raffles London at The OWOhotelRaffles London at The OWO
$$$ | Hot List 2024The War Office is not the War Office anymore. It’s now the OWO (aka “The Old War Office”). It consists of Raffles London at the OWO, which takes up about half the building, along with some mighty luxe private residences and various other restaurants. It’s hard not to over-emphasize how little other London hotels can touch what Raffles has been lucky enough to tap into here. Historically, the building has perched at the very hub of the establishment. The hefty $1.9 billion restoration investment, over seven years, has included a 25-meter downward excavation (to create the wellness levels of the hotel). Nine restaurants and three bars join the 27,000-foot Goddard Littlefair–designed Guerlain spa (with three subterranean levels) and 65-foot pool. The final shimmering product has 120 rooms and suites, with an entry-level rate of more than $1,400 per night. All is presided over by the soave, somewhat slinky French hotelier Philippe Leboeuf, the Managing Director, Anglophile and self-professed Churchillphile.
Price: Rooms from around $1,399 per night
Address: 57 Whitehall, London SW1A 2BX
Closest tube station: Charing Cross
Will PrycehotelThe Peninsula, London
$$$ | Hot List 2024Inside The Peninsula’s vast lobby, there’s an abstract sense that the red buses and black cabs outside on Hyde Park Corner might as well be a digital projection. All the hallmarks of one of the world’s most iconic hotel brands are here—the pristine service, the all-encompassing tech, the Rolls-Royces in brand green, the tinkly underwater music in the pool; every lion statuette, marble surface and Japanese maple tree blessed by a hallowed feng shui master. Barely a week after its September soft opening, the place was already busy with an international crowd, between the columns and chandeliers, overlooked by London Parks murals by wallpaper specialists De Gournay. The 190 rooms were designed by American Peter Marino, all with a prevailing sense of haute-generic seven-star neutrality but are set apart by elaborate technology and extreme comfort. Bright walls of china plates and delicate cups are the backdrop to Peninsula veteran chef Dicky To’s dishes at The Canton Blue, which fuse Cantonese techniques with British ingredients. Downstairs is the sexy street-side Little Blue bar, where ex-Cheval Blanc mixologist Florian Thireau has created a lovely cocktail list themed by the Keying junk journey (to Hong Kong, St Helena, New York, and London). And then there's the faintly Jetsons-styled rooftop bar and restaurant, with knockout London views from the terrace, rare Cuban cigars, and classic British food by former Bibendum and Hibiscus head chef Francesco Di Benedetto.
Price: Rooms from around $1,653 per night
Address: 1 Grosvenor Pl, London SW1X 7HJ
Closest tube station: Hyde Park Corner.jpg)
Benoit LinerohotelNoMad London
$$$ | Hot List 2022 Readers' Choice Awards 2023Despite the Ace Hotel’s departure from the city, there’s something of an American 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 neighborhood on the map, its dirty martini-fueled bar an overnight sensation—but has hit the ground running. The centerpiece 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 $634 per night
Address: 28 Bow St, London WC2E 7AW
Closest tube station: Covent Garden
hotelBroadwick Soho, London: First In
$$$ | Hot List 2024This 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 colors (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 $590 per night
Address: 20 Broadwick St, London W1F 8HT
Closest tube station: Piccadilly Circus
Milo Brownhotel1 Hotel Mayfair
This nine-story 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 emphasizing 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 $577 per night
Address: 3 Berkeley St, London W1J 8DL
Closest tube station: Green Park
Courtesy Maybourne Hotel GrouphotelThe Connaught
$$$ | Gold List 2020, 2022 Readers' Choice Awards 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023A hotel known for its Englishness—a quality embodied in its 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. 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 $1,335 per night
Address: 16 Carlos Pl, London W1K 2AL
Closest tube station: Bond Street.jpg)
The Twenty TwohotelThe Twenty Two
$$ | Hot List 2023This previously residential Edwardian manor house has been turned into a 31-room hotel and member’s club by former Blakes owner Navid Mirtorabi, with the help of business partner Jamie Reuben, a scion of a family that owns swathes of Mayfair. In a marble-floored lobby that smells of churchy frankincense, guests are greeted by a cape-wearing doorman and a row of staff in Charlie Casely-Hayford suits. A pervasive friendliness cuts through the velveteen quality of a place that feels more like a louche Parisian hideaway than most smart new London hotels, which tend to fit into Hoxton or Heritage pigeonholes. Most rooms are understatedly plush, painted an elegant blue that’s on the sensual side of Edwardian; former Arbutus chef Alan Christie hits the key modern British notes in the dining room. Some of the prices are shiver-inducing, but then this is Mayfair, and The Twenty Two is offering something different— something sexier and more fun, which might just be a marker point for the area’s future.
Price: Rooms from around $687 per night
Address: 22 Grosvenor Sq, London W1K 6LF
Closest tube station: Bond Street
Courtesy of The Mayfair TownhousehotelThe Mayfair Townhouse
$$ | Hot List 2021 Readers' Choice Awards 2022, 2023The 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 colored 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 $687 per night
Address: 27-41 Half Moon St, London W1J 7BG
Closest tube station: Green Park
Jake EasthamhotelLime Tree Hotel
$$$This Ebury Street townhouse conversion is a masterclass in how to maximize eclectic style in a small space. It also delivers on a hard-to-keep promise: an elegant hangout that feels like home, in a great location, at an affordable price. Owners Matt and Charlotte Goodsall opened the property in 2008, quickly turning it into the area’s loveliest little boutique hotel and the best affordable hotel in London. They reframed challenge as opportunity during the 2020 lockdown, overhauling the interiors and adding a new café. The couple enlisted Fraher & Findlay architects, whose previous projects include Wolf & Badger in Coal Drops Yard, but relied on their own taste for the decorative details, sprucing up corners with Sanderson wallpaper and Pooky lampshades. The 28 bedrooms range from minuscule to moderately sized, but this only contributes to the country-cottage cosiness. Clever design ensures that even the tiniest space is optimized, with teal velvet headboards, mountains of ikat pillows and marmalade-colored armchairs (thoughtful reading material is provided—ours was Aesop’s Fables). Single rooms come at a keener price, so solo travelers are well looked after. The Buttery kitchen is helmed by Stefano Cirillo, previously at Notting Hill spot Beach Blanket Babylon. Breakfast is made up of perfectly executed classics—avocado on sourdough with runny eggs, chocolate-spread-layered French toast topped with berries, a full English with halloumi—accompanied by the smell of freshly ground Gentlemen Baristas beans and crunchy pastries from the bakery down the road. The back garden is a tiny pocket of quiet for chatting late on summer evenings. Just like the rest of the house, it’s a sweet miniature that has all the elements needed and charm in spades.
Price: Rooms from around $244 per night
Address: 135 - 137 Ebury St, London SW1W 9QU
Closest tube station: Victoria
Niall CluttonhotelMondrian Shoreditch
$$ | Readers' Choice Awards 2023This East London enclave should really have had its day. It’s been years since Shoreditch’s street-food stalls, concept bars and cutting-edge boutiques started taking off. Then came the smart stays, award-winning cocktail dens and Michelin-starred restaurants. Bright young creatives were quickly priced out of living here. Then, over the past 18 months, the once-buzzing streets went silent. A couple of big names closed for good and there was space for fresh players to shake up the re-emerging neighborhood scene. Mondrian, the city-slicking group dreamt up by Ian Schrager in the 1990s, was primed to launch a new London hotel after handing over the keys of its South Bank stalwart a few years ago. The company, helmed by the Reuben brothers, took over splashy members'-club-hotel The Curtain when it shuttered and brought in design studio Goddard Littlefair—also behind the 2016 facelift of Scotland’s Gleneagles—to switch things up. The loveliest of the 120 whitewashed, exposed-brick rooms have large balconies and skyline views, but this is the sort of place where you won’t spend much time in bed. Art fills the lobby—spot the double-height piece by British painter Fred Coppin—while ground-floor Christina’s serves glossy pastries by day and Espresso Martinis by night. There’s a members'-only rooftop restaurant with its own pool and co-working space where events and panels are held. And—the biggest coup of all—Spanish chef Dani García has opened the first UK outpost of his renowned BiBo brand downstairs. The best incentive yet to rediscover Shoreditch.
Price: Rooms from around $296 per night
Address: 45 Curtain Rd, London EC2A 3PT
Closest tube station: Old Street
Courtesy Standard HotelshotelThe Standard, London
$ | Hot List 2020 Readers' Choice Awards 2020, 2021Having 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 side 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 color palette inspired the loud carpets; and the colorways, shapes and humor of Italian design movement Memphis permeate everything. Rooms range from about $250 for a single, aimed at students and early-bird Eurostar travelers, to about $927 for a terraced room with an outdoor bathtub overlooking St Pancras. Expect Memphis design meets Miami with a mix of bright colors 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 $304 per night.
Address: 10 Argyle St, London WC1H 8EG
Closest tube station: King's Cross
hotelThe Hari
$$$ | Readers' Choice Awards 2022With the flurry of London openings in recent years, you’d be forgiven for overlooking hotels such as The Hari, but this is a contemporary bolthole with an artistic temperament and loft-style bedrooms that are a pleasure to dawdle in. And while many of London’s classic hits are a stroll away, staying in for an evening isn’t to be sniffed at either, drifting on a little passeggiata from the bar with its riffs on classic cocktails down to the restaurant for authentic Italian dishes. There’s a real sense of being tucked away here, of bedrooms being chic dens from which you can peek out at London, with decor mixing Starck-like polish with just a little burlesque (a waft of gauze, a lingerie-clad portrait) and lithographs such as Tracey Emin’s ‘She Lay Down’. For a personable, well-connected London base tucked away in Belgravia—this feels like a secret hotel for romantic liaisons or a weekend break taking in a show or exhibition, shopping on Sloane Street then stretching out for an indulgent Sunday morning.
Price: Rooms from around $481 per night
Address: 20 Chesham Pl, London SW1X 8HQ
Closest tube station: Knightsbridge
Courtesy Oeker CollectionhotelThe Lanesborough
$$$ | Gold List 2020 Readers' Choice Awards 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023Minimalists, 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 splendor. In 2015 it reopened more unrepentant, riotous and Regency-splendid than ever. The Royal Suite, at $33,000 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, Céleste, deserves mention as one of the most spectacular dining rooms in town, with decorative cues from Wedgewood and daylight from God, via a gorgeous 'sky dome'.
Price: Rooms from around $1,182 per night
Address: Hyde Park Corner, London SW1X 7TA
Closest tube station: Knightsbridge
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The BerkeleyhotelThe Berkeley
$$$ | Readers' Choice Awards 2017, 2019, 2020Part 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. 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 3,000-square-foot Opus Suite—a spectacular space boasting more impressive vistas.
Price: Rooms from around $1,182 per night
Address: Wilton Pl, London SW1X 7RL
Closest tube station: Knightsbridge
Jack Hardy/Nobu Hotel London Portman SquarehotelNobu Hotel London Portman Square
Readers' Choice Awards 2022, 2023Nobu 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 $507 per night
Address: 22 Portman Square, London W1H 7BG
Closest tube station: Bond Street
Beaverbrook Town HousehotelBeaverbrook Town House
$$$ | Hot List 2022 Readers' Choice Awards 2023A 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 theater, with framed programs 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 colorful, 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 Hotel Costes is slated for late 2022—is part of a new chapter for Chelsea.
Price: Rooms from around $507 per night
Address: 22 Portman Square, London W1H 7BG
Closest tube station: Bond Street
Courtesy The Ritz HotelhotelThe Ritz London
$$$ | Readers' Choice Awards 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023There have been a few changes at The Ritz in recent years. Above all there was the renovation of the Rivoli Bar (which serves the best-presented cocktails in London) and the acquisition of the magnificent William Kent House next door (César Ritz's dream ever since he built the hotel in 1906). Yet the main public spaces—including the adored Palm Court and dining room, aligned along the sumptuous gallery that runs the length of the building, from Arlington Street at one end to Green Park at the other—remain little changed. Here you still have a sense, enhanced by the rich, warm, golden glow of this part of the hotel, of having found yourself preserved in amber. No celebrity interior-designers have been let loose on the rooms, which retain their original Louis XVI style and a lustrous palette of pinks, yellows, and blues. Ravishing.
Price: Rooms from around $1,270 per night
Address: 150 Piccadilly, St. James's, London W1J 9BR
Closest tube station: Green Park
Courtesy Shangri-La Hotels & ResortshotelShangri-La The Shard, London
$$$ | Readers' Choice Awards 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023Never 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-story 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 $811 per night
Address: 31 St Thomas St, London SE1 9QU
Closest tube station: London Bridge
Courtesy The SavoyhotelThe Savoy
$$$ | Gold List 2023 Readers' Choice Awards 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023Though people tend to think of it as monolithic and unchanging, The Savoy has something of a split personality and has in fact changed a great deal over the years. It's decorated in Edwardian style on the Thames side—from which Monet and Whistler painted the river—but it's quintessentially Art Deco on the Strand side. Rooms are large and traditional but never frumpy; and in a world of shrinking bathtubs, The Savoy's remain satisfyingly deep. The Savoy Grill is excellent and The River Restaurant by Gordon Ramsay brings the best of British seafood and shellfish; and the hotel is blessed with two of the finest watering holes in London, The American Bar, granddaddy of London's cocktail bars, and its younger, sassier sibling, The Beaufort Bar. So don't even try to make it an 'either/or' proposition—it must be an 'and'.
Price: Rooms from around $905 per night
Address: Strand, London WC2R 0EZ
Closest tube station: Temple
Courtesy The BeaumonthotelThe Beaumont
$$$ | Gold List 2020 Readers' Choice Awards 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021This used to be a multi-story parking garage, 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-story sculpture extruding from one side of the building, which also happens to contain a suite.
Price: Rooms from around $865 per night
Address: 8 Balderton St, Brown Hart Gardens, London W1K 6TF
Closest tube station: Bond Street
Courtesy Corinthia HotelshotelCorinthia London
$$$ | Readers' Choice Awards 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023As delicious as the huge slice of cake that it resembles when seen from the right spot by the Thames. No fewer than 1,001 Baccarat crystals illuminate the double-height, Victorian-pillared lobby, whose parquet floors and elegant palette of creams, caramels, and charcoals with splashes of lime-green hint at the splendors beyond. Guests with a list of London landmarks to be checked off will find this a convenient base, within striking distance of Downing Street, Trafalgar Square, the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Theatreland, and the South Bank (if you take one of the top-floor suites with a terrace, you can save yourself some time and see all of them at once). The ESPA Life spa occupies four levels, with 15 treatment 'pods', a marble-and-leather spa lounge, glass-encased sauna and steel-lined pool.
Price: Rooms from around $960 per night.
Address: Whitehall Pl, London SW1A 2BD
Closest tube station: Embankment
Courtesy Dukes HotelhotelDukes London
$$ | Readers' Choice Awards 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021Practically hidden down a barely existent alleyway between St James's Street and Green Park. Practically hidden is how they like it here. Hushed, discreet, cozy, and ever-so-English—yet by no means sombre, stuffy, or stuck-up. How could anyone remain somber, 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 favorite drink 'shaken, not stirred'. The GBR (Great British Restaurant) is delightful; so is the entirely chic Cognac and cigar garden.
Price: Rooms from around $464 per night
Address: 35 St James's Pl, St. James's, London SW1A 1NY
Closest tube station: Green Park
Courtesy Hotel Café RoyalhotelHotel Café Royal
$$$ | Readers' Choice Awards 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023This revamped Regent Street landmark combines fin de siècle opulence with streamlined modernity. There are subtle references to its storied past—vases filled with tulips are a silent salute to Oscar Wilde, who once drank so much absinthe in the Grill Room that he hallucinated he was cavorting in a field of the flowers. The Grill Room has been turned into a bar, and its opulent gilt and mirrors have been sexed up with a frankly immodest blush of red furnishings. Recover your composure downstairs at the Akasha spa, which specializes in watsu aquatic-massage treatments.
Price: Rooms from around $917 per night
Address: 10 Air St, London W1B 5AB
Closest tube station: Piccadilly Circus
Courtesy Langham HotelshotelThe Langham, London
$$$ | Gold List 2020 Readers' Choice Awards 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023If 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 Roux at the Landau, where father-and-son dream team Albert and Michel Roux Jr have been casting their culinary spells.
Price: Rooms from around $917 per night
Address: 10 Air St, London W1B 5AB
Closest tube station: Piccadilly Circus
Courtesy EDITION HotelshotelThe London EDITION
$$ | Readers' Choice Awards 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023A restaurant with rooms? That wouldn't be entirely fair, but there's no escaping the fact that chef Jason Atherton's ground-floor Berners Tavern is the palpitating heart of the hotel. The lobby cocktail bar, oak-paneled, reservation-only Punch Room and nightclub Basement only increase the pulse-rate. Ian Schrager's considered, gimmick-free design has given the stucco, marble and stained-glass of the historic lobby a funky edge; upstairs, rooms are James Bond-slick, with buttoned-linen George Smith sofas alongside Scandinavian wishbone chairs and Schrager's trademark floor-to-ceiling white drapes. They are also marvelously quiet, a perfect antidote to the hubbub below.
Price: Rooms from around $520 per night
Address: 10 Berners St, London W1T 3NP
Closest tube station: Tottenham Court Road
Courtesy Mandarin OrientalhotelMandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London
$$$ | Gold List 2020 Readers' Choice Awards 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023The 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, zeitgeist-y restaurants by Daniel Boulud and Heston Blumenthal, 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 $1,182 per night
Address: 66 Knightsbridge, London SW1X 7LA
Closest tube station: Knightsbridge
Courtesy Rosewood Hotels & Resorts/Durston SaylorhotelRosewood London
$$$ | Gold List 2020 Readers' Choice Awards 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023With their first foray into London, Rosewood has created not just a magnificent new hotel but a whole new neighborhood: 'Midtown', previously known, without any of that implied New York spunk, as plain old Holborn. Yet the location is extraordinary, starting with the most unexpected of courtyards, like a mini Somerset House, from which a kind of country-house vibe emanates—a country house, however, with a tremendous sense of wit and panache. The style of the interiors is difficult to characterize, by turns demure and decadent, muted and glossy, traditional and contemporary. The overall effect is dazzling. The perpetually jammed Scarfe's Bar and the elegantly elongated Mirror Room are at either end of an exquisitely lit bronze corridor that insulates the lobby from the outside world. The Holborn Dining Room, run by Calum Franklin, adds a lively brasserie buzz. Sitting outside in the courtyard terrace in summer with a glass of something chilled is a joy.
Price: Rooms from around $778 per night
Address: 252 High Holborn, London WC1V 7EN
Closest tube station: Holborn
Roberto BonardihotelBulgari Hotel London
$$$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 jewelry 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 $1,004 per night
Address: 171 Knightsbridge, London SW7 1DW
Closest tube station: Knightsbridge
Courtesy Four Seasons/Richard WaitehotelFour Seasons Hotel London at Park Lane
$$$ | Readers' Choice Awards 2020, 2021, 2022The 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 color here—apart, perhaps, from the red chairs in the excellent Italian restaurant Amaranto (which is as good for breakfast as it is for dinner). Otherwise, 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. The spa on the tenth floor has serene park views, and perpetuates the chilled-out ambience.
Price: Rooms from around $1,335 per night
Address: Hamilton Pl, Park Ln, London W1J 7DR
Closest tube station: Hyde Park Corner
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This article was originally published on Condé Nast Traveller UK.
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