The best hotels in London according to the editors of Condé Nast Traveller
What’s the best hotel in London? To offer just one answer, or even five, is about as complex as a quantum physics equation. It's like asking ‘what’s the best food?' or ‘what’s the meaning of life?' – the options are seemingly endless, incredibly subjective and forever changing. At last count (2024), London is home to 1,570 hotels, with 146,000 hotel rooms. And even since then, there have been multiple new addresses that have opened with much fanfare – most recently The Chancery Rosewood.
The editors at Condé Nast Traveller are up to the challenge, though. Our British office is based in London, so there's nary an opening we don't thoroughly review, from the beds to the hotel bar. After much discussion, we've created this ever-evolving edit of the best hotels in London, spanning the grand dames, the shiny modern addresses, the effortlessly cool, the romantic and more.
Editor's top picks:
- For classic luxury: Claridge's
- The latest luxury opening: The Chancery Rosewood
- For a cool crowd: Broadwick Soho
- For couples: Chelsea Townhouse
- For families: Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park
Inside some of our favourite London hotels
Firework content
In this article
The best classic luxury hotels in London: Claridges, The Connaught, The Dorchester, The Savoy, The Berkeley, The Lanesborough, The Corinthia, Raffles London at The OWO, The Langham, Four Seasons Hotel Park Lane, The Ritz London
The best modern luxury hotels in London: The Peninsula, The Chancery Rosewood, The Emory, Mandarin Oriental Mayfair, 1 Hotel Mayfair
The coolest hotels in London: Broadwick Soho, Nomad London, The Twenty Two, The London Edition, The Standard London
The best hotels in London for couples: The Chelsea Townhouse, The Mayfair Townhouse, The Hari London, Beaverbrook Townhouse
The best hotels in London for families: Rosewood London, Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, Hotel Cafe Royal
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.
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.
hotelClaridge's, Mayfair
Featured in our Gold List of the best hotels in the world 2026
Best for: classic luxury
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
The ConnaughthotelThe Connaught, Mayfair
The Connaught curves around Carlos Place in Mayfair Village, but it’s not just the address that makes this one of the smartest hotels in London. It started life in 1815 as the Prince of Saxe-Coburg Hotel, and since then has had facelifts as well as the additions of a wing, an Aman spa, and a 1930s-style ballroom – all without losing its original spirit. A gilded mahogany staircase twists heavenward in the reception area, where the energy crackles with a permanent sense of occasion. The private art collection bedazzles: a Graham Sutherland landscape here, a Barbara Hepworth lithograph there. Despite the grandeur, everyone is treated with trademark down-to-earth service. Blending heritage and creature comforts, rooms and suites by Guy Oliver promise style and a soft landing. Minibars are disguised as chinoiserie cabinets; bed heads are hand-embroidered. The 2024-renovated grey-green or storm-cloud-blue Coburg Suites, with painted panelling, delft-encrusted chimneypieces, and heavy draped curtains, are the newest. Megawatt options include The Apartment, designed by David Collins Studio, on the rooftop; The Mews, a light-filled private townhouse; and the King’s Lodge, inspired by Kabul’s 19th-century Peacock Palace. The Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Hélène Darroze flagship restaurants are the focus of a stay, but the watering holes are the most fun. If you start an affair at the Connaught Bar, with its jolly martini trolley and candlelight, you can cut a bon vivant’s business deal at The Coburg. And, for quiet loungers, the Red Room is a modern bar that has an after- or pre party feel. Part of the Maybourne Group, this landmark grande dame still feels utterly relevant. Lydia Bell
Price: Rooms from around £855 per night.
Address: 16 Carlos Pl, London W1K 2AL
Closest tube station: Bond Street
Mark ReadhotelThe Dorchester, Hyde Park
Best for: classic luxury
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 at The Dorchester, one of London’s most storied dining rooms, has recently begun a new era, where British culinary heritage meets bold contemporary flair. 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 £960 per night.
Address: 53 Park Ln, London W1K 1QA
Closest tube station: Marble Arch
Edmund SumnerhotelThe Chancery Rosewood, Mayfair
Best for: modern luxury
In a previous life, this corner of Mayfair was made to look uninviting and unappealing, as it housed the highly secure American Embassy for almost 60 years. Today, door staff in biscuit-coloured suits greet intrigued passersby and diners sip wine on the umbrella-strewn terrace at street level. Above this merry tableau, Theodore Roszak's 35-foot gilded eagle – an original feature from the building's Embassy era – watches over the square from the newly added seventh floor.
This is an all-suite hotel – 144 of them to be exact, which feels like a relatively diminutive number (Rosewood London has 262 rooms, for context) and speaks to their size. Mine is on the sixth floor and has views of Grosvenor Square from floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides. Everything in my suite is appropriately, Americanly super-sized, from the TV screens in every room to the marble bath – the vast proportions make this one of the most sumptuous suites I've seen in London. Similarly, the Asaya Spa, on one of the basement levels, has – I'm told – the only full-length (25-metre) swimming pool in a Mayfair hotel. And then there's the Eagle Bar, a late-night terrace atop the building, dominated by that 35-foot gilded eagle, which is quickly becoming Mayfair's hottest table to book. Sarah James
Price: Rooms from around £1,280 per night.
Address: 30 Grosvenor Sq, London W1K 9AN
Closest tube station: Bond Street
hotelBroadwick Soho, Soho
Best for: a cool crowd
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
Best for: couples
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
hotelThe Emory, Knightsbridge
Best for: modern luxury
It would be easy to walk straight past this glass box of a hotel that overlooks Hyde Park and not realize that it’s perhaps the starriest hotel in London. One of the last projects of the late great architect Richard Rogers, London’s first all-suite hotel is a departure of sorts for the Maybourne Group, best known for heritage classics like Claridge’s and The Connaught. It enlisted an all-star cast: Jean-Georges Vongerichten for the lightly airy ABC Kitchen; Tracy Anderson for the fitness studio in the 21,573-square-foot, longevity-focused Surrenne spa; and a handful of big-name interior designers, such as Rémi Tessier, who designed the entire ground floor and entrance along with the Emory Rooftop Bar and Cigar Merchants and all four floors of Surrenne. Others include André Fu (Claridge’s Spa), Pierre Yves Rochon (The Savoy), Alexandra Champalimaud (Raffles Singapore), and Patricia Urquiola (Six Senses Rome). While there's nowhere else like this hotel in London, thanks to the Damien Hirsts dotted about and helicopter transfers with larger suites, there's also nowhere quite as discreet. Toby Skinner
Price: Rooms from around £985 per night.
Address: Old Barrack Yard, London SW1X 7NP
Closest tube station: Knightsbridge
GEORGE APOSTOLIDIShotelMandarin Oriental Mayfair
Best for: modern luxury
Mandarin Oriental’s second London opening, in a corner of the capital’s most sought-after neighbourhood, was the talk of the town long before the doors opened. Leading designers captured the brand’s Asian heritage in haute couture hideouts in emerald green, with considered splashes of turquoise and sheeny metallic finishes throughout. Kaleidoscopic floral arrangements greet guests in the lobby, who range from families utilizing interconnecting room arrangements to suited visitors dropping in for fizzy informal meetings. Signature suites are Mayfair pieds-à-terre, where hand-painted de Gournay wallpaper lines the walls, Natura Bissé products scent the bathrooms, and classic English novels adorn the coffee tables, ready and waiting for Champagne-sipping, kimono-wearing guests. Experienced hands soothe aching muscles in the subterranean spa’s cosy treatment rooms as other guests break a sweat on the gym’s Technogym equipment. Signature wellness packages include “Tranquillity of Mayfair,” a four-hand massage involving two masseuses, free-flowing oils, and a binaural vibroacoustic session using advanced touchless technology to calm the mind. Beside the 82-foot pool, the hustle and bustle of Oxford Circus feels a million miles away, rather than the stone’s throw it is. Connor Sturges
Price: Rooms from around £994 per night.
Address: 22 Hanover Square, London W1S 1JP
Closest tube station: Bond Street
Simon UptonhotelNomad London, Covent Garden
Best for: a cool crowd
The first NoMad outside the States stands proud in Covent Garden, 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. Sarah James
Price: Rooms from around £499 per night.
Address: 28 Bow St, London WC2E 7AW
Closest tube station: Covent Garden
Adam LynkhotelThe Mayfair Townhouse, Mayfair
Best for: couples
The brains behind classic country-house hangouts Cliveden and Chewton Glen have whisked up a sharp 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. Katharine Sohn
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: a cool crowd
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 start from about £150 for a single, aimed at students and early-bird Eurostar travellers, to about £800 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. Emma O'Kelly
Price: Rooms from around £239 per night.
Address: 10 Argyle St, London WC1H 8EG
Closest tube station: King's Cross
hotelMandarin Oriental Hyde Park, Knightsbridge
Best for: families
Imagine arriving in London, and everything you need is already waiting for you when you check-in. That’s the level of hospitality championed by the team at Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, who endeavour to make every guest’s stay as comfortable as possible. The hotel’s location next door to Knightsbridge tube station is prime real estate. On one side, the most expansive green space in the capital; on the other, the famous shopping street leads to the most lauded museums in the country.
In the rooms, interiors are opulent but not flashy. Glimmers of gold border plush ivory and soft grey fabrics while smooth, rounded wardrobes, mottled in a rich tortoiseshell design, make the most of the space – there’s even a slim corner cubby hole dedicated to the dressing gown. Tall glass cabinets house decorative ornaments, books, or practical implements like the state-of-the-art coffee machine. Afternoon tea is hosted in The Rosebery lounge. It is a lavish, quintessentially British affair. Meanwhile The Aubrey offers a cooler-than-cool underground vibe and serves delicious cocktails alongside a Japanese sharer-style brunch that's worth the visit even if you're not staying in the hotel above. Sarah Leigh Bannerman
Price: Rooms from around £930 per night.
Address: 66 Knightsbridge, London SW1X 7LA
Closest tube station: Knightsbridge
Nicolas KoenighotelThe London Edition, Fitzrovia
Best for: a cool crowd
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. Toby Skinner
Price: Rooms from around £409 per night.
Address: 10 Berners St, London W1T 3NP
Closest tube station: Tottenham Court Road
John AthimaritishotelRaffles London at The OWO hotel, Whitehall
Best for: classic luxury
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 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
hotelThe Berkeley, Hyde Park
Best for: classic luxury
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
WILL-PRYCEhotelThe Savoy, Covent Garden
Best for: classic luxury
First opening over 135 years ago, this is London's first luxury hotel and still one of its most illustrious, welcoming in countless greats through its panelled revolving doors. Day-to-day, impeccably dressed types on business – lots of smart Americans, especially – and chic tourists waft about the space, soaking up the fabulousness from an Art Deco bar stool or chatting over scones in the marble-clad lobby. At Savoy Grill, you can sit in Grace Kelly’s favourite seat for fluffy cheese soufflé and Ramsay's famous beef wellington – out of 160-odd orders taken on an average evening, 140 will be for this dish – and enjoy bumps of caviar with a Martini chaser in the vampish Beaufort bar.
The hotel is currently renovating all bedrooms, with plans for completion by 2027. Great lengths have been taken to hang onto as many original features as possible, with 50 chandeliers precariously wrapped up and remaining in situ as builders worked below. The result is an opulent pearly-grey cocoon, featuring ivory silks, marble, and antique brass finishes, wrapped up in thick triple-height velvet curtains. It feels fresh, with glitzy touches like light-up brass vanity mirrors and colossal televisions demonstrating that for all the reverence paid to times gone by, the hotel has no intention of becoming a dusty relic. Later this year will see the opening of the River View suites, which have window seats framing the capital’s most beloved sights, with the London Eye so close you can almost touch it. Charley Ward
Price: Rooms from around £712 per night.
Address: Strand, London WC2R 0EZ
Closest tube station: Temple
Will PrycehotelThe Peninsula, Belgravia
Best for: modern luxury
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 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
Milo Brownhotel1 Hotel Mayfair, Mayfair
Best for: modern luxury
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 restaurant, Dovetale. Olivia Morelli
Price: Rooms from around £454 per night.
Address: 3 Berkeley St, London W1J 8DL
Closest tube station: Green Park
hotelThe Hari, Belgravia
Best for: couples
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. Rick Jordan
Price: Rooms from around £378 per night.
Address: 20 Chesham Pl, London SW1X 8HQ
Closest tube station: Knightsbridge
hotelBeaverbrook Town House, Chelsea
Best for: couples
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. Emma Love
Price: Rooms from around £399 per night.
Address: 22 Portman Square, London W1H 7BG
Closest tube station: Bond Street
Durston SaylorhotelRosewood London, Holborn
Best for: families
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
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The Twenty TwohotelThe Twenty Two, Mayfair
Best for: a cool crowd
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. Toby Skinner
Price: Rooms from around £540 per night.
Address: 22 Grosvenor Sq, London W1K 6LF
Closest tube station: Bond Street
hotelCorinthia Hotel London, Trafalgar Square
Best for: classic luxury
Since opening on a triangular site near the Embankment in 1885, the grand building has had multiple lives as both a hotel and a government headquarters, due to its proximity to the Palace of Westminster and 10 Downing Street. Entering off quiet Whitehall Place, in a pocket of London frequented by drab bureaucrats, the hotel’s opulence is a bit of a shock – a symphony of grand symmetry, with an enormous flower arrangement at the centre. Up a short flight of stairs is the light-filled Crystal Moon Lounge, where one of the hotel’s signature touches, a 1,001-crystal Baccarat chandelier, hangs.
The 279 rooms here, which include 55 suites, are notably generous, with king-size beds, a table and chairs, and plenty of room to stretch out. The suites have recently been overhauled and mine, the Trafalgar Suite, was an exceptional city oasis, with a sitting room, a dining table for four, and (as you might expect) views of Trafalgar Square. Downstairs, Kerridge’s Bar & Grill is a notable draw, offering up the perfect elevated English pub experience. Likewise, the multi-level subterranean spa is one of the best in London, and recently partnered with luxury German brand Augustinus Bader. Jesse Ashlock
Price: Rooms from around £755 per night.
Address: Whitehall Pl, London SW1A 2BD
Closest tube station: Embankment
Richard GastonhotelFour Seasons Hotel Park Lane, Mayfair
Best for: classic luxury
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. Sonya Barber
Price: Rooms from around £1,050 per night.
Address: Hamilton Pl, Park Ln, London W1J 7DR
Closest tube station: Hyde Park Corner
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hotelThe Lanesborough, Hyde Park
Best for: classic luxury
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 Ritz, Piccadilly
Best for: classic luxury
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 Langham, Marylebone
Best for: classic luxury
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. Paula Maynard
Price: Rooms from around £721 per night.
Address: 10 Air St, London W1B 5AB
Closest tube station: Piccadilly Circus
hotelHotel Café Royal, Piccadilly
Best for: families
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. Teddy Wolstenholme
Price: Rooms from around £721 per night.
Address: 10 Air St, London W1B 5AB
Closest tube station: Piccadilly Circus
