The Most Romantic Hotels in London
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A romantic escape needn’t mean venturing to a remote island. For a city visit with something for every couple to enjoy, consider London. Whether you’re a return visitor or new to the capital, planning the perfect romantic stay in the city is easier than you might think. By day, enjoy some of the UK’s most iconic restaurant dishes or relax and unwind at one of the best spas in London. By night, check in to one of the capital’s most romantic hotels, as approved by our London-based editors.
How we choose the most romantic 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.
More London travel recommendations
To help you plan an unforgettable trip, we also have plenty of editor recommended-guides to the best hotels in London, must-do activities in London, and more.
Courtesy Shangri-La Hotels & ResortshotelShangri-La The Shard, London Bridge
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Readers' Choice Awards 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024There’s a sensation of being separated from the real world at the Shangri-La Hotel At The Shard, rather like floating in space. Up the top you can sip Champagne over afternoon tea; sip a cocktail at Gǒng, the highest hotel bar in London; or stay a little longer at Shangri-La Hotel. (Aqua Shard, one of London's most romantic restaurants, is in the building as well.) The rooms are elegant and contemporary with motifs of Japanese cherry blossom, have huge beds dressed in Frette linen and walk-in showers. But, of course, the USP here is the floor-to-ceiling windows and unbeatable views across London to the hills beyond. Those glass walls may thrill your inner exhibitionist, though up here on floors 34 to 52 (where there’s also a restaurant, Tīng, and the city’s highest swimming pool), you can’t really be seen.
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Benoit LinerohotelNoMad London, Covent Garden
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Hot List 2022 Readers' Choice Awards 2023, 2024One of our favorite hotels in the city is also one of London’s most romantic spots. Slap bang in the middle of Covent Garden, just across from the iconic curves and swerves of the Royal Opera House, NoMad brings NYC cool to London, with a grand central atrium restaurant which is the place to be seen—and a rather fun date spot if you can bag a table. Rooms are elegant and wistful, with clawfoot bedroom baths peeking out behind discreet modesty screens (for those feeling bashful), tactile velvet trimmings, and shimmering golden mosaic bathroom tiles.
Courtesy The BeaumonthotelThe Beaumont, Mayfair
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Gold List 2020 Readers' Choice Awards 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2024Impress a culturally-savvy date by taking them to spend the night inside an actual work of art. Room by Anthony Gormley looks just like a chunky crouching figure perched awkwardly on the outside of the Mayfair Art Deco building but the inside is a whole other story. The rest of the suite is in keeping with the hotel’s other rooms—1920s details and marble bathrooms—but behind a black velvet curtain and up a dramatic staircase, the bedroom (in the sculpture’s belly) is a dark, quiet and intensely private space. The high wood-paneled bare walls and a small sliver of a window showing only a flash of the sky make it the perfect place to switch off from the outside world and concentrate on the company.
hotelThe Mandrake, Fitzrovia
$$Enter this romantic hideaway through a dimly lit tunnel and find an open-air courtyard adorned with cascading plants. Head straight to the bar (one of our best bars in London) for botanical cocktails infused with ingredients from the hotel’s greenhouse on the upper-floor terrace. Then, wined and dined, retire to the Mandrake Suite where there’s a freestanding claw-foot bathtub in the Carrara marble bathroom and king-sized, Bedouin-style tented bed. Read our full review of the Mandrake hotel.
John Athimaritis/Raffles London at The OWOhotelRaffles London at The OWO
$$$ | Hot List 2024 Readers' Choice Awards 2024The 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 $1.9 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-meter 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
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Kensington LevernehotelThe 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), Champalimaud Design studio (Raffles Singapore), and Patricia Urquiola (Six Senses Rome)—while the 3,200-square-foot 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 programs by model-turned-nutritionist Rose Ferguson and skincare products and treatments by New York’s favorite 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
The Berkeley HotelhotelThe Berkeley Hotel, Mayfair
$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. 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-meter Opus Suite—a spectacular space boasting more impressive vistas.
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.
Beaverbrook Town HousehotelBeaverbrook Town House
$$$ | Hot List 2022 Readers' Choice Awards 2023A smart offshoot of the Surrey Hills original, this property has taken over a pair of restored Georgian townhouses in a prime position near Sloane Square. It feels like a joyous and timely celebration of the capital—especially on the stairs where an extraordinary collection of artwork has been cherry-picked by creative director and advertising legend Frank Lowe: old posters for the Boat Race, Brooks’ Peckham Brewery and Kew Gardens. Just as bedrooms in the country mansion pay homage to former owner Lord Beaverbrook’s friends and guests, here each one is named after a London theatre, with framed programs of past productions and books on opera and Laurence Olivier. Interior designer Nicola Harding, who previously worked on the estate’s Garden House, has used a bolder, more playful palette for this spin-off, lending it a grown-up urban edge. Four-posters and fringed velvet sofas sit alongside antique desks, patterned lampshades and cushions made from vintage fabrics by Penny Worrall; bathrooms are equally colorful, with glassy tiles in rich apple green and bottle blue. On the ground floor, a Japanese apothecary cabinet at the entrance of the arsenic-hued, Art Deco-detailed bar marks a shift to the East. The best spot in the Fuji Grill restaurant, helmed by ex-Dinings SW3 chef Alex Del, is at the counter, where a sensational 20-course omakase supper is prepared, combining traditional techniques with modern European elements for dishes that might include tuna dry aged in house and hamachi sashimi with smoked aubergine. This standout addition to the area is part of a new chapter for Chelsea. —Emma Love
hotelThe Biltmore Mayfair
$$$ | Readers' Choice Awards 2024Right in the heart of swanky Mayfair, this handsome red-brick hotel spreads almost entirely along one side of Grosvenor Square and is hemmed in by some of London’s best restaurants and finest hotels (Claridge’s, The Beaumont, and The Connaught form a sort of invisible golden triangle around its perimeter, while a new Rosewood is set to open in 2025, cementing the spot as a hotbed for hospitality). While historic curbside appeal remains intact, inside The Biltmore opens to an even more glamorous world, with shimmering chandeliers and a bright-white marble lobby setting the tone for an indulgent stay. —Abigail Malbon
Kettner’s Townhouse, Soho
The Jacobean Suite was once the private dining room above Kettner’s—a French restaurant that was known as a location for Soho revelry and liaisons dangereuses. Stories of disrepute between its oak-panelled walls abound; Oscar Wilde wined and dined his rent boys here and Edward VII even had a secret tunnel dug across to the Palace Theatre over the street so his mistress Lillie Langtry could slip inside unseen. There’s still a discreet back staircase running straight from the Jacobean Suite to its own door on Greek Street. In this Art Nouveau corner suite there’s a knockout canopy bed, neighborhood-inspired artworks—referencing Soho signage and ladies of the night—a big roll-top bath and windows overlooking the action of Romilly Street and Greek Street. There’s also a well-stocked bar and enough seating for all your closest friends, or the ones you just met in the Champagne bar downstairs.
Read a full review of Kettner's Townhouse.
This article was originally published on Condé Nast Traveller UK.
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