Here's our pick of London hotels letting you soak up some of the most beautiful parts of the city without having to leave your bed/bathtub/pyjamas for it.
Montcalm East, Shoreditch
The Montcalm East building on City Road's a divisive one — makes you feel like you've been incepted if you look at it too long, a weird, pointed tower that looks somehow concave where it spreads against the sky.
The inside of the hotel, by contrast, is actually quite soothing: neutral colours, heavy curtains, nice textures. Big showers, good soundproofing. Feels kind of corporate, but also nicely peaceful. For the most light-flooded flex, it's the Sky High rooms you're after — 17th floor views across Shoreditch and the City. There are double and twin options, or for the biggest window real estate with, unsurprisingly, a price to match: the Sky High Junior Suite.
Montcalm East, Shoreditch
Pan Pacific London, Liverpool Street
The Pan Pacific London, despite its clean lines and quiet-luxury colour palette, also has a splash of hedonistic Golden Age of the Roman Empire to it: huge-window-adjacent chaises longues, from where you can gaze down upon the city spread pliably beneath you; big bathrooms filled with marble and expensive textiles and a general spaciousness that feels improbable to find in the heart of Bishopsgate. Reports have also been filed by our people on the ground, of butlers bringing unsolicited (but welcome) cake to your door/reclining situation.
All rooms come with floor-to-ceiling windows; Deluxe City View Rooms start at £525 a night. The 19-floors-high Pan Pacific Suite starts at £3,500 a night and comes with all of the hotel's standard opulence plus a bespoke cocktail cabinet, a late afternoon 'cocktail turndown' (unsure how this works but sounds like somebody... makes your bed and also makes you a martini?) and huge views of the surrounding skyscrapers from both the bedroom and bathroom.
Pan Pacific London, Liverpool Street
art'otel London Battersea Power Station
We'd guess the main demographic of guests at the sleek new design hotel in Battersea is either couples here on a romantic getaway — booking a massage, hitting the skyline-view Iberian restaurant Joia and taking a dip in the outrageously striking and thankfully heated rooftop pool — or visitors doing some destination shopping, and making a luxe overnighter of their visit to Battersea Power Station's mix of designer and high-end-high-street names.
But for anybody who adores the architecture and infrastructure of this part of the city, the views are reason enough to visit. It's rare to see this side of south London from on high at all, let alone being this close to the power station's towering, brick-cathedral grandeur. If you splash out on the 14th floor Masterpiece Suite you'll be eye-level with the iconic chimneys, with the curl of the river on the horizon, and gazing down on a lacing of railway lines and trains sliding along them like (from this height) silent silk. Starts at £1,470 a night.
art'otel London Battersea Power Station
NoMad London, Covent Garden
Housed in a Grade II-listed building that used to be Bow Street Magistrates Court, the NoMad London exterior still looks grand but forbidding. Inside, the hotel group harks back to its North American roots, the interior all dressed up like a New York townhouse. It looks like the location in a Noah Baumbach film where somebody struggles with writer's block, buys fine art, and gets into arguments about Ojai grape varietals.
The Royal Opera Suite adds a layer of Age of Innocence, 19th-century-high-society feels into the mix — dash off some correspondence or a short screenplay from your heavy, carved-wooden writing desk, while you sip a Manhattan and watch the audience arrive at the Royal Opera House opposite. Plus bonus points for the opera house views from the claw-footed bathtub.
NoMad London, Covent Garden
Treehouse Hotel, Oxford Street
Leaning hard into their views, all of the rooms at Treehouse Hotel come with bay windows, with a little table and cushions so you can admire the BT Tower over your breakfast. There are some weird stuffed toys folded into the décor you're going to have to make your peace with/bury in a dark cupboard where their eyes can't follow you, but beyond that you're looking at neutral-ish colours, splashes of raw timber here and there — Treehouse Hotel = tree trunks in the bathroom, you get it — and a lot of the usual mod cons, but with the views still very much the real USP. The Skyline King starts at £545 a night.
Treehouse Hotel, Oxford Street
Hotel Café Royal, Piccadilly
Not bad at unfettered lavishness, even in their lower-priced (still big-spend) rooms, Hotel Café Royal summits new levels of extra with the Dome Penthouse suite — a three bedroom beast perched on the rooftop of a grade II-listed building, among a sea of other grade II-listed rooftops. It comes with a terrace bigger than the average UK flat (factchecked against Actual Numbers), looking out across Piccadilly. And a domed ceiling — with telescope — in the main living room. Like with all POA deals — which this is — it's safe to assume if you have to ask the price, you don't want to know.
Hotel Café Royal, Piccadilly
Marrable's Hotel, Farringdon
These aren't the most lavish or striking hotel balcony rooms you'll find in London, but it's a part of the city you don't usually get to see from above — rooftop bars aren't as prolifically scattered around the Clerkenwell and Farringdon area as they are in the west end and further east. Book The Rooftops room for floor-to-ceiling windows, skyline views from your bed and breakfasts on the little balcony overlooking the neighbourhood's architectural salmagundi — a mix of townhouses, warehouses, tiny alleyways and historic churches. Starts at £299 a night.
Marrable's Hotel, Farringdon