Romance is going to look different for everybody — but can we all agree that a bedroom bathtub is a win, a shower big enough for two (or more) is a win, that mood lighting and beautiful views and solid soundproofing are all wins?
We've scouted out the places offering some fin-de-siecle decadence or some quiet unassuming loveliness or some worldbeating views of the city spread out beneath you. These aren't specific to Valentine's Day, or anniversaries, or staying there as a couple: these are just the hotels we'd trust to romanticise any day of the year — in the company of anybody you love, or solo.
Town Hall Hotel, Bethnal Green
A beautiful, historic building with labyrinthine interiors, the heavy wooden doors throughout Town Hall Hotel are as likely to open onto a bedroom, a cocktail bar, a two Michelin-starred restaurant or a huge courtroom — left over from the days when this place was, per the label, a town hall. The corridors are lined with tiny, smutty etchings, beckoning you towards your room for the night, and unlike a lot of London hotels, the most romantic stays are actually in the smaller, more affordable bedrooms — with mid-century furnishings, and a welcoming, straightforward cosiness — rather than the pricier suites.
Town Hall Hotel, Bethnal Green
One Hundred Shoreditch
Dressing gowns that feel great. Mattresses that feel great. Bed linen that feels great... Many other, non-bedroom-related things could contribute to One Hundred Shoreditch being generally good as a hotel — expansive rooftop bar, lowlit lobby bar, and probably also some lingering affection we've transferred across from the excellent Ace Shoreditch that used to stand on this spot — but for us it's the in-bedroom stuff where the romance really gets dialled up. The bed and the bedding have to be some of the most comfortable we've ever slept in, like being gently carried on a cloud, and making it very easy to justify spending most of your stay embedded together.
And sure, if you do want to prise yourselves out of bed for dinner, the location means you'll have a wealth of east London restaurants to choose from — but the tiny canned cocktails in the minibar and the outstanding welcome cookies left for you on arrival give the perfect excuse to head back to your bedroom to have dessert with the curtains drawn.
Batty Langley's, Spitalfields
Fireplaces, libraries, secluded terraces overlooking the rooftops and chimneys of Spitalfields: Batty Langley's is a gorgeously opulent 18th century country mansion poured into the body of a small boutique hotel, with a strong undertone of Hogwarts dormitory to some of the rooms (Earl of Bolingbroke suite, we're looking at you).
Several of the rooms come with four poster beds for maximum shutting-the-world-outside-out, and if that weren't enough endorsement of your plans to seclude yourself with your beloved, the hotel's food offering is all supplied to your bedroom or suite (no restaurant on-site) so: very little need to ever wear clothes other than an occasional room-service-receiving dressing gown while you're staying here.
Batty Langley's, Spitalfields
The Rookery, Farringdon
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This Farringdon townhouse is by the team behind Hazlitt's in Soho and Batty Langley's in Shoreditch, but they've really doubled down on their love of antiques here — the Rookery's a warren of rooms down a Clerkenwell side street crammed with armchairs, dark wooden cabinets and leatherbound books, with a Look that could've been lifted straight out of Aesthetics Wiki:Dark Academia. And the Rook's Nest suite — with its porthole window and sloping ceiling and soft carpets and four poster bed — gives a feeling of very elegant seclusion, while at the same time just being a short flight of stairs away from the hotel's fireplaces and library and honesty bar.
The Rookery Hotel, Farringdon
The Hoxton, Southwark
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Big fan of the Hoxtons generally, on home turf and abroad, but when it comes to romance levels I lean towards their Southwark location because it has, IMO, the best on-site restaurant — and there's a specific level of allure to knowing that your oysters, lobster and dirty martinis come with: a sweeping view of the London skyline from their 14th floor vantage point; just the right level of buzz to make sure you can hear each other's sweet nothings without being overheard yourselves, and the warm glow of knowing your bedroom's just a short lift ride away.
And speaking of warm glows: something this Hoxton has in common with all of its counterparts that I've visited is really phenomenal mood lighting in the bars, the bedrooms, and anywhere else you might want to look radiantly good — the sort of lighting that makes every hour feel like golden hour.
The Hoxton, Southwark
L'oscar London, Holborn
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Once upon a time this was a Baptist church. These days there's as much sinning as saintliness happening at L'oscar, now an opulent, purple-and-velvet-draped peacock of a hotel. Whether or not this is romantic to you is going to depend on your appetite for dark, rich interiors, mirrored ceilings and liberally gilded alcoves, but you can't deny their commitment to all-out, Versailles-level maximalism.
L'oscar London, Holborn
Pan Pacific London, Bishopsgate
A stay at the Pan Pacific is basically the simple life made unbelievably luxurious. You know, calm neutrals, crisp white bedlinen that can't remember what a wrinkle looks like, vast beds, floor to ceiling windows and curtains that close them off with a quiet swish. Despite its thick-of-the-Square-Mile location it's giving more tranquil retreat than a swaggering luxury.
Pan Pacific London, Bishopsgate
art'otel London Battersea Power Station
Depending on which bedroom or suite you book at Battersea's most gorgeously power station-adjacent hotel, you might find: a record player and a careful stack of London-iconic vinyl; a view from huge floor to ceiling windows onto the brick-cathedral grandeur and iconic chimneys of the power station, or the mesmerising lacing of trains along the railway lines below you, or the curl of the river on the horizon. Regardless of the bedroom or suite you book, you'd still get to roam around: the massage menu in the basement spa; the cocktail menu at the skyline-view Iberian restaurant Joia, and — most alluring of all — the beautiful, and thankfully heated-all-year rooftop pool, for those swimming-across-a-winter-sky-with-steam-rising-around-you mornings.
art'otel London Battersea Power Station
