Art Hotels

Art hotels are properties where design is not decoration applied at the end but the organising idea of the whole building. Some hold rotating collections in their public rooms; others are notable because an architect or designer shaped every surface, from the lobby floor to the door handles. The entries below describe what each property actually looks and feels like, and what kind of guest tends to find it worth the detour.

1 Hotel West Hollywood

West Hollywood, United States

Reclaimed timber · Rooftop pool · Sunset Boulevard

1 Hotel West Hollywood sits at the western end of Sunset Boulevard, and its material palette does most of the talking: reclaimed wood, unfinished concrete, rope, felt and a great deal of planting that spills over balconies and softens the street elevation. The design brief runs on a sustainability logic rather than a decorative one, which gives the interiors an unusually consistent texture — you rarely find a surface that contradicts the rest. Rooms are calm and relatively restrained, with the greenery and the long city views doing the work that patterned fabric might elsewhere. The rooftop pool deck is the property's social centre, looking out over the flats toward downtown on a clear day. It suits guests who want a design-led stay without the theatricality that Los Angeles hotels often reach for.

The Standard, Downtown LA

Los Angeles, United States

1950s office conversion · Rooftop · Downtown core

Occupying a converted mid-century office building in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, The Standard, Downtown LA is a study in what happens when a corporate shell is given over to a design team with a sense of humour. The bones are pure 1950s — deep floor plates, a ribbon of windows, a lobby that was once a banking hall — and the interventions sit on top of them rather than hiding them. Guest rooms are bright and deliberately plain in places, letting bold colour and playful furniture land harder where it appears. The rooftop is the best-known part of the building and has been for years, a long open deck with a pool and wide views of the surrounding towers. As a base it puts you within walking distance of the civic centre and the gallery district.

Hotel Pulitzer Amsterdam

Amsterdam, Netherlands

25 canal houses · Garden courtyard · Keizersgracht

Hotel Pulitzer Amsterdam is stitched together from twenty-five adjoining canal houses on the Prinsengracht and Keizersgracht, which means the interior is a genuine warren of level changes, short staircases and corridors that turn where a party wall used to be. Rather than smoothing this away, the hotel treats the irregularity as its main asset: no two rooms are quite alike, and several are themed around collections — books, art, antiques — assembled with more care than the word 'themed' usually implies. A planted courtyard sits in the middle of the block, invisible from the street and quiet even in summer. The art programme extends through the public rooms and the bar. It is one of the few hotels where getting slightly lost on the way to breakfast is part of the appeal.