The catch at Artist Residence London

The hotel's own FAQ says it plainly: no lift, and the guest bedrooms are spread across three floors above the ground floor. What the FAQ does not spell out is how the ladder falls across those floors. The room descriptions put the Small Rooms on the first floor, the Medium Rooms and the Club Suite on the second, and the Small Plus, the Medium Double or Twin and The Loft on the third, the last two in the eaves. So the cheapest room is one flight up and the three categories at the top of the house, The Loft among them, are three flights up a Victorian townhouse staircase.

The team will carry cases on arrival and departure, and the FAQ says so, but nobody carries them at eleven at night when you come back from dinner, and a pitched ceiling in the eaves is a pitched ceiling. Anyone with a knee, a pram or a hard-sided case should read the floor before the photograph.

The hotel publishes no room sizes anywhere, and the entry category is called the Small Room for a reason. Its own description is a king bed, a rainfall shower, an armchair and a small desk, which is what fits. Guests report that the small rooms are genuinely small, and the pattern in what they say is consistent: warmest about the staff, coolest about what the rate buys.

For 9 to 11 February 2027 the Small Room was 350 pounds a night, the Small Plus 365 and the Medium 390; for 20 to 22 April 2027 the same three were 407.50, 430 and 480. The extras are priced too: late checkout is 20 pounds an hour, a fold-up bed 50 pounds a night in the two suites, a dog 20 pounds a night. This is a ten-room townhouse with no spa, no pool and no gym, and London rates apply anyway.

The FAQ says breakfast is not usually included unless the room rate states otherwise, and that is the only place the hotel addresses it. What you pay instead is the Cambridge Street Kitchen's weekday breakfast menu: The Big One, the full English, is 17 pounds, the veggie version 16, crushed avocado on sourdough 15.50, two poached eggs on toast 10, a croissant 3.50 and a cappuccino 4. Two people with a full breakfast and coffee is 42 pounds before service, every morning.

It is a good breakfast, and guests single it out, but at these room rates it is worth knowing that the cooked plate is not in the price and the pastry counter is a menu, not a buffet.

The hotel calls the ground floor an all-day neighbourhood restaurant and cocktail bar, and means it. The opening hours page has the coffee lounge and cocktail bar open from 7.30 in the morning until 11 at night Monday to Thursday, midnight on Friday and Saturday and 10.30 on Sunday, and the hotel warns that it can get very busy at weekends and recommends booking a table. The first-floor Small Rooms sit directly above it. The FAQ says most guests find the hotel very quiet at night but may notice gentle background sounds; on a Saturday, read that as a bar closing at twelve.

The other side of a ten-room house is that there is no concierge desk. The FAQ says bistro food can come up to the room during kitchen hours and drinks at any time, but there is no separate room-service menu and no kitchen through the night. One small team covers the house; guests praise them, but it is hospitality rather than service.