Three of these four are a designer's interior inside an older building. Kelly Wearstler's work at Santa Monica Proper Hotel runs across a 1928 city landmark and a new block, the Venice studio Electric Bowery turned a 1980s motel into Silver Lake Pool & Inn, and Paul Fortune redid the interiors of Sunset Tower Hotel, a 1931 Art Deco apartment tower, after 2004. The Beverly Hills Hotel is the period piece: pink since 1948, with the Martinique banana-leaf wallpaper first hung in 1949.
Two things decide the choice. Much of the design is in the spaces every guest shares, the lobbies, bars and pools, so even an entry room puts you inside it. And the four are far apart, from downtown Santa Monica to Sunset Junction in Silver Lake, so choose the neighbourhood as well as the look. Rooms typically start from about $425 a night at Silver Lake Pool & Inn and about $1,090 at The Beverly Hills Hotel.
Kelly Wearstler designed Santa Monica Proper Hotel from the front door in, across two buildings joined as one. The older is the Santa Monica Professional Building, Arthur E. Harvey's 1928 Spanish Colonial Revival offices, made a city landmark in 2005; its rehabilitation for the hotel won the Santa Monica Conservancy's 2020 President's Award, the conservancy's top honour. The newer one is by Howard Laks Architects.
The lobby sets the tone: pewter-glazed ceramic columns that recall dark oyster shells, a geometric white oak floor, and Palma, the lounge, with sheer linen panels and alcove seating. The Grotto, a small library in the lobby, has grasscloth walls, patinated cypress, books and art. Rooms in the 1928 building keep their original steel windows, which frame palms, and the bathrooms are travertine. Up on the roof, a heated pool, cabanas and a circular bar with a fireplace share the deck with Calabra, the roof restaurant. The hotel holds one MICHELIN Key.
The room to book
Landmark Grand King
about 460 sq ft (43 m²)$671 a night
In the 1928 building, about 460 sq ft, with an oversized bathroom and furnishings made with local collaborators, among them Parachute Home and the ceramic artist Morgan Peck.
The Beverly Hills Hotel is design you know at a glance. It opened on Sunset Boulevard in 1912 and was painted pink in 1948. In 1949 Paul R. Williams added the Crescent Wing, and he also reimagined the lobby, the Polo Lounge and the Fountain Coffee Room. Its signature wallpaper, the Martinique banana leaf, was designed in 1942 and first hung here in 1949. The City of Beverly Hills made it its first historic landmark in 2012, and its three MICHELIN Keys are matched in the Los Angeles area only by Hotel Bel-Air.
The set pieces are all still in use. The Polo Lounge, open since 1941, keeps its candy-striped dining room and its patio under palms. The Fountain Coffee Room still serves from the curved counter it has had since 1949, and the 1938 pool is lined with green-and-white striped loungers and pink cabanas. Out in the gardens, the first five bungalows went up in 1915.
The room to book
Bungalow Room
about 475 sq ft (44 m²)$1,414 a night
The first category in the gardens rather than the main house, about 475 sq ft with a garden view: the bungalow setting the hotel has offered since 1915.
Silver Lake Pool & Inn shows how far design can take a 1980s motel. Electric Bowery, a studio from Venice, reworked it for Palisociety, and it opened on Santa Monica Boulevard in November 2019 as Silver Lake's first boutique hotel. The look takes its cues from Palm Springs and Mexico City, in terrazzo counters, vintage leather chairs, live plants and tiles made by hand in sunset colours.
Its 54 rooms and suites share a flagstone pool deck raised a floor above the street, behind tall cactus planters that screen the boulevard, with a view over palms and rooftops to the hills. Marco Polo, the coastal Italian trattoria, has its patio a flight of stairs below. Every room has a walk-in rain shower and a Nespresso machine, and the cafés, bars and independent shops of Sunset Junction are four minutes away on foot.
The room to book
The Deluxe King View
375 sq ft (35 m²)$425 a night
375 sq ft with a king bed, a sitting area and a wide window over rooftops, palms and the hills: the one king room the hotel sells for its outlook.
Sunset Tower Hotel is the building first: Leland A. Bryant's 1931 Art Deco apartment tower on the Sunset Strip, where John Wayne, Howard Hughes and Frank Sinatra all lived, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Inside, the look is newer. After the hotelier Jeff Klein bought the tower in 2004, the designer Paul Fortune redid the interiors, and the rooms and public spaces were refreshed in 2018.
The Tower Bar, in what the hotel calls Bugsy Siegel's old apartment, seats 80 among walnut panelling modelled on an old photograph of the room, with a fireplace and niche booths in rose-coloured light. Beside it, the Terrace has pink suede banquettes. Every room category has floor-to-ceiling windows, and the Deluxe rooms are done in dusty pink and cream, with Donald Robertson's illustrated bathroom wallpaper, the Sunset Boulevard sign and a Tower Bar martini among its scenes.
The room to book
Deluxe King
about 400 sq ft (37 m²)$700 a night
A Deluxe room in dusty pink and cream with Donald Robertson's illustrated bathroom wallpaper: about 400 sq ft with a king bed, behind floor-to-ceiling windows.
Hotel Figueroa, opened by the YWCA in 1926, was restored to its Spanish Colonial Revival style and reopened in 2018. Bar Magnolia's curved counter sits in the lobby, and the coffin-shaped courtyard pool is set among tall candelabra euphorbias.
The Hollywood Roosevelt is the 1927 Spanish Colonial Revival tower where the first Academy Awards were presented, with tower rooms redesigned by Yabu Pushelberg and a Tropicana pool whose floor David Hockney painted.
From about $235 a night
Questions people ask
Good questions about Los Angeles
Which Los Angeles hotels were designed by well-known designers?
Kelly Wearstler designed the interiors of Santa Monica Proper Hotel, across the 1928 landmark and the new building beside it. Paul R. Williams's work at The Beverly Hills Hotel takes in the 1949 Crescent Wing and new looks for the lobby, the Polo Lounge and the Fountain Coffee Room. Paul Fortune redid the interiors of Sunset Tower Hotel after 2004, and the Venice studio Electric Bowery turned a 1980s motel into Silver Lake Pool & Inn. Beyond this list, Yabu Pushelberg redesigned the tower rooms at The Hollywood Roosevelt, and Michael S. Smith the rooms at Shutters on the Beach.
When was The Beverly Hills Hotel painted pink?
In 1948. The hotel had opened in 1912, before Beverly Hills was a city, and it has gone by the Pink Palace ever since. The Martinique banana-leaf wallpaper, a 1942 design, was first hung here in 1949, the year Paul R. Williams added the Crescent Wing. The pink runs on around the pool, where the cabanas are pink and the loungers striped green and white, and into the Junior Beverly Hills Suite, which has a pastel pink bathroom.
Which Los Angeles hotels are in historic buildings?
The Beverly Hills Hotel, open since 1912, became the City of Beverly Hills's first historic landmark in 2012. Sunset Tower Hotel is a 1931 Art Deco apartment tower, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Santa Monica Proper Hotel takes in the Santa Monica Professional Building, a 1928 city landmark rehabilitated for the hotel. Beyond this list, The Hollywood Roosevelt, of 1927, is a City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument together with its pool, and Hotel Figueroa opened as a YWCA hotel in 1926.
Are the interiors at Sunset Tower Hotel original?
No: the tower is original, the interiors are not. Leland A. Bryant's 1931 Art Deco apartment building became a hotel in 1988, and after Jeff Klein bought it in 2004 the designer Paul Fortune redid the interiors. The Tower Bar opened in 2005, its walnut panelling modelled on an old photograph of the room, and the rooms and public spaces were refreshed in 2018. The hotel places the bar in Bugsy Siegel's old apartment, and the Deluxe rooms have Donald Robertson's illustrated bathroom wallpaper.
Which Los Angeles design hotels have a pool?
All four. Santa Monica Proper Hotel has a heated rooftop pool with cabanas beside a circular bar with a fireplace, shared by guests, Proper Club members and day-pass holders. The Beverly Hills Hotel's pool, opened in 1938 as the Sand and Pool Club, is for hotel guests, with green-and-white striped loungers and pink cabanas that seat four. Silver Lake Pool & Inn has a small pool on a flagstone deck one floor above the street. Sunset Tower Hotel's small outdoor pool is for guests, with the Terrace's lanai beside it.
How did you choose these hotels?
Independently, through extensive research, trusted sources and first-hand visits. Hotels cannot pay to be included, and every one of the ten has to exist for a different reason.
The design one
