The name tells you exactly what this hotel in Bethnal Green used to be, and why its old council chamber makes for a decidedly unique wedding venue. Town Hall Hotel lies a short distance eastward of London’s traditional hospitality centers. A 15-minute Tube ride is the price you pay for rooms that are this spacious, and services — not just a spa but an indoor pool as well — that would set you back thousands at the center of the city.

Denmark Street is where Melody Maker and NME got their start, where the Stones recorded an album, where Bowie and Hendrix hung out. Now, spread across no fewer than 16 buildings, it’s where Chateau Denmark pays tribute to that illustrious history with lavishly themed rooms that have a dark and moody Victorian vibe and rock-and-roll references — and, yes, you can stay in the very same mews house where the Sex Pistols once lived.

“Conscious Luxury” is the ethos at BoTree, and what differentiates it from dime-a-dozen London opulence. Conscious means environmentally conscious — witness the plentiful greenery both inside and out. But in BoTree’s eyes, it means a devotion to nothing less lofty than Truth, Love, and Compassion. This manifests itself most concretely in the BoTree’s approach to service, which aims to be friendly, even familial, while remaining professional and discreet.

The design at Treehouse Hotel takes inspiration from its namesake, but just enough to avoid feeling unserious or childlike. In its rooms and suites there’s an eclectic mix of raw concrete, warm wooden surfaces, living greenery, and ultra-British coziness, complete with stuffed Paddington bears, well-thumbed books, and a yellow raincoat in every closet. Its location is no slouch either, positioned close to the capital’s busiest shopping district.

Some of London’s luxury boutique hotels are so tasteful they’re almost invisible. And then there’s the Mandrake. Set in a relatively sleepy section of Fitzrovia, it’s nothing short of a fantasy world, a moody, atmospheric 34-room boutique hotel surrounding a central courtyard full of hanging jasmine and passionflower. It’s named for a hallucinogenic root much beloved by occult practitioners; it’s only natural that a stay here should be a transformative experience.

Artist Residence London is a throwback to the days when creative people could live well in West London without substantial family wealth. The setting, on a side street in Pimlico, places it close to any number of art galleries, both large and small. The rooms are full of character, and of course, full of art — as is Cambridge Street, the hotel’s multi-purpose dining venue featuring a café, a cocktail cellar, a club room, and a terrace.

This is a London hotel that redefines waterfront real estate: Good Hotel literally floats on an inlet of the River Thames. Built in the Netherlands and then transported via barge across the North Sea to the Royal Victoria Docks, it’s now accessible via an easy trip from Central London. As you might expect, the rooms are compact, but they’re cleverly arranged, with the modern, minimalistic design you’d expect from a team of top-notch Dutch designers.

The Experimental Cocktail Club has bars by that name in Paris, New York, and London, as well as a couple of excellent Parisian boutique hotels and some highly regarded London restaurants. And now they’ve added the Henrietta Hotel & its restaurant Henri to their portfolio. The hotel has reimagined two Covent Garden townhouses, one of which used to be the home of Victor Gollancz Ltd., publisher of George Orwell and John Le Carré.

Brutalist architecture isn’t for everyone, but thankfully, it’s not going away anytime soon. Take the old Seventies-era Camden Town Hall Annexe, for example, which has lived long enough to evolve from an architectural pariah into something precious. After a number of developers came close to demolishing it, the Standard hotel group saw a bit of their own aesthetic reflected in its orderly Modernist geometry and transformed it into The Standard London.

Not too long ago modern minimalism in boutique hotels was all the rage, and the Portobello Hotel was looking out of step — London’s original rock & roll hotel was showing its age, and its eclectic, bohemian style looked like something of a relic. Today, not only is the Portobello’s brand of highly textured romance very much back in fashion, but the hotel itself has seen an impressive restoration, and you can well imagine it’ll be adding to its long list of slightly risqué tales.

Beaverbrook Town House is the city sibling of a Surrey hotel that was once the home of newspaper baron, government minister, and society bigwig Lord Beaverbrook. As a result, it’s packed with inter-war glamour and vivid colors, thanks to designer Nicola Harding, who we imagine watches Wes Anderson films for their gritty realism. Another of its inspirations is Japan, which is a welcome curveball, and a third is the theater; each room is styled and named after celebrated London stages.

Hackney Road, between Shoreditch and Bethnal Green, is the perfect site for the affordable, accessible, youth-focused Mama Shelter London Shoreditch. Behind a somewhat minimalist exterior is a hotel that’s overflowing with visual interest, inspired not only by mid-century modernism but by the Seventies and Eighties as well. Certain Mama Shelter signatures like superhero masks are present here, as well as a pair of private karaoke rooms.

If you’re the literary type, you might be won over by the prospect of a hotel inspired by Oscar Wilde, the ultimate non-traditionalist — and if interior design is your medium, you may be more thrilled at the prospect of Jacques Garcia’s first London hotel. L’oscar begins with a landmark Baroque-style Baptist church, but where it truly impresses is with its decadent vision of London that Wilde surely would have preferred to the Victorian one in which he lived.