myhotel Bloomsbury, London, United Kingdom

myhotel Bloomsbury is the more serious, masculine sibling of myhotel Chelsea. It’s built to appeal to a more business-minded clientele than Chelsea’s Flower Show-esque weekenders and lunching ladies. It’s a smooth, smart and professional design hotel in London. It opened in the late 1990s to much acclaim and was a pioneer of the sleek, muted contemporary decor that is now so widely commonplace.

This design hotel is an oasis in the desert of Bloomsbury hotels. It’s the best bet for people who want to be in this odd little stretch of London. It’s set on a quiet street off the madness of Tottenham Court Road, an easy walk down to bars of Soho or to the mummies and marbles of the British Museum.

The facilities

The theme at this design hotel is ‘east meets west’. In practice, this means corporate-neutral with splashes of interesting Asian chic. Orchids and oil-burners add to the eastern sensibility and mean that the luxury hotel always smells deliciously exotic. Both myhotels were originally designed with the principles of Feng Shui in mind, so you can realign your chi while you sleep with no effort on your part at all.

myHotel’s bar is open 24 hours a day to guests. There is no dedicated restaurant, though a good selection of food is served in the bar and a branch of Yo! Sushi is just next door. A subterranean lounge, called the Library, is accessible to guests only – sofas, computers, coffee machines and free fruit and water are found here. There’s also a gym and treatment rooms if you are so inclined.

The rooms

The 78 rooms of myhotel Bloomsbury are decorated carefully in neutral colors of chocolate browns, dark woods and caramels. There’s a little flash of character in a faux-fur throw on the beds. Decently sized, decent wardrobe space, decent tea and coffee-making facilities, decent desk space. Certainly comfortable – soft linens, big pillows, good towels and roomy beds. And you get an up-to-date copy of TimeOut London in your room, which is great.