Sanderson, London, United Kingdom

The Sanderson is brought to you by designer Ian Schrager in association with Philippe Starck, their second design hotel in London (the first is St Martin’s Lane). It’s in an old wallpaper factory to the north of Oxford Street, a listed building of admirable ugliness, its full-length windows intriguingly shrouded by white drapes.

The facilities

Walk in to this design hotel, though, and you’re in a different world. A dramatic lobby with blonde wooden floors is dotted with video installations, clear Perspex cup chairs and the luscious red Salvador Dali lips. To the left is the famous Long Bar, fashioned from white onyx, lit from within by a cool white glow and from without by the diamante straps of a hundred Manolo Blahniks.

TheMalaysian-esque restaurant, Sukais, is beyond that. The Purple Bar, tiny, cave-like and candlelit, is open only to residents and the very cool. The spa at the Sanderson looks like the waiting room for heaven with white drapes cascading down from a double-height ceiling and silent, smiling, white-clothed acolytes. This design hotel already has the air of a retro art installation, which only serves to make it even more fabulously funky. Of course, one man’s 35-foot, silver-leafed, powder-blue silk chaise longue is another man’s bally silly chair.

The rooms

The 150 rooms at the Sanderson are dramatic, subversive and white. There are no inner walls. Bathrooms are sectioned off in glass boxes draped in a cascade of semi-transparent curtain and at the touch of a button another curtain whooshes across for privacy. Silver-leaf sleigh beds appear to float in midair above a scribbled woollen rug. Lights swoop down from the ceilings of this design hotel and a soothing painting is positioned on the ceiling above the bed.

Doubles and deluxe doubles are comfortable and spacious and the higher room categories are really generous with space. Most bathrooms just have very a slick walk-in shower, though some have cool and curvy freestanding tubs. The loft terraces at this design hotel have an excellent balcony, with room for loungers and a table and chairs. The Sanderson’s rooms are exciting and surprisingly romanticin a very modern way. These design rooms are destinations in their own right.