The Mandrake

The Mandrake takes its name and its entire design language from the mandrake root, a plant tangled up in centuries of folklore and alchemy, and interior designer Tala Fustok has run with that brief in a way few London hotels would risk: dark, theatrical, deliberately unsettling in places, built around a palm tree-filled internal courtyard that keeps the labyrinth of rooms from feeling completely closed off from daylight. Corridors and stairwells are treated as part of the design rather than functional afterthoughts, with items from the art collection placed in passageways as much as in the bedrooms themselves. Low lighting throughout means the hotel photographs better than some guests find it functions in practice when trying to read a room number in a dim corridor.

What lifts it beyond mood-board gothic styling is the art scattered throughout. Genuine pieces by Salvador Dali, Jeff Koons and Marc Chagall are placed through the property rather than confined to a single gallery space near reception, alongside more theatrical commissioned work, including an installation by hairdresser-turned-artist Robert Masciave built from real hair and titled The Haunted Chandelier.

The 34 rooms, three suites and a multi-level penthouse are each treated as individual spaces rather than variations on a single repeated template, which suits guests who want somewhere distinctive over guests who want the reliable consistency of a larger chain hotel where every room is essentially identical. Communal areas, including a small bar and a members-style lounge, lean into the same dim, richly patterned aesthetic as the bedrooms rather than switching to something more neutral for public spaces.

Location helps too: Newman Street in Fitzrovia sits within easy walking distance of Oxford Street, Soho and the wider West End without carrying Soho’s noise and crowds directly to the hotel’s own front door.

The honest caveat: the theatrical, dark aesthetic that makes the Mandrake distinctive will not suit every traveller, some will find it genuinely atmospheric and others simply gloomy after dark, and as with most characterful central London townhouse conversions, room sizes vary considerably and the smallest can feel tight for the price charged.