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An expert guide to London's top four-star hotels — priced at less than £250 per night — including the best for spas, pools, quirky bedrooms, cutting-edge cocktail bars, exquisite dining and proximity to central London, in locations including the West End, The City, Marylebone, Knightsbridge and Spitalfields.

Interiors are a Georgian fantasy of wood panelling, four-poster beds and, in a nod to the area’s former textile industry, heavy silk drapes. With access to the hotel only granted at the buzz of a doorbell, Batty Langley’s conjures the feel of staying in an exquisite private home. Service is also obliging and unobtrusive. Rooms are dotted with antiques and injected with an inventive sense of humour: a loo hidden behind a wall of bookcases, plumbing that cuts a mad dash across the ceiling, and a shower that surely takes its inspiration from a car wash. Most bathrooms feature free-standing tubs. The decadent air extends to breakfast in bed on an oversized tray. Rooms from £242Read expert reviewFrom£249

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The lobby looks as though someone has gone mad with an icing gun, for J P Brigg’s 1899 plasterwork is now blinding white. After a £30-million refurbishment by its American owners, the rooms are attractive, the bar warmly convivial, and it all hums with life. Big rooms include many double-doubles with two small bathrooms instead of one large one – perfect for families. Bathrooms are spacious too. The hotel is a hop from St James’s Park – and the underground station – and a short stroll from Parliament Square and Westminster Abbey.Read expert reviewFrom£294

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A hotel for cigar smokers if ever there was one, with its walk-in humidor containing a range of meticulously maintained, hand-rolled Havana cigars, which can be enjoyed on the lightly decadent Cigar Terrace. The location is also perfect for business and leisure travellers who appreciate the village-like charm of Marylebone – the hotel sits amid handsome streets of terraced houses and venerable apartment blocks that epitomise well-to-do London. The décor of the 45 rooms is plush and quietly ritzy, and the interiors in the public areas have the look of a private gentleman's club.Read expert reviewFrom£179

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The Portobello is a charming Notting Hill hotel with characterful interiors, friendly staff and easy access to London’s Portobello road. Rooms range from tiny but beautifully coloured attic rooms to No 16, where Kate Moss and Johnny Depp filled the Victorian bath with Champagne, and No 13, with its enormous four-poster bed that requires a set of steps to reach. This hotel, which opened in 1971, was taken over by Peter and Jessica Frankopan. They have retained the charming furniture, including many Victorian baths, and concentrated on enhancing, rather than materially changing, the look and feel of the hotel, with historical paint colours on the walls, new curtains and carpets but few other changes. The result is a delight.Read expert reviewFrom£225

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If there were Oscars for hotels, then Nick Jones should get one for this near perfect creation in Soho. Rooms are neither superficially trendy nor boringly traditional, they are cool yet timeless, soothing yet spoiling, decorated to reflect the Georgian townhouse that contains them. Either handsomely panelled or prettily wallpapered, they have huge elegant beds piled high with pillows and bathrooms tiled in black and white, with big bottles of Cowshed products, a bowl full of thoughtful extras, and deliciously soft bathrobes. High marks for food (‘new old fashioned’ British cooking – mince and boiled potatoes; ginger sponge and custard) and fun in the buzzing, cosy Dining Room.Read expert reviewFrom£140

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A contemporary, technology-savvy, four-star reincarnation of an 1865 railway hotel, overlooking the Strand and minutes from the river. It's also less than five minutes’ walk from Covent Garden. The old Victorian dame has shaken her skirts and emerged with pared-down décor, faintly Asian touches, and pleasing details such as candles in glowing jars lining the stairs. Even the standard doubles have room for an armchair and table, desk, and minibar with free milk, water and crisps. The hotel's restaurant, located in an intimate Edwardian conservatory, has a terrific-value menu. Staff are friendly and on the ball.Read expert reviewFrom£192

• The best boutique hotels in London

The Rookery, in trendy Smithfield, is a boutique hotel with 35 quirky rooms. Think open fires, sumptuous Georgian detailing (about which the owners know a lot), wonky floors and bulging bookshelves. There’s an Honesty Bar downstairs — and even a tiny garden terrace for the summer. All the bedrooms are as quirky as the building, sharing only rich 18th-century colours, antiques, glowing woods and modernised mad plumbing. The extraordinary top-floor Rooks’ Nest, with its mezzanine floor, 40-ft octagonal spire, trompe l’oeil and Turkey carpets, is popular with families.Read expert reviewFrom£269

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The Zetter Townhouse is a snug boutique hotel in Clerkenwell, complete with terrific cocktails from master mixologist Tony Conigliaro and a flamboyantly theatrical style. It comes dressed in a jumble of Victoriana that includes a stuffed kangaroo, armchairs upholstered with sacking, and walls crammed with curios. The stairways are papered with high-class collages assembled from old magazines and newspapers and there's a games room with table tennis on the lower ground floor. The rooms are super-comfortable playgrounds decorated with cheery woodwork salvaged from a circus carousel, and furnished with vintage radio clocks.Read expert reviewFrom£208

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There are just 10 individually-designed rooms at this quirky and stylish boutique hotel. The décor is all quirky artwork, exposed brick and all manner of rakish clutter — from Kilner jars and tea crates to authentic milking stools refashioned into bedside tables. The hotel occupies a handsome five-storey Regency terrace on Cambridge Street in Pimlico – a road whose former residents include Laura Ashley, the designer, and Jomo Kenyatta , the first president of Kenya. It’s a five-minute walk from Victoria Station; Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, Westminster Abbey and the museums of South Kensington are within easy reach. Check out Michael Brennan’s 64 Degrees restaurant here; punchy sharing plates and an open kitchen concept. Cool cocktail bar too.Read expert reviewFrom£354

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The Levin combines the luxury of a top hotel with the intimacy of a bed and breakfast. It has just 12 bedrooms arranged around a staircase that spirals through five floors. The lobby has delicious pistachio-green walls, with a feel of the 1930s; the minute lift is a nostalgic throwback. It has an immediately welcoming, secure and intimate feel… a haven. Rooms are suave, with particularly good lighting. Each one is equipped with a brilliant selection of pristine paperbacks and a champagne bar. Don't miss the bistro/wine bar in the basement, which is somehow reminiscent of an upmarket Viennese tearoom.Read expert reviewFrom£321 A savvy urban oasis from The Hoxton group, in a somewhat anonymous but brilliantly connected part of town. Check in here and you'll see people with trendy specs, Macbook Airs and expensive pea coats. The industrial chic style works well in this building – part Grade II-listed Victorian and part hunk of 1960s concrete – which was once a domestic appliance manufacturer and later a telephone exchange. It includes painted chipboard ceilings, stained oak floors and a lobby with retro furniture, big, communal tables, three free-to-use iMacs, rows of neat rectangular shelves holding magazines and a restaurant, bar and breakfast area with lighting that could have been swiped from Grand Central Station. Rooms are an exercise in ingenious design and thoughtful touches.Read expert reviewFrom£218

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This hotel is a bit of a secret — and though it deserves to be better known, the loyal band of regulars who appreciate its convenient location, friendly, efficient service, and great spa and pool are happy to keep it to themselves. Perhaps this is why it remains such good value for central London. The welcoming, personable service is what really makes the hotel stand out. Excellent breakfast served until 11am; the restaurant, 108 Marylebone, serves a well-sourced unfussy menu all day. Entry-level bedrooms and bathrooms are very small, but comfortable. The top suites have roof terraces with great views.Read expert reviewFrom£305 This former Jury’s Inn hotel, located in Queens Gate, is now one of the finest hotels in the area. The lounge has 20th-century Irish art on the walls and leads into a strikingly lit bar. Imaginative touches included an afternoon tea called 'Oh So French!' and Pashley bikes, available to rent by the day or half day, and fitted with baskets that can be filled with a bespoke picnic by the hotel. Rooms are comfortable and well equipped, and breakfast is a delight, with a raw juice menu, potted trout and chia seeds topped with compote. An award-winning mixologist mans the bar. Staff are intuitive and personable.Read expert reviewFrom£355

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Not your usual hotel: Sunborn London is, in fact, a 420ft yacht moored in the Royal Victoria docks, a symphony in white and charcoal which could easily have been left behind by a departing oligarch. It's well-placed for the O2 arena, London City airport and the ExCel centre. Size matters in this city, where space is at a premium, and rooms (they don’t call them cabins) are spacious and light. All have at least a coffee-table-sized porthole and the executive rooms have little terraces with water views. The restaurant, serving modern British, has wonderful views of Canary Wharf.Read expert reviewFrom£153

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  A favourite of dowager duchesses, lords, ladies and assorted gentlefolk; the Middleton family and...Read expert review

• 9Telegraph expert rating

  A magnet for media and entertainment types, darling. Interiors are charmingly retro, service is p...Read expert review

• 9Telegraph expert rating

  On elegant Sloane Street, right opposite leafy, Grade II-listed Cadogan Place Gardens, the Beaver...Read expert reviewFrom£400