Fitzrovia sits between Marylebone and Soho without quite belonging to either, and has for many years been home to writers, set designers and advertising creatives who have made their lives here, without wanting anyone else to really notice. Until recently it did not have a five-star hotel to its name, which was just the way it was. It does now. The Newman opened in February on its namesake street, holds 81 rooms across nine floors, and was named London Hotel of the Year for 2026 by The Times within weeks.

The Newman was built from the ground up on a former demolition site, with three floors excavated below ground before Lind + Almond designed the interiors. The studio’s work is the kind that rewards a slow walk through the building. The bathroom basins reference the bubbled balcony of Shropshire House next door, while the tiles borrow from the Victorian glazed brick of the Langham Court Hotel. The patterned flooring and several handcrafted furnishings draw on Nancy Cunard, the Fitzrovian socialite and collector who wore stacked African bangles up both arms.

The art works on the same principle. Pieces by Christopher Brown, Marcel Garbi and Sandhills Studios run through the public spaces, black and white photographs of local streets by Rory Langdon-Down hang in the corridors, and the larger suites carry pieces by Louise Roe and 3 Dot Furniture. Watercolours by Freddie Darke and Georgie Bennett appear in all the right places. Whoever sourced it has been to the artist’s studios.

Everything thought through

The rooms and suites have a palette of neutral tones, curved edges to the joinery, baths walled top to bottom in Swaledale stone. The mini-bar goes way beyond, and includes anatomē scents and essential oils, KLORIS CBD sleep aids, plus well-chosen British snacks and drinks. The books beside the bed have been carefully handpicked rather than bought by the metre. The bath products throughout The Newman are anatomē, the British essential-oil house, which has a shop around the corner. The bed is from Naturalmat, organic and handmade, and set inside double-layered blackout blinds. I had the kind of sleep central London hotels hope to deliver yet seldom do. I got out of bed very reluctantly.

The Penthouse sits at the top of the building and is a different level of luxury altogether: a 130 square-metre private terrace with its own sauna, cold plunge, outdoor shower and fire pit. Inside, a separate living room with a dining table for eight, a kitchenette, a powder room, a master bedroom with its own dressing room. There is an LED face mask on the dressing table and a yoga mat folded beside the bed. It connects to a Deluxe Room for those travelling with family or staff.

Serious about wellness

Wellness occupies an entire floor and is what separates The Newman from many of London’s recent hotel openings. Hotel after hotel has tried to graft a serious spa onto a London building in the last three years and very few have hit the mark: the rooms are too small, the equipment too compromised, the architecture too constrained, the lighting too dark. The Newman has solved this by deciding from the start that the wellness floor was not just an optional add-on. It was built in collaboration with the Swedish spa group Raison d’Etre, and the influence shows in the material palette: pale stone, soft light, the kind of space where you want to start whispering the moment you walk in.

The list of facilities is unusually generous for a London hotel. A hydrotherapy pool. A sauna. A steam room. A medical-grade halotherapy salt room with heated benches and patented salt particle dispersion. An ice lounge chilled to between 14 and 16 degrees. Three experience showers that cycle through tropical rain, cool fog and a tropical shower escape, each with colour change, birdsong and ambient ocean sound. There are four treatment rooms with extra-wide heated beds.