Windowless Hotel Rooms in London: Every Operator, and What the Window Costs

In this guide

Six operators in London will sell you a room with no window at all — not a bad view, not a light well, nothing.

One of them does it as the whole product. Zedwell runs five hotels where every room is windowless by design, and they are why the phrase “windowless hotel” now means something specific in London, not sounding like a complaint.

The other five do it as a grade in the price list: every one of Z Hotels’ twelve London branches sells a room with no window, and at nine of them it is the cheapest rate in the building. hub by Premier Inn, Point A, easyHotel and The Corner all sell them too.

This is what the rooms are like, which brands tell you plainly and which do not, and what daylight actually costs — because the answer runs from £5 to £35 for the identical room.

💡 The Short Version: A windowless room is a small, private, en-suite hotel room with no daylight, and it is not a capsule. Zedwell is the purpose-built version: for two people it is very good value, because the second guest adds about £5 a night. Z Hotels sells a windowless “Inside” grade at all twelve London branches — cheapest at Shoreditch and Victoria, £50 — but the premium for daylight varies wildly, from £5 at Tottenham Court Road to £35 at Shoreditch. Read the grade name before you pay. Three of the six operators bury it.

Three picks: The Z Hotel Shoreditchad (£50 windowless, two minutes from Old Street) · Zedwell Greenwichad (£66–£145, Cutty Sark DLR) · Zedwell Piccadilly Circusad (£97–£287, one minute from the Tube).

Two different things get called a windowless room

Windowless by design is Zedwell. There is no upgrade, because there is no room with a window to upgrade to — two of the five hotels are entirely below ground. The design, the price structure and the whole proposition are built around it, which means the trade-off is at least openly presented.

Windowless as a grade is everyone else. A compact-format hotel fills its floorplate as far as it will go, and the rooms that end up in the middle of the building or under the pavement get sold anyway, usually cheaper. Z Hotels, hub by Premier Inn, Point A, easyHotel and The Corner all do this. The room is fine. The problem is that the disclosure ranges from a word in the room’s name to a footnote behind an asterisk.

Neither of these is a capsule. A capsule is a berth in a shared dormitory with shared bathrooms — every room in this guide has its own door and its own shower. Our London capsule hotels guide covers those separately.

What a purpose-built windowless room is like

A cocoon room.

Your own room, your own door, your own bathroom. The smallest Zedwell is 7 sq m. The bed sits on a lit oak plinth, there is a full-length mirror, hooks, not a wardrobe, and an en-suite with a walk-in rainfall shower.

The design is built around sleep rather than stay. Soundproofing on walls, floors and doors; purified, temperature-controlled air instead of an opening window; blackout by default because there is nothing to black out. The bathroom mirror runs circadian-rhythm lighting that mimics a daylight cycle, which is the closest thing to a window in the room.

Hypnos mattress, Egyptian cotton sheets, Wi-Fi over 50 Mbps. Reception is staffed 24 hours.

The grade-by-grade operators are less theatrical about it and the effect is similar. hub lights its window-free rooms with a self-dimming back-lit box and what it calls circadian light wells; The Corner builds the bed and the bathroom into one moulded cube and leaves the walls blank. What none of them can do is give you a daylight cue in the morning.

What you give up, beyond the window

These are the things that decide whether the format suits you, and none of them are on the booking page.

The room is cleaned every four days, not daily. That is Zedwell’s schedule; fresh towels come with the clean. You can pay for more, or collect clean towels and bedding yourself from reception at any time. easyHotel is stingier still — Victoria cleans free every sixth night and charges £15 for an extra clean.

There is no kettle, no mini bar and no television at Zedwell, deliberately. No hairdryer or iron either — those are £10 to have delivered to the room. Piccadilly Circus and Tottenham Court Road have free beauty and ironing rooms; Greenwich, Knightsbridge and Park Lane do not. Z Hotels and The Corner both put a TV in the room; hub has no kettle but free tea and coffee all day.

There is no breakfast at Zedwell. Its own answer to the question is a list of nearby restaurants. Z Hotels and Point A both include breakfast if you book direct, which is a real difference at this price.

Check-out is 10am and check-in is 3pm at Zedwell, which is a short day. Both ends move for money, and the West End sites charge a lot for it:

After 2pm you are charged a full night at every one of them. Note what that £80 means on a quiet date: a late check-out at Piccadilly Circus can cost less than the room but more than a Cocoon 1 at Tottenham Court Road, so on a cheap night it is nearly a second night’s money for four hours. Greenwich is less than half the price at both ends, which is one more reason it is the value pick.

Foreign nationals must upload a passport copy before arrival at Zedwell, through a secure link emailed after booking. UK residents can check in with any government photo ID. This is the one that catches people out at 11pm.

The Zedwell pricing, which works backwards

A windowless room for one person is not a bargain. Across five dates we sampled — a quiet Sunday, a February midweek, an October Saturday, the second Saturday of December and a Saturday in April — a single room at Zedwell Piccadilly Circus ran from £97 to £287. That is ordinary money for a central London room, and what you have given up is the window.

The value is in filling the room. The Cocoon number is how many people it sleeps, and the price barely moves with it:

Four or five pounds for a second bed, on a room that swings by nearly two hundred across the year. Tottenham Court Road behaves the same way at £8 or £9.

It keeps going. A Cocoon 8 sleeps eight for about two and a half times the price of a single, and those ratios held to within about three per cent on every date we checked, whatever London was charging that week.

The limit is the beds. From Cocoon 4 upwards these rooms are built from double beds in bunks — a Cocoon 4 is two doubles, not four berths; a Cocoon 8 is four doubles. The per-person price assumes people are sharing a bed. Two couples in a Cocoon 4 is a good deal. Four friends who each want their own bed are not the customer that price is for.

Floor space works the same way: a Cocoon 8 is 20 sq m for eight people, against 7 sq m for one.

The five Zedwell hotels, in the order we would book them

Zedwell Tottenham Court Road — the default pick

£81–£206 a Cocoon 1 · 206 rooms · Beneath Great Russell Street, WC1 · Tottenham Court Road 2 min · check pricesad

London’s first hotel entirely below ground, carved out of a disused car park under Great Russell Street. It undercut the Piccadilly flagship on every date we sampled, by £16 to £81, for the same product two Tube stops away — which makes the flagship premium hard to justify unless you specifically want to walk out into Soho at midnight.

A Cocoon room at Zedwell Tottenham Court Road, and its ensuite bathroom.

Two minutes from the British Museum, and on the Elizabeth, Northern and Central lines, so it is the easiest arrival from Heathrow of the five. Because it is underground the windowless format is a fact of the building, not a design choice, and the soundproofing has nothing to fight: no street noise reaches it.

The one real limit is size. Rooms stop at Cocoon 4, so a group of six or more has to go back to Piccadilly Circus. Early check-in is West End money here — £60 from 9am, £40 from noon.

Zedwell Greenwich — the value one

£66–£145 a Cocoon 2 · Greenwich SE10 · Cutty Sark DLR · check pricesad

The steadiest price in the group, and the only Zedwell where a February midweek came in cheaper than an October Sunday. A room for four starts at £117, which is the cheapest way to put four people in a private room anywhere in this guide.

A Cocoon room at Zedwell Greenwich, and its ensuite bathroom.

Everything ancillary is cheaper here too. Early check-in is £25 rather than £60, from noon it is £15 against £40, and a late check-out to 2pm is £50 against £80. On a two-night stay with an evening flight, that difference alone is most of a third night.

You are by the river for the Cutty Sark, Greenwich Park and the O2 (the Royal Observatory is closed from 2 November 2026), and the trade is Zone 1 for about a third off. There is no free beauty or ironing room here, unlike the two West End sites — a hairdryer or iron is £10 delivered.

Zedwell Piccadilly Circus — the address, or the group

£97–£287 a Cocoon 1 · London Pavilion, W1J 0DA · Piccadilly Circus 1 min · check pricesad

The biggest of the five and the most volatile: the price roughly triples between a quiet Sunday and a Saturday in December, which is a wider swing than any other property here. It is the flagship, it is in the London Pavilion, and you step out of the door into the West End.

A Cocoon room at Zedwell Piccadilly Circus.

Book it for one of two reasons. Either you want that address and are happy to pay £16 to £81 more than Tottenham Court Road for it, or there are more than four of you — this is the only Zedwell selling Cocoon 6, 8 and 12 rooms, so a large group has nowhere else to go in the brand.

It has a free beauty and ironing room, which Greenwich, Knightsbridge and Park Lane do not. Luggage storage is £15 a piece and non-refundable, which on a short stay is a meaningful fraction of the room. Check-in 3pm, check-out 10am, and after 2pm you are charged a whole extra night.

Zedwell Knightsbridge — couples only

£89–£257 a Cocoon 2 · Knightsbridge SW1 · Knightsbridge 2 min · check pricesad

One room type, a Cocoon 2 sleeping two, so there is no single rate, no family option and nothing to trade up or down to. What you book is what there is.

A Cocoon room at Zedwell Knightsbridge, and its ensuite bathroom.

On a quiet night it starts at £89, which is unusual money for SW1, and it is about fifteen minutes’ walk from the V&A and the Natural History Museum — which makes it a serious option for the museums if you can sleep without daylight. It reprices as hard as the flagship, though, so the bargain is a midweek-and-February proposition, not a standing one: at £257 on a bad date it stops being interesting.

Early check-in is the full £60 from 9am, and there is no free ironing room. The rooms are windowless, soundproofed and en-suite with a rainfall shower.

Zedwell Park Lane — a Mayfair address at Knightsbridge money

£90–£207 a Cocoon 2 · 77 Park Lane, W1K 7TP · Marble Arch 7 min · check pricesad

The newest of the five and, like Tottenham Court Road, entirely underground. Its Cocoon 2, sleeping two, ran £90 to £207 across our five dates — within a pound of Knightsbridge on a quiet night and about £50 cheaper on an October Saturday, for a W1K postcode. A Cocoon 4 of 14 sq m sleeps four.

A Cocoon room at Zedwell Park Lane.

That is the whole argument for it. Seven minutes from Marble Arch, ten from Hyde Park Corner, Hyde Park across the road, and a Park Lane address on your booking confirmation for less than most Bloomsbury doubles.

It is last here for one reason: almost nobody has reviewed it. There are only a handful of scores so far, so there is very little to go on beyond the rate and the specification, and the things guests catch — how warm the rooms run, how the air handling behaves in August — are exactly the things that need a few hundred reviews to show up. If you want a safe booking, take Tottenham Court Road. If you want the address, take this.

Z Hotels: all twelve London branches sell one

Z Hotels has twelve London branches, and every single one publishes at least one room grade with no window.

Z’s own word for them is “Inside”, and the room page says an Inside room has all the features of the standard bedroom, “just with no curtains to draw”. Most cards also carry a small “no window” tag beside the occupancy. Neither is a lie. Neither is what anyone would call leading with it.

At nine of the twelve branches the cheapest published rate in the hotel is a room with no window. At Piccadilly it ties with the single; only at City and Soho does the lead rate come with daylight.

Here is what the window costs at each, comparing like with like — the Inside grade against the same bed size and the same floor area with a window, from Z’s own published from-rates:

Seven times the difference, for the same missing window, inside one brand. Whether an Inside room is a bargain or a mistake depends entirely on which branch you are looking at, and nothing on the booking page tells you.

Two more things to know before you read the grade list at any of the twelve. The word “Inside” is not a reliable warning on its own — Z Holborn’s Z King at £90 carries the no-window tag with no “Inside” in the name, and the £150 Club Family Room at Z Leicester Square, the dearest room in that hotel, describes itself as having no curtains to draw. And the name is sometimes the only warning: several Inside grades carry no tag and say nothing about windows in the description at all.

The Z Hotel Shoreditch — the cheapest bed, and the widest gap

£50 windowless, £85 with a window · 136–144 City Road, EC1V 2RL · Old Street 2 min · check pricesad

Fifty pounds is the lowest published rate at any Z Hotel in London, shared with Victoria, and it buys either an 8 sq m Inside Single or a 10 sq m Inside Double — the double being the better deal by a distance at the same money.

It is also the branch where the window costs most. The first room here with daylight is the Z Double at £85, the same 10 sq m as the Inside Double, so you are paying £35 for the glass — seven times what the identical decision costs at Tottenham Court Road. There is an Inside Queen at £70 between them at 11 sq m, which is the sensible middle if you want a bigger bed and do not mind the dark.

A room at the Z Hotel Shoreditch, and its ensuite bathroom.

Breakfast is bought in the Z Cafe rather than included. Joining Z Member before you book is free and adds evening cheese and wine plus 10% off food and drink, but not off breakfast; only the dearer Z Club room grade has breakfast in the rate. The address is the Shoreditch edge of the City, not the nightlife core. Our Shoreditch hotel guide compares it with the other hotels in the area.

The Z Hotel Victoria — £50, and £30 for daylight

£50 windowless, £80 with a window · 5 Lower Belgrave Street, SW1W 0NR · Victoria 2 min

The other £50 room in the estate, and a useful one: Victoria is the arrival point for Gatwick trains and the coach station, and a private en-suite room two minutes’ walk away for fifty pounds is not a thing that otherwise exists in SW1.

The ladder here is short and steep. An Inside Double is 9 sq m at £50, an Inside Queen 10 sq m at £60, and then the Z Double — the identical 9 sq m with a window — is £80. That is a £30 step for daylight on the same floor area, the second widest of the twelve, and it makes the Inside Queen at £60 the obvious pick: a bigger bed and a bigger room for twenty pounds less than the smallest room with a window.

A room at the Z Hotel Victoria, and its ensuite bathroom.

There is no family grade at this branch. Two adults is the ceiling on every room type, so it is a couples-and-solos address, not a family one.

The Z Hotel Tottenham Court Road — where the window costs £5

£70 windowless, £75 with a window · 52 Poland Street, W1F 7NH · Oxford Circus 5 min

The branch where the arithmetic breaks in the reader’s favour, and the one branch where we would tell you flatly not to book the Inside room. An Inside Double is 9 sq m at £70. The Z Double is the identical 9 sq m at £75, and it has a window. Five pounds.

There is no argument for saving the fiver unless you specifically want the dark, which some people do — and if you do, this is the cheapest place in London to find out whether you are one of them for a five-pound stake.

A room at the Z Hotel Tottenham Court Road.

Two more oddities in this short grade list. The Z Accessible at £75 is 14 sq m with a window, so it is larger and cheaper than the 11 sq m Z Queen at £85. And the branch is not on Tottenham Court Road at all: it is at 52 Poland Street, in Soho — five minutes from Oxford Circus and six from the station it is named after. Z names its hotels after the nearest famous thing rather than the street they stand on, so check the address before you plan a walk.

The Z Hotel Holborn — the branch with the traps

£55 windowless, £70 with a window · 75 Kingsway, WC2B 6SR · Holborn 2 min

Nine grades, the longest list of the twelve, and two of them are traps worth spelling out.

The family rooms are £95 either way. A Z Inside Family and a Z Family are both 14 sq m, both sleep four in two queen bunk beds, and both cost £95 — the only difference is the window. Booking the Inside version here saves nothing whatsoever, and it is the clearest illustration of why you read the grade name, not the number.

The £90 Z King has no window and does not say so in its name. It carries the small no-window tag and nothing else; the description talks only about the size of the bed. It is the dearest windowless room here, and the one most likely to be booked in error by someone who has learned to watch for the word “Inside”.

Otherwise it is good value — Inside Double £55, Z Double £70, two minutes from Holborn station and five from Covent Garden, which is the whole Holborn argument.

A room at the Z Hotel Holborn.

The Z Hotel Covent Garden — three windowless grades before daylight

£70 windowless, £100 with a window · 113 rooms · 31–33 Bedford Street, WC2E 9ED · Covent Garden 3 min · check pricesad

A hundred and thirteen compact rooms in a courtyard behind St Paul’s Church — a quiet address thirty seconds from the Covent Garden piazza — and the deepest run of windowless grades of the twelve. You pass three of them before you reach a room with daylight.

The ensuite bathroom of a Z Hotel Covent Garden room.

A Z Inside Single is 8 sq m at £70, an Inside Double 9 sq m at £80, an Inside Queen 11 sq m at £90. The first room here with a window is the Z Double at £100 — the same 9 sq m as the Inside Double, for £20 more. A Z Family sleeping four is £155.

Z publishes every grade with its floor area, and reading that list carefully is the entire job at this branch. Café Inigo downstairs does the buffet breakfast, which is charged separately; the free Z Member scheme adds evening cheese and wine and 10% off food and drink, though not off breakfast. Our Covent Garden hotel guide sets it against the other hotels in the area.

The accessible room is often the windowless one

Four Z branches sell a wheelchair-accessible room with no window: Holborn at £60 (15 sq m), Strand at £65 (16 sq m), Trafalgar at £70 (14 sq m) and Leicester Square at £80 (16.4 sq m). At Holborn, Strand and Trafalgar there is also an accessible room with a window, at £75, £80 and £90 — so the step up is £15 to £20 and the choice is real.

At Z Leicester Square the choice is much harder. The only standard accessible room is the windowless one at £80; the next accessible grade is a Club Queen at £135. That is a £55 step to get daylight, and it is charged to the guest with the least ability to book something else.

And on two of those four — Holborn’s Z Inside Accessible and Leicester Square’s Inside Queen (accessible) — the word “Inside” in the name is the only signal on the page. Neither carries the no-window tag, and neither description mentions a window at all.

The other four operators

hub by Premier Inn — the “ambient room”, and where it actually is

16 London sites · Interior grades published at Westminster Abbey and Paddington · 11–14 sq m

hub’s brand page carries a section headed “Our ambient rooms” stating plainly that they are window-free, lit instead by a self-dimming back-lit box, “circadian light wells” that mimic daylight, or frosted glass. Beneath it sits the double-asterisk footnote: the estate operates a mix of sites, and this includes rooms that are window-free. Neither line tells you which hotel.

The brand’s own room FAQ is the more useful document. Asked whether all rooms have a window, hub answers that some do and some are window-free, and that the ones underground or on lower ground levels have no natural daylight. That is the actual rule: it is a floor, not a hotel.

Of the sixteen London hub sites, two publish the grade on the hotel page. hub London Westminster Abbey, 21 Tothill Street SW1H, sells a Standard room – Interior at 11 sq m and a Bigger room – Interior at 14 sq m, both described as having no windows.

The ensuite bathroom of a hub by Premier Inn Westminster Abbey room.

hub London Paddington, 40 Eastbourne Terrace W2, sells a Bigger room – Interior at 14 sq m and no ordinary Bigger room at all, so the king-size bed there comes only without a window. Note the naming: the hotel pages say “Interior”, never “ambient”.

Point A Hotels — the only chain that sells it as a feature

Windowless rooms at Kensington, Liverpool Street and Paddington · Free breakfast booking direct

Point A is the outlier here. Its property pages say the word “windowless” in plain English, in the main description, before the booking engine — and they sell it as a benefit, not a discount.

At Point A Kensington, just off Cromwell Road near Earl’s Court, the choice is spelled out three ways: a bright room with a window, a room with a skylight for extra natural light, or a windowless option for total quiet. The skylight grade is unusual — it is the only middle option any operator in this guide offers.

A room at Point A Kensington, and its ensuite bathroom.

Point A Liverpool Street offers quiet windowless rooms, city-view rooms or minimalist ones. Point A Paddington lists windowless rooms among its range, again framed as peace and quiet.

A twin room at Point A Paddington, and its ensuite bathroom.

Rooms are compact and airline-inspired, with mood lighting, air conditioning, a safe, an ironing room and unlimited Wi-Fi, and breakfast is free if you book direct. Point A King’s Cross sells them too, though its own page never mentions windows: on Hotels.com its cheapest room on each of five nights we priced, from October 2026 to April 2027, was a Cosy Double Windowless, £9 to £10 under the same room with a window.

easyHotel — rooms from 6 sq m

easyHotel South Kensington and Victoria · Rooms from 6 sq m · Cleaning every sixth night

These are the smallest rooms in this guide by a clear margin. A small double at easyHotel Victoria or South Kensington is 6 to 7 sq m — under the 7 sq m floor of the smallest Zedwell — and comes in with-window and without-window versions at both.

At South Kensington the standard grade is windowless outright: the hotel sells only doubles, the small ones come both ways at 6–7 sq m, and the standard room at 8–9 sq m has no windows at all. There is nothing to upgrade to.

A windowless room at easyHotel South Kensington, and its ensuite bathroom.

At Victoria the standard room is 7.2–9 sq m and does come both ways, and every larger grade — the 14 sq m accessible room, the 12 sq m triple, the 18 sq m family room — has a window.

A room at easyHotel Victoria, and its ensuite bathroom.

The disclosure sits in a FAQ answer near the foot of the hotel page, under a question about room types, not about windows, which is the least prominent placement of any operator here. Price in the extras too: rooms are cleaned free only every sixth night and an extra clean is £15, luggage storage is £5 a piece, and early check-in or late check-out are £20 each.

The Corner London City — clear about the room

Snug Room (windowless) · 42 Adler Street, E1 1EE · Aldgate East 5 min · Cashless

The former Qbic Hotel London City, five minutes from Aldgate East, and the only property in this guide that puts the word inside the room’s name. The grade list reads: Snug Room (windowless), Comfy Room, Plush Room. You cannot book the wrong one by accident.

Every bedroom here is built around a moulded cube holding both the bed and the bathroom — a super-king Naturalmat mattress, a rain shower with a steam-free mirror, a 32-inch TV set into the wall, air conditioning, a laptop safe and sockets inside the cube itself. The Snug is that cube with blank walls around it.

A room at The Corner London City, and its ensuite bathroom.

The hotel’s pitch for it is switching off from the outside world, which is at least the argument Zedwell makes, not an apology. The Comfy Room is the window version and takes two adults plus an infant; the Plush adds a sofa bed for a third. It is cashless, check-in is 3pm and check-out 11am, and hanging the do-not-disturb tag to skip a clean earns a drink voucher.

How to tell before you pay

The six operators disclose this on a spectrum, and knowing where each one sits is most of the defence:

Three practical rules follow from that. Read the grade name, not the price — Inside, Interior, Snug and ambient all mean the same thing. Check the floor area against the next grade up, because when two rooms are the same size and different prices, the difference is usually the window. And at Z Hotels, check the gap before you decide: £5 at Tottenham Court Road is not the same decision as £35 at Shoreditch, and it is the same brand and the same room.

Who should not book one

Do not book a windowless room if you want to spend daytime in your room, you are claustrophobic, or you are unsure how you react to sleeping without daylight. Two practical notes from guest reviews, not the marketing: the rooms run warm, and the climate control is less individual than it sounds; and there is no daylight cue at all, so you wake to an alarm or you do not wake.

Reviewers split hard on it. One group calls it the best sleep they have had in the city. Another finds it oppressive. Both reactions are common enough that neither is the outlier — which is the argument for booking one night before you book four.

If you want to test it cheaply, the £70 Inside Double at Z Tottenham Court Road is the five-pound experiment: the room with a window is next door at £75, so the stake is trivial and you find out for certain.

Not the same thing as a capsule

Zedwell also runs two capsule properties, and confusingly calls the sleeping unit in those a “Capsule Cocoon” — so the word cocoon appears on both products. A capsule is a berth in a shared dormitory with shared bathrooms, at roughly a third of the price of a room. The word to look for is “Capsule” in the property name.

Every room in this guide, by contrast, has its own lockable door and its own en-suite shower. That is the line, and it holds for all six operators — a Z Inside Single and a hub Interior are small rooms, not berths. Our London capsule hotels guide covers the five real capsule properties in full, including what a night in one is actually like.

And if the reason you are considering a windowless room is a longer stay at a lower price, compare it with an aparthotel first: a kitchen changes the arithmetic more than a missing window does. And if you would rather keep the window, the best budget hotels in London lists hotels whose typical night came to £150 or less.

Zedwell rates sampled on Hotels.com for one adult across five dates on 7 September 2026. Z Hotels grade names, floor areas and from-rates taken from each of the twelve London hotel pages on thezhotels.com on 9 September 2026; hub wording from premierinn.com’s hub brand page, hub room FAQ and individual hotel pages; Point A, easyHotel and The Corner from their own property pages, all on the same date. Published from-rates are lead-in prices and move nightly — always check your own dates.

Book a windowless room

In the order this guide recommends them. Ranges are what we saw across five sampled dates, not a quote for your night.Links marked ad are affiliate links. If you book through one we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never affects what goes on this list.

• Zedwell Tottenham Court Road

  ££Accessible rooms

  £81–£206 a Cocoon 1London's first fully underground hotelBloomsbury

  Carved out of a disused underground car park beneath Great Russell Street - 206 soundproofed cocoons and London's first hotel that is entirely below ground.

  Check pricesadWebsite

• Zedwell Greenwich

  ££Accessible rooms

  £66–£145 a Cocoon 2Windowless cocoon rooms, riversideGreenwich

  The same soundproofed windowless format as the Piccadilly flagship, at Greenwich prices and within reach of the Cutty Sark and the Observatory.

  Check pricesadWebsite

• Zedwell Piccadilly Circus

  ££Accessible rooms

  £97–£287 a Cocoon 1Windowless cocoon rooms, sleeping one to twelveSoho

  Almost a thousand windowless, soundproofed 'cocoon' rooms above Piccadilly Circus, sold in sizes from one bed to twelve. The second person costs about £5 whatever the room costs, so the per-head price halves the moment there are two of you and keeps falling as the room gets bigger.

  Check pricesadWebsite

• Zedwell Knightsbridge

  ££Accessible rooms

  £89–£257 a Cocoon 2Windowless cocoon rooms in SW1Knightsbridge

  An SW1 postcode between Hyde Park, Harrods and South Kensington at a rate the area does not otherwise offer, two minutes from Knightsbridge station.

  Check pricesadWebsite

• Zedwell Underground Hotel Park Lane

  ££Accessible rooms

  £90–£207 a Cocoon 2Windowless cocoon rooms, entirely undergroundMayfair

  A Park Lane address at Zedwell money, seven minutes from Marble Arch, and the brand's newest and most design-led property. Underground like Tottenham Court Road, so the windowless format is a fact of the building rather than a choice.

  Check pricesadWebsite

Common questions

Which London hotels have windowless rooms?

Six operators. Zedwell runs five hotels where every room is windowless by design: Piccadilly Circus, Tottenham Court Road, Greenwich, Knightsbridge and Park Lane. Z Hotels sells a windowless 'Inside' grade at all twelve of its London branches. hub by Premier Inn calls them ambient rooms and publishes them as 'Interior' grades at Westminster Abbey and Paddington. Point A sells them at Kensington, King's Cross, Liverpool Street and Paddington, easyHotel at South Kensington and Victoria, and The Corner London City puts the word in the room's name.

What is a Z Hotel 'Inside' room?

A room with no window. Z's own room pages tag them 'no window' and describe them as having all the features of the standard room, just with no curtains to draw. Every one of the twelve London branches sells at least one Inside grade, and at nine of them it is the cheapest published rate in the hotel. Watch the name as well as the tag: Z Holborn's £90 Z King carries the no-window tag without the word Inside, and the £150 Club Family Room at Z Leicester Square is windowless too.

How much does a window cost?

At Z Hotels, between £5 and £35 for the same room in the same brand. Tottenham Court Road charges £70 for a 9 sq m Inside Double and £75 for the identical Z Double with daylight. Shoreditch charges £50 and £85 for its 10 sq m pair — a £35 gap on the same product. At Z Holborn the family grade is £95 either way, so the windowless version saves nothing at all.

Are windowless hotel rooms legal in the UK?

Yes. Building regulations require adequate ventilation and means of escape, not daylight, so a bedroom with mechanical ventilation and no window is lawful. Zedwell's rooms have filtered, temperature-controlled air instead of an opening window, and two of their hotels are entirely below ground where a window is not physically possible. hub's own FAQ makes the same point from the other direction: its window-free rooms are the ones underground or on lower ground floors.

What is a hub by Premier Inn 'ambient room'?

hub's brand name for a room with no window. Its brand page says the ambient rooms are window-free and lit by a self-dimming back-lit box, circadian light wells that mimic daylight, or frosted glass. The individual hotel pages do not use the word: at Westminster Abbey and Paddington the same rooms are sold as 'Standard room – Interior' and 'Bigger room – Interior', described plainly as having no windows.

Is a windowless room cheaper?

For one person at Zedwell, not especially — a single at Zedwell Piccadilly Circus ranged from £97 to £287 across five dates we checked, which is ordinary central London money. Where it gets cheap is with more people in the room, because the price barely moves with occupancy. The second guest costs about £5 at Piccadilly Circus and £8 or £9 at Tottenham Court Road. At the grade-by-grade operators the saving is smaller and more variable: £5 to £35 a night at Z Hotels, nothing at all on one grade.

Do windowless rooms have a private bathroom?

At all six operators, yes. Zedwell's have a walk-in rainfall shower and a mirror with circadian-rhythm lighting; Z's Inside rooms have the same en-suite shower as every other Z room; hub's have a monsoon shower; The Corner builds the bed and the bathroom into one moulded cube. This is the main thing separating them from capsule hotels, where the bathrooms are shared.

Will I sleep badly in a room with no window?

Reviewers split about as hard on this as on anything in London accommodation. One group reports the best sleep they have had in the city — no traffic, no dawn, no thin curtains. Another finds it oppressive and would not repeat it. There is no daylight cue at all, so you wake to an alarm or you do not wake. If you have never tried it, book one night before you book four.