Best-of list · Design
The most extraordinary bar interiors in the world are worth the flight. Our editors have tracked down the rooms where the decor and interior design are…
The short answer
9 ranked rooms follow. How we picked is at the end of this guide.
The most extraordinary bar interiors in the world share a quality that separates them from merely attractive rooms: they change how you feel when you walk in. The shift is immediate and specific — you are somewhere else, in a better version of an evening, before you have even ordered. We have visited hundreds of bar rooms across six continents in search of this effect, and what follows is the list of rooms that reliably produce it.
European bar interiors benefit from a design culture that prizes restraint and material quality over novelty and volume. The best rooms on this continent tend to announce themselves quietly — a particular marble, an unusual ceiling height, a colour choice that should not work but does. These are the European rooms currently setting the standard.
How we picked
If we had to choose one room — the Connaught Bar in London. The David Collins Studio design is the most complete interior achievement in bar hospitality: a room where every element reinforces every other, where the service format was designed specifically for the space, and where the quality of materials and craft is visible in a way that most interiors, however expensive, cannot claim. It has been the best bar room in London since it reopened in 2008 and it remains so.
For travellers building itineraries around bar interiors, the three cities that consistently overdeliver are London, Singapore, and New York. Each has a density of genuinely extraordinary rooms that justifies the trip specifically for the bar architecture. All other cities are chasing these three.
Sofia has been writing about bar interiors for over a decade and approaches each room as both a design critic and a drinker. She has documented bar interiors in thirty-two countries and has a particular interest in how material choices and lighting decisions shape the experience of drinking.
Last reviewed 2025-11-09 · The editors recheck hours and closures against current local coverage.