Three New Design Hotels With Interiors We’d Love to Get Cozy in This Fall

While most of us tend to do the majority of our traveling in the summer — when it’s more enjoyable to endlessly traipse around cities on foot, or hit the beach of course — we think fall is actually the most magical time to get maximum enjoyment out of a stay in a really nice hotel. In the summer, we’re eager to spend all our time outside, and mostly just dip back in to sleep. In the fall, we aren’t rushing out quite so quickly, so we get more of a chance to actually enjoy the coziness of having a coffee or a cocktail in a warm, well-designed, moodily lit hotel lobby or bar. If we weren’t going to be spending most of this particular fall chained to our desks, finishing up the first Sight Unseen book, we’d be checking ourselves into one of these three new properties and settling in with a martini and a good book. As a bonus, they marry the sustainability of using vintage furnishings with the social responsibility of sourcing from local artists.

For our European friends, there’s Kanalhuset, a hygged-out haven on Copenhagen’s central Wilders Canal that was designed by EEN Kobenhavn. Kanalhuset inhabits a former school building from 1754, and is filled almost exclusively with amazing vintage Scandinavian furniture and objects; one of the most appealing things about it, though, is the fact that it contains both regular hotel rooms as well as huge apartments built for slightly longer stays that are surprisingly affordable. Portland’s new Hotel Grand Stark also occupies an old building (1908) that was originally another hotel, but then housed a furniture manufacturing facility for 80 years. It’s part of the Palisociety group and was designed by North 45 Projects, who gave its lobby an art gallery vibe, filling three long shelves with art and design objects by local makers. Finally there’s the Alsace in the West Adams neighborhood of L.A., which is the second of what’s sure to be many hotels designed by Home Studios, with a building by NMDA Architects. Many of its furnishings were custom-designed by Home, but there are also several locals on the roster, including Morgan Peck, Sarah Koik, and Molly Haynes.

Tour all three properties below, and if you go, be sure to tip one back for us. ◆