Editorial
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.
American bar interior design has moved decisively upmarket in the past decade. The best rooms now invest in bespoke furniture, commissioned artwork, and materials programmes that would have been unusual in hospitality design even ten years ago. These rooms are the current high-water mark.
The Asia-Pacific bar interior scene has produced the most adventurous work globally in the past five years, combining serious investment, architectural ambition, and a willingness to commission bespoke elements that most Western operators would source off-the-shelf. These rooms represent the current frontier of what bar interior design can achieve.
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.