Best Bars with Neon Signs Worldwide

Built inside a former beauty salon, the vintage equipment remains — hair dryers, styling chairs, and the original pink-and-teal neon that hung in the window since 1967. The sign has never been repaired and now flickers on the third letter, which somehow improves everything. Cheap cocktails, loud music, and genuinely interesting people.

The single neon sign here — a custom piece commissioned from a Brooklyn sign-maker — reads "BITTER" in deep red against the black-painted brick. It is the only real light in the room apart from the back bar. The contrast is stark and exactly right. The drinks programme is built around amaro and bitters, and is one of the most knowledgeable in the city.

The neon at Bar Termini is Italian railway orange — the colour of the old Roma Termini station signs that inspired the bar's name. Mounted above the bar, it casts the whole room in a warm orange that makes every Negroni look like a painting. The cocktail list is short, precise, and exactly what you want it to be.

A basement bar under London Bridge station with multiple neon installations throughout the space, each commissioned from a different artist. The effect is a bar that looks different from every seat. The cocktail list changes monthly and the music is always at the right volume — loud enough to feel alive, quiet enough to hold a conversation.

Six seats, one bartender, and a neon sign in the window that has been there since 1978. The bar serves Japanese whisky and beer. There is no cocktail menu. You tell the bartender what you want and she makes it. The sign outside gives nothing away about what is inside — which is exactly the point of Golden Gai.

Hidetsugu Ueno's legendary bar in the basement of Ginza uses neon with the precision of a chef who understands seasoning. A single strip of blue-white neon runs behind the back bar, illuminating the bottles from below. Everything else is candlelit. The effect — cool light against warm flame — creates the most beautiful bar interior in the city.

Named for the distance beyond which Prohibition boats ran, this Mid-City bar has a vintage neon sign that glows green and white from across the street. Inside, the drink-to-price ratio is extraordinary and the atmosphere is completely unaffected. This is where New Orleans locals actually drink.

A tall, narrow Jordaan townhouse bar with a neon sign in Dutch — "PROOST" (cheers) — that has glowed in the window for 23 years. The gin selection runs to 80 labels. The bartenders are among the most knowledgeable in the city on Dutch genever. On summer evenings the canal outside catches the sign's reflection.

A corner bar in Kreuzberg with three different neon installations — one original DDR-era sign that came with the building, one custom piece from a Berlin artist, and one that simply says "OFFEN" (open) in red letters that can be read from two streets away. The drinks are strong, the music is correct, and the room fills slowly with exactly the right people.

In a city where neon is everywhere, Commonwealth earns its place on this list by using it with genuine restraint. The ground floor is all exposed brick and Edison bulbs. The neon — cherry red, spelling the bar's name in a 1940s typeface — is in the window only, and it is beautiful precisely because nothing else in the room is competing with it.

The Broken Shaker's neon installation in the garden — a palm tree rendered in pink and green neon, commissioned specifically for the space — is perhaps the most photographed piece of bar signage in South Florida. Deservedly. The cocktail programme is among the best in Miami. The drinks taste exactly as good as they look in the neon glow.

The oldest bar in Barcelona still serving, open since 1820. The neon that hangs outside is newer — 1960s, by local accounts — but it glows with the patina of something much older. Inside, dusty mirrors and original bottles of absinthe that have never been opened line the walls. This is atmosphere that cannot be designed. It simply accumulated.

A bar built entirely around the aesthetic of the great 1980s Hong Kong cocktail bars — red neon numerals in the window, lacquered wood, and a drinks programme that has placed in the World's 50 Best Bars six times. The neon is functional: it marks the building from the street. Inside, the craft of the cocktails does the rest of the work.

In the Dubai International Financial Centre, Zuma uses neon as architectural framing rather than signage — strips of red and blue neon run along the ceiling of the bar area, turning the room into something that feels like a Japanese city at night. The cocktail programme is exceptional. The robata grill is the reason to stay for dinner.