Six Senses London

Six Senses opened its first United Kingdom hotel on 1 March 2026, installing 109 rooms and suites inside The Whiteley, the restored Art Deco department store on Queensway in Bayswater. The project pairs the brand's wellness-led programming — a 2,300-square-metre spa, London's first hotel magnesium pool and a dedicated biohacking lounge — with 14 branded residences and a private members club, Six Senses Place. Reviewers have called it among the more closely watched London debuts of the year.

The place

Six Senses London sits on Queensway in Bayswater, a few minutes' walk from Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens and bordering Notting Hill to the north. The address is less a traditional luxury-retail postcode than Mayfair or Knightsbridge, but it places the hotel at the centre of a wider regeneration: The Whiteley redevelopment adds 139 residences in total alongside the hotel, reviving a stretch of Bayswater that had been anchored by a shuttered shopping centre for years. For Six Senses, whose portfolio leans toward resort and destination properties, an urban debut in this specific part of London — quieter and more residential than the West End core — fits a brand built around wellbeing rather than nightlife or shopping proximity.

The concept

The building has a long retail history. William Whiteley opened his original drapery shop in Westbourne Grove in 1863, and in 1911 moved to a purpose-built store on Queensway designed by architects John Belcher and John James Joass, blending post-Victorian grandeur with early Streamline Moderne detailing; it was marketed at the time as the largest shop in the world. Whiteleys closed as a department store in 1981, reopened as a shopping centre in 1989, and shut completely in 2018 before developer Valouran — backed by CC Land Holdings, MARK and Gruppo Statuto — began converting it into The Whiteley, a mixed residential and hospitality scheme. Foster + Partners led the building's restoration, working with EPR Architects to bring back original features including the 1911 marble staircase, which was disassembled, restored piece by piece and extended by four steps. AvroKO designed the hotel interiors, applying a logic borrowed from department-store merchandising — display cases, deliberate lighting, staged focal points — to wellness spaces instead of retail ones. The result mixes green-and-white checkerboard marble flooring around the restored staircase with contemporary details such as Crittal-style glass shower enclosures in guest rooms, referencing Paris's Maison de Verre, and plaster vaults around the pool modelled on European subway architecture. It is a design conceit specific to this building rather than a template import, which is part of why the project has drawn attention beyond the usual luxury-opening coverage.

Dining & wellness

Dining centres on Whiteleys Kitchen, serving British ingredients with global influences — Cornish mussels in dashi broth, Dorset crab alongside spicier dishes — plus Whiteleys Café for coffee and grab-and-go food, and Whiteleys Bar, notable for offering every cocktail in an alcohol-free version. A separate Mediterranean restaurant upstairs is reserved for hotel guests and members. Wellness facilities include a 2,300-square-metre spa with a 20-metre pool, a magnesium pool billed as a London hotel first, cryotherapy and flotation rooms, a longevity clinic, and a biohacking lounge offering sleep-tracking rings, LED masks and compression-boot recovery sessions.