The Top 12 Hotels in Santa Monica
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Rank 1. Hotel Casa del Mar
Hotels
A 1920s Italianate palace on the sand, Casa del Mar has sheltered Hollywood's elite since the hotel's inception, its architecture and service calibrated to a bygone glamour that persists. The red brick facade and beach access—shared only with its sister property, Shutters—anchor the kind of coastal grandeur that Los Angeles rarely preserves intact.
- Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
- Michelin Guide 1 Key
- Time Out 2026 · The 17 best hotels in Los Angeles
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A hotel lobby bathed in coastal light opens onto sand and sea, with marble tubs and yoga mats signaling an indulgence that doesn't take itself seriously. The Pacific fills every window; proximity to the pier and beach path feels less like a selling point than a natural consequence of the location's generosity.
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Michael S. Smith designed this beachfront hotel as a fantasy made real—casual California ease meets subtle Northeast restraint in rooms lined with Hockney prints and club chairs. The lobby and suites feel like a perpetually sun-lit beach house where the wealthy actually want to stay.
- Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
- Michelin Guide 1 Key
- Time Out 2026 · The 17 best hotels in Los Angeles
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The Santa Monica Proper weaves a 1920s Spanish Colonial façade into a new structure designed by Kelly Wearstler, whose interiors signal luxury without the boutique-hotel cliché. What emerges is a contemporary envelope around historical bones, restrained enough to let the bones show.
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A renovated Modernist enclave sits discreetly between Ocean Avenue and the beach, its interiors warmed into organic geometry that acknowledges both the building's mid-century bones and Southern California's landscape. The hotel trades colonial stiffness for something closer to a private retreat—distant enough from the boulevard's commerce to feel like genuine escape.
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The Fairmont Miramar sits on manicured grounds a block from the beach, its century-old bones wrapped in the kind of privacy that wealth and landscaping afford. A private beach club and gardens that screen out Downtown's commercial sprawl make it feel removed, even as Santa Monica transforms around it.
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A turquoise-and-gold Art Deco tower from the Thirties presides over Ocean Avenue, recently restored to conjure Old Hollywood without pretense. The Georgian reclaims its place as Santa Monica's most visibly glamorous refuge, one that rewards those who prefer architecture to amenities.
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Oceana Santa Monica reopened in 2019 as a restored oceanfront resort with a courtyard pool and ivy-draped facade that feels like a private coastal escape. Chef Kaleo Adams's Sandpiper restaurant draws from the Santa Monica farmers market, turning seasonal produce into California dishes that balance simplicity and precision.
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A mid-century modernist box on Ocean Avenue surveys the beach with the ease of something built for this exact moment. After its thirty-million-dollar restoration, the Oceana trades vintage charm for the kind of contemporary luxury that feels earned rather than imposed.
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A luxury boutique hotel steps from the Santa Monica Pier, where Colorado and Ocean avenues converge; it arrives as the closest lodging to that iconic structure, a detail that matters more than the name suggests. The place caters to visitors seeking something less threadbare-bohemian than the neighborhood's reputation promises, trading worn romance for refined comfort.
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A 1927 Mediterranean Revival building on a quiet Santa Monica residential street houses a hotel that forgoes ostentatious glamour for the understated comfort of a well-appointed home. The restoration respects the structure's bones while introducing contemporary ease, making it the kind of place you'd actually want to stay rather than be seen in.
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A corner block away from the beach and the Promenade, this formerly corporate structure has been recast as a boutique hotel that aims to fill Santa Monica's gap for somewhere young and design-conscious. The location does most of the lifting, but the hotel seems aware of what it's trying to be.