The Best Hotels Near Casa Loma Beach Hotel, by the Record
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Woven rattan pendants, curved wooden headboards, and patterned throws replace the usual beachy kitsch at this 70-room clifftop boutique hotel, which reopened recently with a Mallorcan-inflected, warm-minimalist sensibility. The Pacific does the decorating through the windows. Ocean-facing rooms add balconies or pool access, and a guest-only policy keeps things quieter than you'd expect for a place this central to Laguna's gallery-and-restaurant corridor.
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The Spanish Revival bones have been here forever, and a top-to-bottom renovation brought them back to the kind of formal California glamour that makes you feel underdressed just checking in. This is a Fairmont hotel in downtown Long Beach, so expect crisp service and rooms that skew sophisticated over breezy. The rooftop bar looks out to Catalina on a clear day, and the Sky Room above it pushes all the way to the L.A. skyline.
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A reimagined 1940s motor inn a short walk from the beach in Oceanside, the last low-key stretch of coast before San Diego proper takes over. Moroccan rugs, mid-century furniture, and curated art keep the rooms from feeling like a motel, even if the bones are modest. Studios have mini-fridges and coffee makers; suites add a small kitchen. A cedar hot tub and communal fire pit round things out, and the neighborhood handles the rest.
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A coffin-shaped pool in the courtyard sets the tone before you've even checked in. This Spanish Colonial hotel in downtown Los Angeles went through a Moroccan-themed detour before a full renovation returned it to its 1920s bones, and the rooms now pair that era's warm geometry with local art, most of it by women, down to a lobby mural. The Broad, MOCA, and Hauser & Wirth are all walkable, which is a sentence you cannot say from Santa Monica.