The Laslett

The Laslett runs across five Grade II-listed Victorian townhouses on Pembridge Gardens, a minute from Notting Hill Gate. Living Rooms converted the building from 59 studios into 51 bedrooms and suites and opened it in autumn 2015, after a soft opening that August. It takes its name from Rhaune Laslett, the community activist who organised Notting Hill's first neighbourhood street festival in 1966, the event now recognised as the beginning of the Carnival.

Tom Bartlett's studio Waldo Works did the interiors, with furniture by Pinch and by Race and a lighting collection commissioned from Simon Day of Nocturne Workshop. Art carries the house. Prints by Barry Kamen, of the Buffalo collective, and by Barbara Hulanicki, who founded Biba on Kensington Church Street, hang through the bedrooms and the ground floor, and the Library at the front works as a private sitting room stacked with books rather than a hotel reception.

Four spaces take private hire. The Henderson Bar, pink-walled and hung salon-style, holds 35 and is named for Russ Henderson, the Trinidadian steelpan player who led the band through Laslett's first festival; his rum punch recipe is still on the list. Behind it the Henderson Dining Room seats 20 among the design books. The planted terrace, half covered and half heated, is the largest room at 80 standing, and the suites are let for pop-ups, shoots and showrooms. Both the terrace and the dining room allow a guest's own music.