With a name like that, it’s not hard to guess where they’re coming from. The Luxe Sunset Boulevard Hotel is luxe indeed, with a location that’s more upscale retreat than downtown hipster haunt — it’s spread over seven acres of parkland in Brentwood, near the Getty Center, where Sunset Boulevard is a winding mountain road, not a neon-lit urban strip. Some stylish hotels are a little disappointing once you get past the lobby, but this is not a problem the Luxe has. If anything the rooms are even more stylish than the public spaces, and they’re long on comfort as well. The look is sleek and contemporary, the interiors clearly designed rather than just decorated, but they’re ...

Built in 1946 in a style that can only be described as romantic Mediterranean, the Hotel Bel-Air, with its rose-colored mission-style bungalows, is about as elite a hideaway as you can find. Hidden by bougainvillea, ficus, orange blossom, and fern, on eighteen acres right in the middle of LA’s most exclusive suburb, the grounds are mapped by terracotta passageways, and the reception area lies just beyond an arched stone bridge. Naturally it was the Hollywood set who made it famous. Elizabeth Taylor honeymooned here with her first husband, Marilyn Monroe spent a lot of time hopping between rooms 133 and 33, and legend has it that Lauren Bacall flooded the hotel during the Ac...

From the outside it’s hard not to see Los Angeles as one continuous megacity, but Westwood Village is in some ways a classic university town, home to the community around UCLA. That’s the central concept of Palihotel Westwood Village, a boutique hotel that’s got more in common with a particularly stylish university-town boarding house than with the opulent Hollywood luxury hotels that you might associate with Los Angeles. With particular emphasis on the “stylish” part. This one blends Parisian romance with mid-century modernism, and the 1939 building — Westwood Village’s first hotel — lends it an air of throwback glamour. Paligroup specializes in stretching fairly modest ...