Shutters on the Beach

Editorial score of 9.2 of 10, the composite average of the three factors above (Rooms, Service, Location). Method at our methodology page. Affiliate disclosure: booking links may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you, and never change our verdict.

Why book Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica?

Shutters on the Beach earns its place because it holds a position no other Los Angeles hotel of this class can claim: its front door opens onto the sand of Santa Monica State Beach, and the better rooms look straight out at the Pacific with nothing in between. This is not the loose beachfront proximity that inland hotels borrow in their marketing, it is the literal thing. The property opened in 1993 and was designed from the start as a New England-style beach cottage scaled up to 198 rooms, so the shuttered windows, hardwood floors and white-painted woodwork are the point rather than a theme, and they carry through every corner of the building. For a couple or a solo traveller who came to Los Angeles for the ocean, this is the honest answer to where to stay.

The setting is only half of it. Service at Shutters is warm in a way that reads coastal rather than corporate, and the team is famously long-tenured, so returning guests are remembered and first-timers are handled with patience. The hotel is a genuine five-star beach resort, though it is worth setting expectations correctly: it carries a Forbes Four-Star rating and an AAA Four Diamond rating rather than a top-tier Forbes Five-Star, and its strength is atmosphere and location rather than the marble-and-butler formality of a Beverly Hills grande dame. Come for the sand, the light and the sound of the waves, and it delivers on all three. The honest trade-offs are the ocean-view premium and the fact that Santa Monica is thirty minutes or more from Beverly Hills in traffic.

What are the best rooms to request?

Request an ocean-view room with a private balcony, and if the budget allows, one of the categories with a soaking tub positioned toward the water. The value of Shutters is the sea, and the rooms that face it directly are worth the premium over the garden-view alternatives, because the sound of the surf and the light off the water are what you are paying for. The 186 rooms and 12 suites are among the more thoughtful on the California coast at this level: warm and specific California-residential interiors rather than the generic luxury vocabulary that fills lesser beach hotels, with an art collection assembled over the years setting the tone in the public spaces. The suites add proper separation and, in the better cases, larger terraces that turn a morning coffee into the reason you booked.

One honest caveat: this is a beach hotel from the early 1990s, so while it is kept up carefully, the garden-view rooms do not deliver the postcard the property is famous for, and a few room layouts feel of their era rather than freshly reinvented. Book the ocean side, ask for a higher floor for a cleaner horizon, and the compromise disappears. If you want a hotel that is about interior grandeur rather than the water, Beverly Hills is the better call, but for the beach itself this is the room to book.

What is the dining and the bar scene like?

Dining here is a reason to stay put rather than an afterthought. The signature room is 1 Pico, the oceanfront restaurant that now runs a Southern Italian-inspired menu for dinner and weekend brunch, with unobstructed views over the sand toward the pier. It is the room to book for the occasion dinner, the food good enough to hold the table through a long evening as the light drops over the water. The more relaxed option is Coast Beach Cafe and Bar, open daily for breakfast, lunch, dinner, happy hour and weekend brunch, with terrace seating a few steps from the beach path. Breakfast on that terrace, with the marine layer burning off and the sea in front of you, is one of the more pleasant hotel mornings in greater Los Angeles.

Does it have a spa and pool?

Yes, and both make the most of the beach setting. The spa runs across two floors with a full treatment menu, the kind of unhurried, sea-air wellness room that is hard to find in a downtown hotel. There are two outdoor pools serving different moods, one geared to families and one quieter for adults, and beyond them is the sand itself, so you can move from the pool deck to a treatment to the beach without leaving the property. Add bicycle rentals for the beach path and the hotel effectively becomes a base for a whole Santa Monica day rather than just a room to sleep in.

Signature amenities

On the sand in Santa Monica

The sand, the rooms, the pools

Beachfront

Ocean-view room

Pool deck

Terrace dining

How does Shutters on the Beach compare with other Los Angeles hotels?

Against the field, Shutters is the on-the-sand beach option, and the choice comes down to whether you want the Pacific or a Beverly Hills address. Hotel Bel-Air is the secluded garden estate up in the hills, the top pick in the city for privacy but a long way from the ocean. Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills is the modern Beverly Hills tower with a rooftop pool and newer rooms, better for shopping and proposals than for the beach. The Viceroy Santa Monica sits a few blocks north on Ocean Avenue, a boutique that costs less and makes fewer claims while keeping you in Santa Monica. Shutters' own trade-off is the ocean-view premium and the distance from Beverly Hills, so you are paying for the sand above all.

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