Where to propose in London and actually be alone

73 of the 94 London spots we price are yours for the booking — the door shuts and there is nobody else in the room. They start at around £609 all in, which is the decor, a photographer and everything the venue charges for about four hours, in one figure. The middle one starts at £1,159.

“Will we actually be alone?” is a fair question, and a hard one to put when you are being sold a proposal at a venue nobody will name. Every spot below is named, and says whether you have it to yourselves or not.

41 of them, in the open

A proposal takes about four hours of the venue: an hour to an hour and a half to set it up, an hour for the moment itself, an hour to clear it away. So the venue figures you’ll see are worked out on a four-hour booking, not on the hour you’re in the room.

We check this price with the venue for your date before you pay anything.

32 more are flats and lofts hired whole. They are published by description rather than by name, so listing every one would be 32 cards nobody could tell apart. 12 of them are in the list below and the finder goes through the rest.

• 
  Stone Studios — Studio 003

  Hackney Wick

  All in, around £609

  A studio in Hackney Wick, booked by the hour, is the whole of what they are told. It is a dance studio on Wallis Road, taken as a whole venue and handed over as a blank canvas — mirrors, a PA you can play your own music through, £25 an hour from half past eleven in the morning to half past ten at night — so everything they walk into is ours to build. The one thing it will not do is dinner: no food and no drink of any kind may be brought in, so this is the room and the moment, and you eat afterwards.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book
  • Bookable 08:30–22:30 any day of the week. The rate we have quoted is the one that applies from 11.30 onwards.
  • No outside catering and no drink brought in, and the studio serves none itself — so nothing to eat or drink on site.

  Photo: the venue's own listing, cropped

• 
  bbodance — Muir-Warden Studio

  Wandsworth Town

  All in £702

  A friend's rehearsal at Battersea Reach that you have promised to look in on. It is a dance studio, forty-four square metres of it, with a sprung Harlequin floor, mirrors and a barre, and windows over the Thames. Everything in the room folds away — stacking chairs, folding tables — so what is standing in it when the door opens is ours, and they let outside catering in.

  • Bookable until 22:00, seven days a week. Weekday evenings and the whole of the weekend are charged at the higher rate.

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  Colour + Sense — Artist Palace Warehouse Loft

  Hackney Wick

  All in £750

  They think you are dropping in on an artist's studio off Dace Road. It is her live-work loft rather than a gallery — her own paintings on the walls, pink aerial silks hanging, one tall warehouse window — and for your booked hours the whole place is yours. No alcohol of any kind is allowed in it, not even a bottle you bring yourself, so the toast has to happen somewhere else.

  • Daily 08:00–22:00; no alcohol on site

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  Bartha Contemporary — Gallery

  Notting Hill

  All in £934

  A gallery in Notting Hill before dinner, they think. It is six hundred square feet on a cobbled mews, the doors opening straight onto the cobbles, and the booking takes the whole room for your slot rather than a corner of it. One thing to plan around: the walls are only hung during an exhibition — there are real gaps between shows, so ask what will be up before you fix the date.

  • Bookable any day, any hour; no tables on site

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  Makiko Harris Studio — Whole Space

  Kensal Town

  All in £939

  A studio visit, a friend of a friend who paints. Under the central skylight her framed work hangs on the plastered wall and big canvases lean stacked on their stretchers along another one, and at the kitchen end the table is laid for two, because the whole studio is booked and nobody else is coming.

  • Daily 08:00–22:00

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  St Ethelburga's Centre — The Bedouin Tent & Garden

  Bishopsgate

  All in, from £895 to £939

  A walk through the City after work is all they are expecting. You turn off Bishopsgate past a small medieval church and there is a courtyard garden behind it with a Bedouin tent in it, heated, laid out and closed to everyone else for your slot.

  • No naked flame inside the tent or the inner courtyard, so we dress those with LED candles; real ones are allowed in the outer courtyard in a container taller than the flame. No helium balloons.

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  San Mei Gallery — Gallery Space

  Loughborough Junction

  All in £1,275

  An exhibition in Loughborough Junction, they think. The gallery is closed to the public when it is booked, so the old floorboards and the tall windows and the grand piano are yours — twenty people could be in here and there will be two.

  • Daily 06:00–22:00

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  London Contemporary Art Gallery — Bottom Floor

  Pimlico

  All in, from £1,214 to £1,324

  They think you have been asked to a private view in Pimlico. The bottom floor at 7 Denbigh Street is below street level, and the gallery's own words for it are private and secluded, away from public footfall — an L-shaped room with about half as much wall again as the floor above. It hires until half past eleven at night; nothing may be hung on the walls or moved against the artwork without permission, and candles need approval in advance, so ours are LED.

  • Closed Mondays. Open flames and candles need prior approval.

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  General Assembly Gallery — Whole Space

  Mayfair

  All in £1,401

  One big arched window on the first floor looks across at St George's, Hanover Square — the church is the view you are paying Mayfair rates for. The whole gallery is yours for the booking, stairs only to reach it, and you can carry your own wine up there without anyone charging corkage on it.

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  Mimosa House — Gallery Space, first floor

  Holborn

  All in £1,489

  A gallery show on Theobalds Road, they think, and someone they ought to meet. Take an evening after six, or any day Sunday to Tuesday, and the public hours are over and the first floor is yours alone — two small rooms and a mezzanine under a skylight, sixty-nine square metres in all. Ask us what is hanging on your date: during an exhibition you get a hung gallery, and between shows the walls are bare.

  • The £400 afternoon session is 13:30-17:00 - three and a half hours, so a four-hour set-up needs the £900 evening.

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  Estorick Collection — Galleries 1, 2 and 3

  Canonbury, Islington

  All in £1,555

  They think you've got tickets to a late viewing. The doors close behind you and the Modern Italians are yours: three rooms and the walled garden, no queue, nobody else's conversation. Just the two of you and the pictures.

  • Four hours confirmed by the gallery. Closed Mondays.
  • No coloured or sticky drinks in the galleries, and no dancing or smoking anywhere in the building.

  Photo: the venue's own website

• 
  Map Maison — Whole Venue

  Dalston

  All in, from £1,049 to £1,599

  Drinks at a little bar on Kingsland Road, they think. You push the door and there is nobody else in it — the whole room is yours for the evening, the light kept low, the pressed-metal ceiling working away above the two of you. An ordinary table here would put you shoulder to shoulder with a busy room; this is the version that is quiet.

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  Savage Garden — Ferus Suite

  Tower Hill

  All in £1,599

  Rooftop drinks at a place you've heard about. The lift opens twelve floors up onto a working bar, and then a door off it into a glass-walled room with the Gherkin standing behind you — the bar carries on outside, the room does not.

  • LED candles only; non-refundable inside 90 days; over-18s after 18:00

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  Bow Arts — Nunnery Gallery

  Bow

  All in, around £1,198 to £1,687

  A quick look at the show in Bow before you eat, is the line — except the gallery shut to the public at four and the room has been yours since five. The exhibition stays up on the walls, which is the point of doing it here, and Bow Arts allow fixings to any gallery wall, which almost no gallery does, so a backdrop can go straight up as long as it suits what is hanging. Evening hire runs five till ten Tuesday to Sunday during an exhibition; take a Monday or Tuesday instead and you have it all day.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book
  • Evening hire is 17:00-22:00 Tuesday to Sunday during exhibitions; all day Mondays and Tuesdays. A keyholder at £14.80 an hour is added outside 9am-5pm.

  Photo courtesy Bow Arts

• 
  October Gallery — Gallery & Courtyard

  Bloomsbury

  All in, from £1,456 to £1,702

  They think you have tickets to a late viewing. The gallery shuts at half five and you go in after half six, so the rooms are yours with the show still hung, and the courtyard at the back is where you will be standing when you ask.

  • Mon–Sat 18:30–21:30 only; Sun closed

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  Wagtail — The Nest

  Bank

  All in £1,737

  They are expecting drinks somewhere with a view. It is the cupola crowning the building: a round room under a low domed ceiling, a ring of arched windows with the City skyline and the river beyond, one round table and ten deep-green leather chairs with two of them taken. There is no lift to it, so plan the stairs — and the restaurant floor and terraces stay open to other diners while the room itself is yours.

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  William Morris Gallery — Acanthus Room

  Walthamstow

  All in, from £1,489 to £1,819

  A museum trip, they think — a look at the wallpapers. The Acanthus Room is at the top of William Morris's house, in what were the servants' quarters, full of Georgian character: panelled walls and a bay window. You take the evening slot, six until eleven, with the galleries shut below you, and the caterers have to come off the gallery's own recommended list.

  • Closed for renewal work since 22 June 2026, reopening in phases before 3 October 2026. Anyone enquiring now is booking for October onwards.

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  Van Gogh House — Gallery, Kitchen and Garden

  Stockwell

  All in, around £1,850

  A look at a house in Stockwell, you have said, something to do with a painter. It is the one Van Gogh lodged in, still a working gallery and artist residence, and a booking takes the gallery, the kitchen and the walled garden together — there is no shared or walk-in option, so the session is yours. Candles and any decoration are at the owners' discretion and have to be agreed in advance, and nothing may be attached to the walls.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book
  • Candles and decoration are at the owners' discretion and must be agreed in advance. Maximum 30 people in the house.

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  Burgh House & Hampstead Museum — The Library

  Hampstead

  All in, from £1,159 to £1,984

  A last look round a Hampstead museum before it shuts, they think. The Library is the small private room in Burgh House — painted timber panelling, low ceilings, sash windows, a large red Persian carpet and period furniture round a mirror-framed fireplace, ten chairs at the outside. It is yours until half past ten at night, you can play your own music with no noise limit at all, and you may bring your own wine so long as you pay the corkage.

  • Mon–Fri 09:00–22:30; weekends by the day

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  Fortnum & Mason — The Tasting Room

  St James

  All in, around £1,984

  They think you are going up to Fortnum's for dinner like anyone else. Book a table the ordinary way and you sit out in the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon among its other diners; the Tasting Room is the room inside it, up on the fourth floor — one oval table, fourteen chairs, the wall of tea caddies behind — and taking it for the evening closes it to everybody else.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book
  • The evening session is 18:30-23:30. A service charge is not stated on the listing - confirm it.

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  1 Leicester Square Rooftop — The View, private room

  Leicester Square

  All in £2,149

  A drink at the rooftop bar on the ninth floor of Hotel Indigo, they think, with Leicester Square a long way down. The room you have booked is the glass one off it — forty-two square metres, floor-to-ceiling glass with the skyline behind it, sliding doors onto a roped-off section of the rooftop bar that shut when you want them shut. Nothing may be stuck to the walls or the glass and confetti is banned, so everything we bring stands on its own.

  • No confetti
  • No naked flames, so we dress it with LED candles

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  Tattershall Castle — The Bridge

  Embankment

  All in, from £1,324 to £2,149

  Drinks on the boat by the Embankment, they think, like everyone else there. You keep going up instead, to the Bridge Suite at the top of the ship, a glazed room built in 1988 where the wheelhouse used to be, with the London Eye and County Hall across the water and a bar in the room that nobody else can use while you have it. The evening session runs five until eleven, on a minimum spend of £750 early in the week rising to £1,500 Thursday to Saturday, all of it going on their food and drink.

  • A 17:00–23:00 evening session runs all seven days, 17:00–22:00 on Sunday. The price is a minimum spend, not a hire fee.

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  Freud Museum — Dining Room

  Hampstead

  All in, from £1,555 to £2,347

  They think it is dinner in Hampstead. It is Freud's own house on Maresfield Gardens, and the dining room in it — the room where he entertained, still holding the decor and furnishings from the time he lived there — is hired as a private space from five in the evening, seven days a week. Thirty-five people sit down in that room; there will be two of you, and you carry in the food and the wine yourselves, with no corkage to pay.

  • Evening hire is 17:00-23:00; daytime hire only Monday and Tuesday.

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  The Alwyne Castle — Conservatory

  Highbury

  All in, from £1,049 to £2,424

  A drink at the pub in Highbury is all you have to say. What is actually booked is the Conservatory and the small private garden that opens off it through its own door, so you can be outside under the string lights and still be a step from cover under the glass roof when the weather turns, and the room is hired apart from the pub rather than being a table in it. Monday to Wednesday that is a £500 minimum spend behind the bar, VAT included.

  • Glass-roofed room with its own door onto the garden

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  The Prince of Wales Feathers — The Roof Terrace

  Fitzrovia

  All in, from £1,379 to £2,479

  A drink at a pub off Warren Street after work, and nothing more said about it. Upstairs the terrace is yours for the session — benches, chairs and tables with hanging plants all round, and a remote-controlled cover that goes fully over, partly over, or not at all, so the weather is not what decides the date. It runs five until eleven, you can play your own music with no noise limit on it, and the food and the drinks can be pre-ordered and set out before you arrive.

  • A 17:00–23:00 evening session runs all seven days, 17:00–22:00 on Sunday. The price is a minimum spend, not a hire fee.

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  The Greenwich Tavern — King William Room

  Greenwich

  All in, from £774 to £2,699

  The bar noise stays downstairs. Up here the tall windows look straight out at Greenwich Park, so the trees do half the decorating for you — and this is a proper private dining room rather than a corner of the pub. A weeknight is both the quieter option and the cheaper one.

  • In a residential area, so music and entertainment may be restricted.

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  The Solo Kitchen & Bar — Roof Terrace

  Bethnal Green

  All in, from £2,356 to £4,212

  They are expecting dinner somewhere ordinary. This is the rooftop above Bethnal Green — marble-effect tables, jewel-toned velvet, dark metal and glass balustrades, open sky over the lot — and the thing you look straight at from the seats is the clock tower next door. An ordinary table puts you up here inside everybody else's evening; the terrace is only yours alone on exclusive hire, from a £1,500 minimum spend Monday to Thursday.

  • Mon–Thu 12:00–23:30; Fri–Sat to 00:30

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  The Goldsmiths' Centre — The Atrium

  Clerkenwell

  All in, around £5,436

  Drinks after work in Clerkenwell is all they are given. What opens up is the atrium of the Goldsmiths' Centre on Britton Street — a ground-floor hall of fifteen hundred square feet with the ceiling ten metres up and daylight coming through floor-to-ceiling windows — taken whole from six until a quarter to eleven, one table for two in a room that seats seventy-two. The catering has to be theirs, and the minimum spend on it is most of what the evening costs.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book
  • Evening hire runs 6.00pm to 10.45pm. Hours beyond that are charged separately, at about £300 each.
  • You may bring your own bottles, but there is a corkage charge of about £60 a bottle.

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  Doggett's Coat and Badge — Rooftop Terrace Bar

  Blackfriars

  All in, from £2,699 to £5,999

  They think you are going for an ordinary Sunday drink on the South Bank. The rooftop terrace at Doggett's is only ever let as a private hire, so for your session the whole deck above the river is yours and nobody else's, and your own decorations are welcome as long as nothing is taped to anything. It is not a cheap way in: the Sunday session starts at a £2,000 minimum spend you have to eat and drink your way through.

  • A 17:00–23:00 evening session runs all seven days. The price is a minimum spend on food and drink, not a hire fee.

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  A warehouse loft in Whitechapel

  Whitechapel

  All in, around £782

  Someone's flat in Whitechapel for the evening, they are told. It was a clothing factory once and the brick walls are the original ones, still rough. The tall doors push back onto a south-facing terrace over the rooftops, which is where you have set everything, and the flat is yours alone while you are in it.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  A maisonette in Hampstead

  Hampstead

  All in, around £854

  A friend's place in Hampstead, they think, and someone else is doing the cooking. The Crittall bifold doors fold right back off the open-plan kitchen, so the stone patio and then the garden with its old mature trees become one space with the inside, and two large skylights light the whole of it. It is dressed before you arrive and nobody else is in it, so the only thing left to plan around is the weather.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  An apartment in Hackney Wick

  Hackney Wick

  All in, around £859

  A friend's place in Hackney Wick, they think, and the lift up gives nothing away. The door opens on a top-floor room walled in glass, antique rugs and dried flowers and big plants in it, park on one side and street on the other. Hired whole for your hours, so nobody else is coming in.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  A warehouse loft in Hackney Wick

  Hackney Wick

  All in, around £936

  Dinner at a friend's place in Hackney Wick, as far as they know. The lift opens on a hundred and twenty square metres of loft — over fifty plants, work by local Hackney Wick artists on the walls, big south-facing windows with blackout curtains if you want the daylight gone — and the lighting system has been set to the hour you arrive. The flat is hired whole so nobody else comes through the door, though it is one unit in a larger warehouse building, so the quiet is inside the flat rather than outside it.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  A warehouse loft in Stamford Hill

  Stamford Hill

  All in, around £936

  Drinks at a friend's warehouse flat, nothing planned. Wooden floors the length of the place, daylight going, a Juliet balcony standing open, and a bar in the corner that we have stocked for two. It sits on a private road, which is how everything got carried in before you arrived without them seeing a thing.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  A house in Dalston

  Dalston, Hackney

  All in, around £987

  Dinner at a friend’s flat in Dalston is the line you give them. The long room ends in a sunken conversation pit that opens straight onto a tropical garden, so the table can go out among the planting with the pit dressed and lit behind it. The flat is hired whole for the evening, so the two of you are the only people in it, indoors or out.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  A house in Mapesbury

  Mapesbury

  All in, around £1,013

  A friend-of-a-friend's for dinner in north-west London, nothing to dress up for. It turns out to be a detached Edwardian house in Mapesbury, four and a half thousand square feet of it, and the evening is set outside — on the terrace, with a hundred and thirty-two feet of landscaped garden running away behind the table. House and garden are taken whole for the booking, so the only footsteps in either are yours.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  A maisonette in Victoria Park

  Victoria Park

  All in, around £1,013

  Dinner at a friend's near Victoria Park, they think. Inside it is oak underfoot and a high concrete ceiling with moon lights hung off it, and the Crittall doors open onto a herringbone brick courtyard with the long garden running away into the trees behind. Nobody else has the house that evening.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  A townhouse in Hackney

  Hackney

  All in, around £1,013

  Dinner at someone's house in Hackney, that is all they know. The ground floor of this four-storey Victorian townhouse runs forty-six feet open-plan, kitchen through to dining, with crittall doors onto the patio and the large garden beyond, and it is laid for two. Above it, panelling, fireplaces and original wooden floors, up to a top-floor room with an exposed brick wall and a skyline view — and nobody in any of it but you.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  A house in Teddington

  Teddington

  All in, around £1,141

  You have said you are looking at a house in Teddington for a friend who is thinking of buying. The lawn runs down past the sunken wooden hot tub to a private waterway off the Thames, with a boathouse and a mooring at the bottom of it, and that is where the walk ends. The whole house is hired for your hours rather than a room in it, so there is nobody to interrupt the walk back up.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  A loft in Dalston

  Dalston

  All in, around £1,141

  Drinks at a friend's in Dalston. The flat has its own entrance off a small residential building and runs over two floors, so you go up, and then you keep going up: there is a private roof terrace on top and the table is on it. For the length of the hire nobody else has access to any of it.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book

  Photo: the venue's own listing

• 
  A warehouse space in Old Street

  Old Street

  All in, around £1,141

  A friend's place near Old Street, they think, and somebody is cooking. It is one large open-plan warehouse apartment — wooden floors throughout, high ceilings, big windows — with a kitchen and a dining room in it, and you hire the whole flat, so nobody else comes through the door. The place keeps AV equipment in-house for podcasts and live recordings, so if you want the moment recorded properly rather than on somebody's phone, ask for it when you book.

  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book

  Photo: the venue's own listing

How to choose between these

Private is something you buy, not something you find

There is no secret corner of a public park that belongs to two people for an hour. The spots on this page are private because the whole of the space is booked and paid for, and that is what the figure beside each one covers.

A room to yourselves is not a building to yourselves

Some of these are one room inside somewhere that is open and busy around it. You will be alone in the room; you will walk through a bar or a lobby to reach it, and somebody will knock. Others are the whole place, with nobody in the building but you. Each entry says which, and if it matters to you it is the first line to read.

The cheap way to be genuinely alone is a whole flat

A flat or loft taken over for the afternoon is often less than a room inside a restaurant, and there is nobody else in it at all — no staff, no other table, nobody knocking. 12 of them are below and the rest are on a place of your own. The full cost of each of these, and how the figures are worked out, is on the cost page.

The ones that are not on this page

21 of the 94 spots we price are semi-private: other people will be nearby for at least part of it. They are not the worse half — every garden that charges nothing for the space is one of them, and a public park in the right hour is a better proposal than a dull private room. What they cannot be is a surprise, so each one carries the warning beside its price wherever it appears.

Questions people ask

Where to go next

• A place of your own — the flats and lofts hired whole . 45 of them, from £750 all in.
• A room of your own — the rooms you have to yourselves . 11 of them, from around £609 all in.
• Where to propose in London — the whole list, and the other ways of cutting it.
• How much a proposal in London costs — the full cost of each of these, and how the figures are worked out.

Every figure here is worked out on a booking of about four hours, from the venue’s own published rate or a quote given to us. We check this price with the venue for your date before you pay anything. Last checked: 21 September 2026.