Where to propose in London with a view

10 of the London spots we price are about what you can see from them — rooftops, river boats, decks and a pier. They start at around £499 all in and the middle one starts at £1,599. A City rooftop and a pier on the Thames are both “a view”, and the figures spread as far apart as that suggests.

This is the most contested search in London and most of the answers to it are bars you cannot book. Every spot below is somewhere you can actually have for the hours you need, at a figure that is on the page.

All ten, cheapest first

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.

• 
  Greenland Pier

  Surrey Quays / Rotherhithe

  All in, around £499

  You have told them you are getting the river bus home from Surrey Quays. The boat goes without you, and you are left standing on the south bank of the Thames with Canary Wharf directly across the water — it is a single cross-river hop from this pier, four pounds ten. It is a working Thames Clippers pier, open to anyone with a ticket and running until nearly midnight on a weekday, so the whole thing happens in the gap between two sailings and nothing of ours can be in the way.

  • Semi-private: other guests nearby
  • Based on the venue’s published rate — we confirm before you book
  • Boats call through the day and into the evening, so this is built around the gap between two sailings. Nothing may block the gangway.
  • Subject to availability — it is a working river-bus pier and the sailings come first.

  Photo: Philip Halling / geograph.org.uk, CC BY-SA 2.0

• 
  GoBoat

  Canary Wharf

  All in £718

  You told them it was a boat round the docks, nothing more. Canary Wharf is the only GoBoat site that sails after sunset, you drive it yourselves, and the towers come straight up out of the water as the city lights come on. The boat is yours for the slot but the water is not — you are asked to keep moving and stay aboard, and other GoBoats will pass you.

  • Semi-private: other guests nearby
  • Three hours is the longest boat you can book, and it is the only GoBoat that runs after dark. Drinks must come from GoBoat.

  Photo: GoBoat's own website

• 
  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

• 
  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

• 
  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

• 
  Tamesis Dock — The West Facing Deck

  Vauxhall

  All in £2,259

  Sunset runs straight up the river from the west deck of this old barge, which is the reason to be here and the reason to come on a weekday. It is a working bar boat: the pizza service is on, people cut past you to reach the toilets, and the deck fills up in good weather. Pick your hour, not your privacy.

  • Semi-private: other guests nearby
  • Open-air deck with an awning; over-18s only

  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

• 
  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

How to choose between these

Height costs more than a room, almost always

The cheapest here is around £499 all in and the dearest settled figure is £5,999, for the same four hours. What the difference buys is the height or the water, and it is the one setting where that genuinely is the thing being photographed. The full cost of each of these, and how the figures are worked out, is on the cost page.

The hour matters more here than anywhere

A roof is worth having at the right time of day and much less at the wrong one, so we pick the hour with you rather than leaving it to the booking. Everything else about setting up on a roof is our problem, not yours.

Some of these float

A boat or a floating deck is a different proposition from a terrace: the booking is a slot rather than an afternoon, the view moves while you are in it, and the set-up has to stay put while the floor does not. It is our favourite kind to build and the one that needs the tightest timings.

A section of a roof is not the roof

Three of these are places where other people will be nearby for at least part of it. Each one says so beside its price, in those words, rather than leaving you to find out on the day. That is how most high-up London places sell an evening: you get a section rather than the whole terrace, and there will be other people up there. If being alone matters more to you than the height, the somewhere private page is the one to read instead.

Questions people ask

Where to go next

• Central London — the Central London spots . 16 of them, from £895 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.