The best independent design hotels in America.

Design 9.2. 225 acres where design, farming, and dinner are the same project.

Design 9.2. The rebuilt 2010 oceanfront Victorian — Watch Hill's only five-star, Forbes-list luxury.

Design 8.9. Five rooms, Michelin Key, run by former New York restaurant pros. George Bailey's house, sort of.

Design 8.9. A 2024 16-room reimagining of a 1918 Windham hotel — by the team behind Contra and Wildair.

Design 8.9. Mickey Muennig's cliffside icon — 39 rooms, two Michelin Keys, adults-only, the architectural pilgrimage.

Design 8.9. Sixteen rooms a block from Greenport Harbor. Michelin Key, rooftop bar, the North Fork's only serious design hotel.

Design 8.9. Five restored 1804 townhouses around a courtyard — 18 rooms, on-site culinary school, Michelin Key.

Design 8.9. From the Rivertown Lodge owners — new-build cabins and lodge rooms in Leeds. Michelin Key.

Design 8.9. Where JFK and Jackie honeymooned — 38 cottage suites on 500 Montecito acres, Ty Warner-owned.

Design 8.9. A Forbes 5-star Blue Ridge inn — 64 rooms, Madison's restaurant, the Highlands flagship.

Design 8.9. A working cidery, orchard, and Michelin Key boarding-house hotel on a hilltop in Callicoon.

Design 8.7. Reopened June 2024. A restored 1840s farmhouse on 13 acres, minutes from Killington.

Design 8.7. An 1889 Victorian schoolhouse converted to 12 rooms — Forbes 5-star, slope-side service.

Design 8.6. Maui's only adults-only Relais & Chateaux — 72 suites on 15 acres, treetop dining, ocean views.

Design 8.7. A 1915 Swiss-chalet-style inn on Lake Toxaway — 33 rooms, the Carolina Mountains classic.

Design 8.7. A 1900 Carnegie family mansion — the only hotel on Cumberland Island, fully inclusive, ferry-only access.

Design 8.7. A 30-acre estate above Manchester, run by the Levis family since 1987. Destination weddings, family reunions, unapologetically eccentric.

Design 8.7. A 1908 schoolhouse converted with cabins and a Japanese-style bathhouse — Columbia Gorge spa-hotel.

Design 8.7. A 140-year-old dairy barn rebuilt into country-chic rooms, on 160 Green Mountain acres.

Design 8.7. Nine acres of park-like lawns, nine buildings of rooms and cottages, in the village that invented Vermont marble.

Design 8.6. A 1916 redwood-built oceanfront inn — 11 rooms, Two-Michelin-Star restaurant, Forbes 5-star.

Design 8.7. Bryan Batt-designed — maximalist interiors, rooftop bar, Grand Bohemian-adjacent but independent.

Design 8.7. A 1765 literary estate on 250 acres — where Thoreau and Emerson actually slept.

Design 8.7. The Biltmore Estate's original 1920s steelworks, restored — Benne on Eagle restaurant, Block neighborhood.