Best Areas to Stay in London for Families (2025 Guide)

The museum mile running along Exhibition Road is South Kensington's strongest argument for families. The Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum are all free to enter and within five minutes of each other on foot — a rainy day in this part of London is genuinely well solved.

Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens are a short walk away, offering more open space than almost anywhere else in central London. The Diana Memorial Playground in Kensington Gardens is one of the better children's playgrounds in the city. For families whose trip centres on museums, South Kensington is hard to beat — and staying here means you can walk back for lunch rather than eating out every meal. Our two-bedroom South Kensington apartment is a few minutes from Gloucester Road tube and around ten minutes on foot from all three museums.

Pimlico is less immediately obvious as a family base but has underrated advantages. Victoria Station — seven minutes on foot — gives you fast access to Gatwick and the south coast, which matters if you're flying in or planning train day trips. Buckingham Palace and St James's Park are a 15-minute walk, and the Changing of the Guard remains one of those experiences children respond to more than you'd expect.

Tate Britain, a short walk along the river at Millbank, is free and has good children's programmes — and is generally calmer than the South Kensington museums on busy weekends. Our Pimlico maisonette is seven minutes from Victoria Station and within walking distance of Westminster, which makes it an efficient base for this part of London.

Bloomsbury's case rests on the British Museum, which is vast enough to fill two or three days and free for all visitors. Russell Square and the surrounding garden squares give families somewhere to decompress between galleries. The area feels calmer than the West End without being remote — Holborn, Tottenham Court Road, and Russell Square stations are all close.

The downside is that Bloomsbury's restaurant and food-shop offer is thinner than South Kensington or Victoria, and the area lacks the immediate park access that makes the other two stand out for family stays.

Notting Hill suits families with older children or teenagers better than it suits those with young ones. Portobello Road Market on Saturdays is genuinely engaging, Holland Park has a Japanese garden and a peacock enclosure that surprises most visitors, and the neighbourhood has a lively independent food and cafe scene.

The trade-off is transport: you're mostly on the District line or the Overground, which means more changes to reach the most-visited parts of London. For families making daily trips to the South Bank, the City, or the East End, it adds up.

Self-catering almost always makes sense for families in London. The ability to eat breakfast in, store snacks and milk, and have children wind down in a living room rather than a hotel corridor changes the texture of the trip considerably.

Both our Pimlico apartment and our South Kensington apartment have full kitchens, enough space for families, and good supermarkets nearby — Waitrose on Gloucester Road in South Kensington, and Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury's close to Victoria in Pimlico. Neither neighbourhood has the crowded, transactional feel of the tourist centre, which makes returning to the apartment at the end of the day noticeably more pleasant.