The Line, Los Angeles - hotel review: Drawing a line at over-design in K-Town

Hip without being pretentious

Room with a view: small spaces are enhanced by windows

You know that drowning feeling? I had it at The Line hotel in Los Angeles. I was nowhere near the pool, nor the bathtub; I had just walked into my room. I tossed my keycard on the side, looked up – and it came over me all at once: the concrete-effect wallpaper, the Miró-esque mobile lightshade, the low-slung chair upholstered in Apache fabric, trinkets on every surface ... and so much more. I think they were going for an industrial-maximalism look, but it came off as death by design.

To the positives though – and there are plenty. The latest from Sydell Group, The Line opened last year in what was the Hotel Wilshire. A mid-century Modernist high-rise, it has 383 rooms with wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows. From the street, it looks a lot of fun: each room a come-hither pop of colour through a cool glass façade.

And fun it is. As with New York's Nomad, its sister hotel, it is hip without being pretentious. The crowd at the rooftop pool is mixed and lively, superb for people-watching. The Commissary, sited in a cavernous greenhouse, has a superb menu from local whizzkid Roy Choi, the man who fused two of the city's major culinary strands into the Korean taco and launched the food-truck revolution. The restaurant serves New-American sharing plates: grilled melon with mint, honey and chilli, pickled beets with goat's cheese, and pistachios and radishes in zingy green sauce kept my vegetarian dining partner happy, while I enjoyed the fried shrimp po-boy sandwich. The cocktails are great, but here the drowning reflex kicks in again.

Drinks are served in the sort of plastic tubs one might get Ikea rollmops in, and crockery and linen are studiously mismatched. The laborious design continues throughout the hotel. In the corridors, exposed pipework clashes with swirly carpets and corporate artwork. In the lobby, there is an inexplicable mural made from twisted T-shirts. My breakfast congee was delicious, but the canister it came in was swaddled in an over-sized napkin. Enough!

Perhaps I'm getting hung up on details. All was forgotten when I realised, at lunch, that my flight was six hours later than I thought. I flopped down by the pool under the delicious West Coast sun, ordered a cocktail and took a nice, deep breath.

The exterior of the hotel

Location

Thanks to its Koreatown (K-Town) location, a sea of food options sits outside The Line's front door. At lunch, I wandered to a nearby hole-in-the-wall-type place for bibimbap. Venturing further afield, you are at the mercy of the LA traffic. The Line is 20 minutes by car from West Hollywood and 15 minutes from Echo Park and Silver Lake, so you are well-positioned to go either bougie or boho. For the free-spirited, the hotel also offers a bike rental service.

Comfort

Views from the room are a winner, with the Hollywood sign just visible from the bed. Downstairs, the reception desk is cleverly tucked to one side, leaving the large lobby space free. At one end is a café called, um, CaFe, with a pavement-side terrace; at the other end is Pot, a Korean hot-pot restaurant overseen by Choi. There's also a gym, and the Break Room 86 bar, run by twins Mark and Jonnie Houston, has a DJ four nights of the week plus bands. It's furnished with a mish-mash of retro video games, TV screens and a wall covered in LP covers.

There's a shop on the ground floor, which brings me on to another slight niggle. Pretty much everything in the room is listed for sale. The bathrobe costs $50. You can take the vase on the shelf home for $20. For the romantics, there's a $20 memento rock – which seems to be a garden-variety pebble. It makes for an uneasy sensation – might I inadvertently end up with a huge bill for using the hairdryer?

Travel essentials

The Line, 3515 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, US (001 213 381 7411; thelinehotel.com)

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Doubles start at $270, room only.