The Meininger maintains the spic-and-span mood and look so familiar in budget lodgings throughout the German-speaking countries.

The cozy, 30-room Macdonald Hotel isn’t the most charming or crisply designed hotel in London—or in the King’s Cross area, for that matter—but it will fit the bill for many.

The dorms and private rooms at the Clink261 are small and spare, but the hostel offers a super-low rates, cool common spaces, and a fantastic location near King's Cross station.

In design terms, Paddington’s 39-room Stylotel is utterly unique. Rooms have a metal-and-plastic design that looks like a theater-set version of the future.

With 22 comfortable and uniquely decorated rooms, the simple yet cozy Rushmore Hotel stands out from the business-class crowd.

The YHA Oxford Street, perhaps the most central of several YHA hostels in London, is so plain that it almost defies description. The set-up will be familiar to anyone who has spent any time in a hostel.

The YHA St. Paul's is youth hostel situated in a 550-year-old building, steps away from St. Paul's Cathedral.

Renting out basic rooms at affordable rates when school is not in session, the LSE Bankside House (a London School of Economics dormitory) offers great value for budget travelers to London.

With a friendly staff and appealing rooms, the lovely Amsterdam Hotel is a rare, splurge-worthy gem on the rather ho-hum London hotel scene.

The Seven Dials Hotel is a cramped two-star spot in just about the best location possible, smack-dab on Monmouth Street in one of the cutest—and most crowded—corners of London’s West End.