London in July... characterful budget accommodation with A/C?

If you look on Booking.com for your week and scroll down to the bottom left side of the search results page, you’ll see that you can add a Filter for AC. I did this for a random week in July and saw that about 30% of the rooms listed seemed to fit your criteria for price and a bit of character in London. There aren’t a lot in the 700+ results so if you see something you like with a good cancellation policy I’d book it even this far in advance. About 70% were business class or chain hotels.

We stayed in a lovely Bloomsbury hotel this past August and while it had AC in all of the public areas there was no AC in the rooms. Read any descriptions carefully and perhaps call before booking.

You can also add a filter for budget on booking.com. And once you see a place you like, you can go to their own website and book direct.

You may have to choose between the A/C and “characterful” though, or up your budget a bit.

Thank you for the replies!
I have already viewed booking dot com's suggestions with A/C within my budget but know that many accommodation options are not listed on that site. I also hoped to receive some personal recommendations. :-)

If you decide to stay in a B&B which does have "character," one reason I choose that option in London Kings Cross, you can expect two constant features...no elevator and no AC. I go to London in the summer too, starting the second half of May.

I am aware that character and A/C rarely go together... hence my inquiry here. I simply thought there may be a few options out there and maybe someone had somewhere to recommend.
I did find a few possibilities but hoped for personal recommendations from forum members rather than go through the many and varied reviews on the booking website. So often, people are quick to post negative reviews there but overlook posting positive ones.
I am also aware that I may end up at a chain hotel like a Premier Inn (have stayed in those in London before) in order to get my coveted A/C but wanted to tap into the knowledge here and exhaust other possibilities first.

A/C will more likely be found in newer hotels or newer conversions. Some older buildings have added A/C but they will most likely be more expensive.

And a/c is not going to be banned anytime soon. The last few summers in London have had some brutal weeks. I'm glad I had a/c.

Since no one has offered the personal recommendations you seek, I checked booking.com to see what might be offered.

The nice thing about using booking.come to filter results is that the reviews are genuine, from people who have actually stayed there, and you do not have to read many because they also assign a numerical score—-which in my experience with the properties is quite accurate.

In 5 minutes, using the filters for AC, price ( $150-$200), score 7 or higher) and the categories Hotels and Guesthouses, I came up with 24 options for mid-July. I could have filtered for neighborhood but have no idea what you might prefer. But I glanced down through the photos on the results page and picked two that looked like small places with charm (I say charm instead of character as I associate the latter with places that might be old and quirky). The first 2 I looked at are coincidentally both in Pimlico, not far from Victoria station. The Beverly has a score of 7.7 and the Belgrave scored 8.7 so I went to their website.

https://www.the-belgrave.com/

It is a small family-run boutique hotel in a Georgian townhouse, probably one of those classic neighborhoods with white townhouses and black iron fences. The rooms are nicely decorated and the single rooms, though small, have a desk and chair, and a kettle. And yes, A/C, but you might check the reviews to see if anyone says it is not strong enough.

Both these hotels run around $150 for a non-refundable rate and $200/ni for a flexible booking.

Air conditioning is not particulary a thing in the UK for a variety of reasons. A few being, the UK Building Reguations strongly steer developers away from it, as do planning for listed and buildings of character - also the climate in Blighty is generally not conducive or cost effective for comfort cooling.

Like a lot of Americans get muddled up with customs and immigration. Brits muddle up ventilation and aircondtioning and what is often advertised as aircondtioning is often just ventilation and at the best has 'free cooling', with no actual refrigeration component.

Another issue, heat pumps which are coming more popular often get consfused with A/C units.

If one wants true A/C with mechanical cooling you may have to dig deeper.

There was a relatively recent thread on The Belgrave.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/england-reviews/the-belgrave

In London I have stayed in six different B&Bs , the last time in the summer of 2018, one of which had been remodeled, refurbished, etc, They are all located in Kings Cross, always there in the summer, except once 2014,

Regardless of their condition, charm, and "character," none of the B&Bs had AC, which didn't matter to me anyway. If you are willing to pay more, (I am not), then this piece of luxury might be available.

A post by LSF 2 below mine explained what I kind of hinted at: even if the website says they have AC, it may be so weak and ineffective you will not notice it. It is probably nothing like the whole-building chill one finds in commercial buildings in the US. Leastwise, not in the small and charming hotels or Bnb’s you seek.

Another thing: in looking at various websites for the newer small (non-chain) hotels, I see many have adopted the sustainability path. Which is a good thing, and I support that. But it means they will not have A/C, as it is not compatible with the sustainability model.

95% of building services in the UK for comfort are designed to heat not cool, most use gas heated pumped water, not air systems. Where whole building ducted mechanical ventilation systems are installed, it often only supplies tempered air in the cooler months and fresh air at outside prevailing conditions at other times.

With the move to net zero I fully expect the next iteration of of the building regulations to move even more heavily towards passive and fabric 1st building perforamance and make it even harder to justify the installation mechanical comfort cooling, this willbe driven along with the eyewatering cost of energy. Even given the warm recent summer A/C is just not a cost offective option for a few weeks operation it is required in a year.

It's quite possible a hotel employee/manager will say yes we have cooling to anyone asking the question, "look at those grilles in the ceiling", the reality and chance are it just a ventilation system.

I worked for an organistion that had indvidual wall mounted stats that had a cooling selection, but in reality there was no cooling option installed it was just placebo setting. I'm not at liberty to say if it was a hotel or not ;-)

That said there will be buildings with A/C just a lot less that one expects.

Fortunately, there's a good chance that it will cool off a lot at night even during a heat wave. Of course, you may not be able to open your windows for ventilation due to lack of screens and/or outside noise.

"Fortunately, there's a good chance that it will cool off a lot at night even during a heat wave"

Even or if are the operative words. Its a 4 weeks out of 52.

Thank you for the valuable info posted here. I had no idea about the different interpretations of the phrase "air conditioning", LOL!

I will always pick air conditioning over “character” in the summer.