Twelve rooms in a 1910 Arts and Crafts townhouse on Sköldungagatan, redesigned by Ilse Crawford and run as a private home — no front desk, no restaurant menu, an honesty bar in the library, and the most considered residential hotel in Scandinavia.
"The most considered residential hotel in Scandinavia — twelve rooms in a 1910 Arts and Crafts villa where the lobby is a kitchen table, the bar is a library shelf, breakfast is whatever you want whenever you want it, and the staff to guest ratio is closer to a private estate than a hotel."
Ett Hem — Swedish for "a home" — opened in 2012 in a 1910 Arts and Crafts townhouse at Sköldungagatan 2 in Lärkstaden, an embassy district north-east of central Stockholm. The villa was originally built by the Swedish architect Frederik Dahlberg as a private residence and later served as a private home through most of the 20th century. The current owner, Jeanette Mix, acquired the building in 2010 and commissioned the British designer Ilse Crawford (Studioilse, ex-editor of Elle Decoration UK) to convert it into a hotel that would feel like staying in a friend's family home rather than a commercial property.
The result is twelve rooms across the original villa and a quiet 2018 garden-house extension, none of them numbered in the conventional sense — they are referred to by name (the Garden Suite, the Library Room, the Tower Room) and arranged across the building's three floors plus the garden pavilion. Materials are deliberately domestic — old oak floors, hand-glazed Marrakech tiles in the bathrooms, custom Hästens beds, vintage Scandinavian furniture mixed with contemporary commissions. There is no front desk; arriving guests are met in the library and walked to their room. There is no restaurant menu; meals are prepared by an in-house kitchen team to order at the kitchen table or in the room. The library, the conservatory, the kitchen, and the walled garden function as shared living space — guests treat them like their own.
The food programme is the most distinctive in any small Stockholm hotel. Head chef Tim Spedding (formerly of P. Franco in London and Hertog Jan in Belgium) runs a daily-changing menu sourced almost entirely from a network of small Swedish suppliers — Skåne dairy, Gotland lamb, Baltic fish — with breakfast served in the kitchen at any hour and dinner offered as a single set menu around the kitchen table or at the conservatory tables in the garden. The honesty bar in the library is open to guests at any hour. A small spa with sauna and treatment room sits in the basement; a Pilates studio added in 2020 runs daily classes for guests.
Position is the considered choice. Lärkstaden is twenty minutes' walk or six minutes' taxi from the Royal Palace, the Grand Hôtel waterfront, and the central shopping streets — far enough that the hotel feels genuinely residential, close enough that the city is fully accessible. The neighbourhood is the city's diplomatic quarter (the German, French, and Italian ambassadorial residences are within four blocks) with the leafy Karlaplan and Humlegården parks on either side. By any honest measure of considered design, food quality, and service depth, Ett Hem is the most refined small luxury hotel in Sweden and one of the strongest residential-format propositions in Europe — alongside The Connaught's quieter wings in London and the small La Réserve properties in Geneva and Paris. Look also at Lydmar Hotel for the boutique waterfront alternative or Grand Hôtel Stockholm for the grand-hotel format.
For a Stockholm anniversary at the residential register, Ett Hem is the obvious answer. The Tower Room or the Garden Suite for the booking, dinner at the kitchen table arranged in advance with chef Tim Spedding, the spa session in the basement, breakfast in the conservatory — the experience is closer to a small private estate than a hotel and the level of service-to-guest ratio (around 4:1 staff to room) is unmatched in the city.
Ett Hem is the most refined Stockholm solo retreat. The library is open at any hour, the kitchen will serve breakfast at any time, the Pilates studio runs daily classes, and the staff handle every interaction at exactly the level of attentiveness the guest signals. A four- or five-night booking in the Library Room or one of the smaller garden-side rooms is the standard format — the city is accessible by taxi, the neighbourhood walkable, and the hotel itself is the destination.
A Stockholm honeymoon at Ett Hem is the boutique counterpoint to the Grand Hôtel format. The Garden Suite with private terrace, kitchen-table dinners cooked to order, the walled garden in summer, and the discretion of a twelve-room property where the staff know every guest by name. The hotel's relationships with private archipelago boat operators, the Royal Opera, and Mathias Dahlgren's restaurant group make the wider Stockholm itinerary effortless.
Sköldungagatan 2
114 27 Stockholm
Sweden
Karlaplan or Stadion metro 6 minutes; Humlegården park 4 minutes; Royal Palace 18 minutes by taxi; Stockholm Central 12 minutes by taxi; Arlanda Express 25 minutes total
12 rooms (incl. 4 suites)
Smaller rooms from SEK 6,000/night
Library Room from SEK 8,500/night
Tower Room from SEK 11,000/night
Garden Suite from SEK 16,000/night
Check-in: 3:00 PM
Check-out: 12:00 PM
Building 1910; opened as Ett Hem 2012; Crawford-designed garden-house extension 2018
No front desk, residential format
Kitchen-table dining (Tim Spedding)
Library, conservatory, walled garden
Honesty bar open at any hour
Spa with sauna; Pilates studio
Member, Relais & Châteaux
Member, Design Hotels
From SEK 6,000/night. Twelve rooms only — book three to four months ahead for spring and autumn weekends; six months for the summer high season (mid-June to late August) and Nobel week in early December.
Book This Hotel →269 rooms since 1874 facing the Royal Palace — Sweden's grand hotel and the official residence of Nobel Prize laureates each December.
Eighty-one rooms in restored 1690s naval barracks on the car-free Skeppsholmen island, ten minutes from the centre by foot.
Sixty-two rooms in a restored 1910 bank building on Arsenalsgatan in Norrmalmstorg, with a six-storey atrium and a Bonnier rooftop bar.