Ibiza gets the headlines. Mallorca gets the loyalty. While its little sister trades in hype, the largest of the Balearics has quietly kept the affection of people who know the Mediterranean well – the ones who unshutter their houses each spring, who know which cove is empty at nine in the morning, who have a standing table at a taverna deep in Palma’s old town and no intention of telling you where.
The island has earned that devotion over a long time. Chopin spent a difficult winter at the monastery in Valldemossa in 1838 and wrote some of his finest preludes there. Robert Graves settled in Deià in 1929 and never really left. Joan Miró kept his studio on the edge of Palma for the last three decades of his life. That creative inheritance sat dormant through the package-holiday decades, when Mallorca meant charter flights and little else. It doesn’t any more. A new generation of hoteliers, architects and chefs has picked the thread back up: a British photographer running a finca above Deià, a Swedish design studio inside a 12th-century palace, a Michelin-starred chef cooking from recovered Balearic manuscripts below the Cathedral. The result is the most interesting hotel scene in the Mediterranean, and it isn’t close.
For readers in the Gulf, the timing is good. Etihad launched its first direct Abu Dhabi–Palma service in June 2026 – three flights a week on the A321LR, and the first scheduled link between the Balearics and the Middle East. Demand has been strong enough that the route now runs until 18 October, which leaves the best of the season still ahead: September and October are when the island is at its most rewarding, the crowds thinned, the sea still warm.
We have organised our picks by geography – Palma first, then the Tramuntana and the northwest, the agricultural interior, and finally the north and east coasts. Here are the best design hotels in Mallorca.
DESIGN HOTELS MALLORCA: PALMA
Sant Francesc Hotel Singular
The benchmark for Palma’s city hotels. The Soldevila-Ferrer family restored this 19th-century mansion in the old town with interiors by Maria José Cabré, keeping the original neoclassical frescoes and marble while commissioning Mallorcan ceramicists and glassmakers for everything new. There are 42 rooms, a rooftop pool and bar, and a restaurant under chef Alvar Albaladejo built around market seafood and local cheeses. Order the Mediterranean sour on the roof at dusk.
@hotelsantfrancesc
Nobis Hotel Palma
The most architecturally significant opening in Palma in years. The Swedish Nobis group took one of the city’s oldest buildings – a 12th-century Islamic-era palace, rebuilt in the Gothic 15th century – and brought in Wingårdhs, working with local architects Jordi Herrero and Eduardo García Acuña, to rework it. The result is remarkable: an original carved ceiling with Arabic calligraphy above reception, a medieval courtyard fountain converted into a dipping pool, and 37 rooms in warm, restrained Scandinavian materials – wood, wool, leather – against thousand-year-old stone. Restaurant NOI serves sharing plates beneath a draped textile ceiling.
Can Bordoy Grand House & Garden
A former nunnery in the La Lonja quarter, redesigned by Palma studio OHLAB with a confident art deco streak – jewel-toned velvet, cerulean headboards, oval freestanding tubs. The 24 rooms and suites are reason enough to book, but the real currency here is water and greenery: a walled garden pool shaded by mature trees, a second pool suspended over a skylight on the roof, and a third in the subterranean spa. One of the largest private gardens in the old town, and it shows.
El Llorenç Parc de la Mar
An adults-only 33-room hotel in Sa Calatrava, the old Moorish quarter below the Cathedral, designed by Swede Magnus Ehrland with geometric patterned floors that nod to Arabic star motifs, contemporary art and vintage black-and-white photography. The rooftop infinity pool looks over both the city and the sea; the spa pool below follows an Arab-baths concept. The real draw is on the ground floor: DINS Santi Taura, holder of a Michelin star since 2021, where the Mallorcan chef serves Origens, an 11-course tasting menu built from historic island recipes. Urbà handles the more casual meals.
Terreno Barrio
The most interesting new opening in Palma, and the second OHLAB project on this list. Owner Lydia Piñero took a 1935 apartment block by architect Francesc Casas in El Terreno – the hillside quarter below Bellver Castle where Grace Kelly and Marlene Dietrich once drank, long since fallen off the map – and commissioned OHLAB’s Jaime Oliver and Paloma Hernaiz to build a 41-room hotel designed to serve the neighbourhood as much as its guests. A public alley cuts through the property; rubble from a demolished nightclub next door was recast as terrazzo for the bathrooms; a timber-louvre façade opens and closes with the sun. Studio Roses drew the graphic identity from old neighbourhood signage, chef Gabriel Conti cooks over an open grill at Destape, and there is an invite-only nightclub, Dos Rombos, downstairs. One to watch as El Terreno finds its feet again.
Sant Jaume Design Hotel
A quieter proposition on a side street near the centre: an 18th-century townhouse with 36 light-filled rooms, deep marine-blue interiors and work by Spanish artists throughout. The roof terrace has a plunge pool and a clear line of sight across the terracotta rooftops to the Cathedral. Downstairs, El Colmado handles tapas, and a private, bookable spa sits in the stone cellar. A strong choice for a first Palma stay.
DESIGN HOTELS MALLORCA: THE TRAMUNTANA & THE NORTHWEST
Son Bunyola, Banyalbufar
Richard Branson’s return to Mallorca, twenty years in the making, and Virgin Limited Edition’s first European hotel. The 16th-century finca sits on a 1,300-acre estate within the UNESCO-listed Serra de Tramuntana, with olive and almond groves running down to three miles of coastline. Local architects GRAS Reynés handled the restoration; Palma design house Rialto Living styled the 26 rooms and suites, two of which occupy the tafona, the old olive press. The 28-metre pool looks straight at the Sa Foradada rock formation. This is estate life rather than hotel life, and all the better for it.
Grand Hotel Son Net, Puigpunyent
The Finca Cortesin team’s first Mallorcan project, and interiors of genuine ambition: Madrid designer Lorenzo Castillo spent the restoration filling this terracotta-pink 1672 mansion with antiques, bold print and a serious art collection. There are 31 suites, a Malvasía vineyard on the estate, cooking under chef Sergi Olmedo, and a two-storey spa with an indoor saltwater pool added in 2024. Fifteen minutes from Palma, but it feels a century away.
La Residencia, A Belmond Hotel, Deià
Belmond is anything but boutique, but no list of Mallorcan hotels is honest without the island’s grande dame. Built around two manor houses dating to the 16th and 17th centuries – once the property of Cistercian monks, and co-owned by Richard Branson in the late 1980s, decades before Son Bunyola – La Residencia is the hotel that made Deià a destination. Its art credentials remain unmatched: a private collection of more than 800 works curated by Cecilie Sheridan since the 1980s, one of Europe’s largest hotel sculpture gardens, resident painters and sculptors, and 33 original Mirós hanging in Café Miró. El Olivo, in the old olive press, remains one of the island’s great dinner reservations. The icon, and still earning it.
Hotel Corazón, Deià
If La Residencia is Deià’s establishment, this is its new energy. Photographer Kate Bellm’s 15-room finca, opened in 2023, is the distillation of the town’s artistic mythology. Every room is different – one entirely pink, another with a shower concealed inside an egg-shaped dome – and the programming runs from guided hikes and sound baths to musical jams. A farm-to-table restaurant and a pool facing the sea complete it. Not for minimalists; entirely for everyone else.
Hotel Valldemossa
Twelve suites in a building that once belonged to Valldemossa’s Carthusian monastery, looking across the honey-coloured town and the mountains behind it. Thick stone walls, terracotta floors and mid-century furniture set the register, and the grounds hold monk-carved rock staircases and an 800-year-old olive tree. De Tokio a Lima, the restaurant, works Peruvian-Japanese ideas into Mediterranean cooking. One of the most peaceful addresses on the island.
Bikini Island & Mountain Hotel, Port de Sóller
An argument could be made that the island’s creative reinvention started here. This renovated 1970s property is loud, playful and unapologetic about it – hammocks, trailing plants, a California-inflected pool bar (Pikkini) and its own Spotify playlist. Book it for energy rather than serenity. A second Bikini has now opened at Es Trenc beach in the south.
DESIGN HOTELS MALLORCA: THE INTERIOR
Finca Serena, Montuïri
Forty hectares of olive, carob and almond trees in the island’s agricultural heart, with 25 minimalist rooms spread between the old farmhouse and outbuildings. The Único Spa occupies a former cowshed reached through lavender; the Jacaranda restaurant cooks from the kitchen garden, with paella on Tuesdays and open-flame octopus and Iberian pork on Thursdays. The strongest expression of slow, rural Mallorca at the top end.
Son Xotano, Sencelles
A 13th-century finca turned 22-room retreat that makes the case for skipping the coast entirely. The design is more colourful than most country stays – floor-to-ceiling artworks in some bedrooms, a hand-painted mural of storks beside the saltwater pool – and the programming leans creative, with workshops and visits to local artists’ studios. The restaurant keeps things Mallorcan down to the tiramisu, which is laced with Palo, the island’s bittersweet herbal liqueur.
Can Beneït, Binibona
The value play, and no less considered for it. Ten simple rooms – white walls, dark wood, terracotta floors – sit within 80 hectares of working farmland in the Binibona valley, with a 200-year-old church in the courtyard and guided walks through the olive groves. Mirabona, the farm-to-table restaurant, has built a reputation well beyond its ten-room audience.
DESIGN HOTELS MALLORCA: THE NORTH & EAST
Can Aulí, Pollença
An adults-only, 21-room mansion in Pollença’s backstreets with a genuine commitment to Mallorca-based artists – work by Estefania Pomar and Jaume Roig hangs throughout. The old bones remain – archways, wide staircases, double-height ceilings – while the tapas menu at the open kitchen downstairs runs from Cantabrian anchovies and Iberian ham to pickled mussels and monkfish foie.
Hotel Can Mostatxins, Alcúdia
Eight rooms inside a 15th-century building that once housed an olive-oil press, within Alcúdia’s medieval walls. The restoration used local artisans and kept the original stonework in every bedroom, but the reason to book is below ground: the spa plunge pool sits in a cavernous, open-roofed former Roman cellar cut into the bedrock. No restaurant, though old Alcúdia solves that within a two-minute walk.
Can Ferrereta, Santanyí
The Soldevila-Ferrer family’s second act after Sant Francesc, and proof the island’s southeast deserves more attention. A restored 17th-century mansion with 32 rooms in textured mortar, linen and hand-woven hemp, artwork including Joan Miró, and furniture from Piero Lissoni and Hans J. Wegner alongside commissioned local pieces. OCRE, in the former wine cellar, builds its lunch menu around Santanyí’s market days. The Sa Calma spa and the town itself – all sandstone and Saturday markets – close the deal.
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