Quirky Places to Stay in Los Angeles: Where Normal Hotels Fear to Tread

Seven Genuinely Quirky Places to Stay in Los Angeles That Will Make Your Instagram Followers Jealous

The landscape of quirky places to stay in Los Angeles has expanded faster than the city’s notorious rush hour traffic. What follows is a carefully curated collection of accommodations where the term “standard room” has been banished from the vocabulary, and where the setting often overshadows any attraction you might visit during daylight hours.

Vintage Airstream Paradise at Auto Camp

Perched along the Santa Barbara Highway, Auto Camp has transformed the humble trailer park into a haven for design enthusiasts with disposable income. Their fleet of meticulously renovated Airstream trailers ($175-225/night) offers all the nostalgic charm of road travel with none of the actual movement. Each 31-foot aluminum capsule has been gutted and refitted with mid-century modern furnishings that would make Don Draper nod approvingly, luxury linens that belie your technically-camping status, and private patios with fire pits perfectly positioned for performative marshmallow roasting.

The location provides deceptively convenient access to LA landmarks—Griffith Observatory sits just a 10-minute drive away, and the Hollywood Sign hiking trails begin roughly the same distance in the opposite direction. Insider tip that won’t appear on their slick website: request trailers #7 or #12 for the best sunset views, and ask about their complimentary s’mores kit, which they only offer to guests who know to request it. It’s like a secret handshake, but with graham crackers.

The Airplane Hotel Experience

For those who find conventional hotels too grounded, a decommissioned Boeing 747 in Pacoima now offers accommodations that give “red-eye flight” an entirely new meaning. Priced between $250-300 per night, these converted cabin quarters maintain much of their original first-class configurations, only with significantly improved legroom and the blessed absence of seatbelt signs.

The coveted cockpit suite preserves the original control panels in all their button-filled glory, allowing guests to roleplay as pilots without the responsibility of keeping hundreds of passengers alive. Aviation enthusiasts will appreciate the proximity to Van Nuys Airport, just 3 miles away, where private jets ferry celebrities who couldn’t possibly stay in something as pedestrian as a grounded commercial aircraft.

The economics of airplane accommodations follow the airline industry’s pricing model—weekday rates can be up to 30% less than weekend rates. February offers the best deals when occupancy drops to 65%, coinciding with the brief window when Los Angeles weather drops to merely perfect instead of idyllic.

Urban Glamping on Rooftops

Downtown’s Nomad Hotel has elevated camping to new heights—literally—with rooftop tents that offer 360-degree views of the city’s increasingly vertical skyline. Priced between $200-275 per night, these climate-controlled canvas structures represent perhaps the only instance where “tent” and “climate-controlled” can appear in the same description without involving science fiction.

Each tent includes private bathroom facilities and exclusive access to the rooftop pool—amenities cruelly withheld from the hotel’s regular guests who foolishly opted for traditional walls. The prime location puts cultural landmarks within easy walking distance: The Broad museum (0.5 miles), Grand Central Market (0.3 miles), and enough craft cocktail bars to ensure you’ll never remember how to find your tent.

Security concerns about sleeping outdoors in downtown LA are addressed with 24-hour security personnel and elevator access restricted to glamping guests. This arrangement offers the rare opportunity to sleep under the stars in Los Angeles, where stars are typically visible only on studio lots and behind velvet ropes.

The Converted Shipping Container Hotel

The Arts District, where industrial decay meets artisanal everything, naturally hosts LA’s premier shipping container hotel. Here, corrugated steel boxes that once transported consumer goods across oceans now house consumers themselves at $150-225 per night. Each 320-square-foot container has been transformed with floor-to-ceiling windows and custom furniture built by local craftspeople whose beards are as carefully cultivated as their woodworking skills.

The hyperlocal focus extends to bathroom products sourced from neighborhood makers and in-room art from galleries within walking distance. Practical travelers should request containers on the second or third levels, which measure approximately 15 decibels quieter than ground-floor units and offer superior views of the surrounding neighborhood, where former warehouses now house kombucha breweries and boutiques selling $300 t-shirts.

Among quirky places to stay in Los Angeles, the shipping container concept offers perhaps the most honest representation of modern life—repurposed industrial materials, minimal square footage, and maximum design intervention, all at a premium price point that somehow still represents “value” in the LA market.

Treehouse Living in Silver Lake

Silver Lake’s urban treehouses prove that elevated living needn’t be merely metaphorical. Built 15 feet above ground among 100-year-old oak trees, these arboreal accommodations ($300-400/night) offer a childhood fantasy reimagined for adults with expendable income and a desire to one-up their well-traveled friends.

The sustainable design incorporates rainwater collection systems, solar panels generating 85% of needed electricity, and interiors crafted from reclaimed wood that looks distressed in the carefully curated way that costs significantly more than new materials. The westward-facing private balconies capture perfect sunset shots over the Hollywood hills, creating the kind of content that social media algorithms particularly favor.

Culinary options abound within a 5-minute walk, including Silverlake Ramen and Night + Market Song, allowing guests to experience the uniquely Los Angeles phenomenon of eating Thai food hot enough to melt fillings before returning to sleep in a tree like sophisticated squirrels.

The Madonna Inn of Los Angeles

While the original Madonna Inn sits in San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles now boasts its own version of theme-room excess where each of the 35 rooms ($175-350/night) features decor so distinct that returning visitors could stay monthly for nearly three years without repeating an experience. Options range from cave rooms with stone walls and waterfall showers to 70s disco palaces where everything reflects light with alarming enthusiasm.

The most sought-after themed accommodations—the Western Suite with its saddle-shaped bar stools, the Space Odyssey room with ceiling-mounted planetary mobiles, and the Safari suite where stuffed animals outnumber guests by a concerning margin—typically maintain a 2-3 month waitlist. Booking advice borders on relationship counseling: reserve 4-6 months in advance for weekend stays, or monitor for cancellations that sometimes appear 72 hours before check-in.

Each room delivers its immersive experience with varying degrees of subtlety (none) and restraint (less than none), creating environments where good taste has been sacrificed on the altar of memorability. The property stands as proof that among quirky places to stay in Los Angeles, sometimes the most transformative experiences happen within four walls that refuse to be beige.

The Converted Historic Building

Downtown’s former financial institutions didn’t survive the banking consolidation of the 1980s, but at least one has found new purpose housing tourists behind its 25-ton vault doors. The bank-turned-hotel offers vault suites ($225-375/night) where guests sleep surrounded by three-foot-thick walls originally designed to protect cash rather than provide restful slumber.

The preservation of 1920s architectural details extends beyond the vault to include marble columns polished to a gleam that suggests they’ve witnessed nearly a century of human drama, brass fixtures with the warm patina of countless touches, and a vintage elevator operator who may or may not have been installed with the original machinery.

The hotel serves as the starting point for walking tours ($15, Tuesdays and Saturdays at 10am) covering prohibition-era speakeasies, many of which operated with the tacit financial support of the very institution whose building now houses visitors. Transportation logistics represent a rare win for car-optional travel in Los Angeles—the location provides direct transit access to Santa Monica (40 minutes), Hollywood (15 minutes), and Downtown attractions (5 minutes) without requiring the soul-crushing experience of navigating LA traffic.