Booking a family trip to London? Ask these six things first

Ask how many bedrooms have a door. A family of four sharing a hotel suite in London is fine for two nights and fraying by the fourth, and the fix is simply more walls. Most of the residences we list do two-bedroom flats and plenty do three, so real separation isn't hard to find once you know to ask.

Beds, washing and stairs

Start with where the children will actually sleep. Listings count sofa beds as sleeping space, which a teenager will put up with for a weekend and resent by midweek. Ask whether each child gets a proper bed, whether any bedroom can only be reached through another, and whether cots can be supplied. If grandparents are coming too, a fair number of residences have flats with four bedrooms or more.

On budget, the typical starting rate sits somewhere near £270 a night, and the bigger family flats cost more than that. Bringing the dog narrows things quickly, since only a minority of residences take pets, so mention it in your first message.

Second, ask whether you can do your own washing. Children produce laundry fast, and fewer than a third of residences include laundry as an amenity; even then it might mean a washer-dryer in the flat, a shared machine room or a paid service. For anything over five nights, the washer-dryer in the kitchen is the one to hope for.

Third comes the lift. A lot of the prettiest buildings in Kensington, Marylebone and Mayfair are converted Georgian and Victorian townhouses, and the fourth-floor flat may well be up four flights. Only about half the residences have a lift, and with a buggy, a grandparent or a mountain of luggage it's the question to settle before any other.

Cleaning and the walk to the Tube

The fourth question is what the cleaning includes, and serviced apartments vary more here than guests expect. Some clean daily, many weekly, and a few leave it to you with a mid-stay linen change; daily maid service is the exception rather than the rule. Ask what's in the rate, whether you can add extra cleans and whether towels are changed on request. Holiday lets and Airbnb-style homes usually only do a final clean.

Fifth, how far is the station, and is it step-free? Distance matters less than stairs. Nearly all the residences are within about ten minutes' walk of a station, but many of the older Tube stations in the centre have long staircases and no lift. Every Elizabeth line station is step-free, which makes a flat near Paddington, Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road or Liverpool Street much easier with a pushchair. Check TfL's step-free Tube map before you book.

Who picks up at 10pm?

The last question is where the options really differ. A hotel has a front desk all night, whereas roughly half the residences have staffed reception and the rest should give you an out-of-hours number. Ask who actually answers it.

Private holiday lets are the riskiest on this front. In Greater London a whole home can only be let short-term for 90 nights a year without planning permission, which caps what a private host can sell and is worth remembering for a long summer booking. With school holidays fixed, a building run by a professional operator is the safer bet.

Get good answers to all six and you can end up somewhere like South Kensington, where the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the V&A are free and a short walk apart, and you can go back to the flat for lunch and a nap in between.

London weather by month

July is the warmest month, averaging 23°C by day. July has the fewest wet days (9) and October the most rain (80 mm). For sightseeing on foot, June scores best on our combined warmth-and-dryness measure.

Month	Avg high	Avg low	Rain	Wet days	Chance a 7-day stay sees a washout	Record high / low
January	8°C	2°C	74 mm	13	53%	16°C / -12°C
February	8°C	2°C	51 mm	10	43%	18°C / -8°C
March	11°C	4°C	45 mm	9	44%	23°C / -7°C
April	14°C	5°C	54 mm	10	44%	26°C / -3°C
May	17°C	8°C	54 mm	9	39%	30°C / -1°C
June	20°C	11°C	58 mm	9	35%	34°C / 2°C
July	23°C	13°C	52 mm	9	34%	34°C / 4°C
August	22°C	13°C	68 mm	9	37%	37°C / 4°C
September	19°C	11°C	62 mm	9	39%	29°C / 2°C
October	15°C	8°C	80 mm	11	47%	27°C / -2°C
November	11°C	5°C	76 mm	12	52%	18°C / -6°C
December	8°C	2°C	69 mm	12	50%	16°C / -8°C

Calculated NOAA GHCN-Daily observations at the Hampstead weather station, north London (records 1960–2015; averages from about 25 years per month). A wet day has 1 mm of rain or more.