Inside RH London, The Gallery in Mayfair: the brand's new outpost opens in a historic Palladian mansion

RH has arrived in London, and it's done so in style. The American luxury home furnishings brand – formerly known as Restoration Hardware – has chosen 7 Burlington Gardens, one of the city's most storied addresses, for its new flagship.

The project marks RH's first London outpost, following its 2023 debut at Aynho Park – a 400-year-old landmark estate in Banbury – and subsequent openings in Paris, Milan, Brussels, Madrid, Munich and Düsseldorf. But London, it seems, demanded something different in scale and ambition.

The venue is Uxbridge House, a rare surviving Palladian mansion designed in 1721 by Italian-born architect Giacomo Leoni for the 1st Earl of Darnley. Restored and reimagined alongside three adjoining landmark properties, it now houses what RH bills as the largest curated collection of luxury home furnishings in the world. Working with Foster + Partners, the brand has unified four buildings – spanning five levels and over 5,000 square metres – into a single destination encompassing retail, dining, design and culture.

Visitors arrive through a Roman Doric portico into the Architecture & Design Library, where herringbone floors of European white oak and museum-style plinths frame a collection of rare classical books. The centrepiece is a 1521 first Italian edition of Vitruvius' De Architectura, a foundational text of Western architecture. Through Leonardo da Vinci's later interpretation, its principles of proportion helped shape the design philosophy that continues to influence RH today.

A scenic lift designed by Foster + Partners – its shaft clad in champagne gold-finished steel and glass – connects all five levels. The Wine Bar and Tea Salon, finished in Bronze Amani Spanish marble, sits nearby, while deeper in the mansion the former banking hall has been reborn as the The Dining Room: a 136-seat restaurant where champagne-lacquered Roman columns rise nearly eight metres to a coffered ceiling hand-finished in gold leaf, tiered chandeliers of hand-blown Venetian glass suspended from mirrored skylights above. The menu leans into British classics like rib roast and fish and chips, cooked on custom Molteni rotisseries.

Upstairs, the first floor's historic Piano Nobile state rooms retain their elaborately decorated 18th-century ceilings by master plasterer Joseph Rose, now framing RH Interiors collections. The second floor is arguably more dramatic still. Designer and hotelier Anouska Hempel has created two spaces: the The Perch at RH London, with its smoked-glass aviary canopy, blackened églomisé walls and bar of pure Absoluto Nero marble, which opens onto a terrace garden of laurel trees, diamond-laid marble floors with water rills and grand glass birdcages evoking the domes of Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan. Nearby, the World of RH Lounge is anchored by a 360-degree hologram floating within a case of bronze and fluted mirror.

The third floor, meanwhile, has been transformed into a sheltered garden oasis beneath a massive ridged skylight of triangular glass panels and hand-selected European white oak beams, housing RH Outdoor among fountains, pleached plane trees and open fireplaces.

Situated opposite the Royal Academy of Arts, between New Bond Street and Savile Row, the location is as deliberate as everything else here. RH London is a store, yes – but it's also a statement.