WatchHouse's Newest London Coffee Shop Might Be Its Best-Designed Yet — Here's Where It Is, and How to Capture Its "Ornate-but-Industrial" Style
Unveiled this week, the group's Millennium Bridge location is "a distillation of the Thames Embankment, its monumental architecture, its shifting light, and its fleeting atmospheres"
If you're a Londoner, you might already be familiar with WatchHouse. Well, coffee culture's most sophisticated group has just landed on Millennium Bridge, and its twenty-third London outpost takes the minimalist-sleek look of founder Roland Horne's design-driven concept to the riverbank. For those unfamiliar, WatchHouse was established on the British capital's Bermondsey Street in 2014, and has since grown into a world-renowned portfolio of cafes across London, New York, and the UAE.
Sourced from the finest producers of blends and single-origin offerings around the globe and roasted locally in its dedicated London Coffee Lab, WatchHouse takes on high-street coffee chains by keeping standout specialty coffee, fresh food, and evocative design at its heart. The goal? "Move coffee and those who drink it forward". That WatchHouse is behind some of the most iconic coffee shops in London is a fact, and that wouldn't have been the case without the contribution of lead designers Deidra Hodgson, Thomas-McBrien, and CAKE, the last studio of whom has envisioned the interiors of the new Millennium Bridge cafe.
Revolving around a round, back-lit brushed steel and cement bar island, like the surreal Fitzrovia House, painted a modernist, lacquered emerald green, like WatchHouse Cabot Place, or fitting the set design brief for a Wes Anderson film, as in the case of the chocolatey, nostalgic interiors of Belsize Park, House 14, each of the portfolio's coffee shops captures a world of its own. But if there is one thing WatchHouse can be credited for, it's having perfected the modern coffee (lover) aesthetic — stylish, refined, and uncompromisingly bold.
A look that, at the latest address by the group, is out in full force.
Inside Millennium Bridge House — WatchHouse's Latest Chapter in Modern Coffee Design
Meet Millennium Bridge House, WatchHouse's first opening of 2026 — and what a way to start the new year.
The first WatchHouse opening of 2026, the Millennium Bridge House finds its home in a 2,050-square-foot tower building nestled between Tate Modern and St. Paul's Cathedral on the North Bank of the River Thames.
It will be serving WatchHouse's signature breakfast menu alongside plenty of bakery and viennoiserie bites, all while allowing you to take in some of the most beautiful London sights from indoors. As for its decor, we feel confident it contains ideas for the ultimate coffee bar makeover. Here are three ways to bring its captivating look home.
1. Echo Nature's Ever-Changing Essence via Some Chrome, Iridescent Surfaces
All surfaces in the House are coated in a hand-applied, back-painting technique that, "continuously reflecting and softly diffusing iridescent light across the open-plan floor".
Like all WatchHouse projects, CAKE's design for the Millennium Bridge House incorporates nods to its surroundings into the cafe experience, translating natural and architectural inspirations into statement details that transcend space and time.
Being so close to the Thames, the coffee shop couldn't ignore the presence of water, the way light moves on and continuously traces its uneven surfaces — an element the architecture studio found best embodied in Monet's melancholic blue view Waterloo Bridge, effet de brume (1904).
It is a reference we see, although stripped back to its most essential form, in the Millennium Bridge House, where three cool metal finishes — brushed aluminium and brushed and stainless steel — are alternated across the furniture, shelving, and counters of the space to recreate the feel of mirror-like, turbid, and coruscating waves.
To heighten the effect, all surfaces in the House were completed with a hand-applied, back-painting technique that, "continuously reflecting and softly diffusing iridescent light across the open-plan floor," WatchHouse explains, "subtly evolves throughout the day to create an ever-changing atmosphere."
The result boasts a futuristic look that, widely explored in our Space Oddity aesthetic feature, reunites two seemingly separate worlds — the melancholic beauty of nature and the dreamy edge of science fiction. Nothing you can't attempt to replicate with the inspired buys below.
2. Complete Your Coffee Bar With a Porthole Window or Skylight for a Heightened Moment of Drama
The latest addition to the WatchHouse family may well be its most theatrical yet.
But water wasn't the only aspect of London's North riverbank that wove its way into the design of the Millennium Bridge House. St. Paul's Cathedral itself makes a subtle appearance in the space, which distinguishes itself for what CAKE describes as an "ornate-meets-industrial" flair.
Hovering above visitors' heads as they step inside the coffee shop is a hypnotic dropped ceiling that, with its hollow silhouette, indirectly reminds guests of the church's legendary geometry. To make the architectural accent even more memorable is the rich, warm timber that this is lined with, which, together with the hand-finished aluminium panel inserted in the middle of the piece, projects a warming glow over the theatrical espresso counter.
Just imagine yourself sipping your favorite blend steps away from the River Thames.
Image credit: Felix Speller. Design: CAKE
London's ever-changing skies are reflected in the cafe's light-sensitive surfaces, tracing day and night.
Image credit: Felix Speller. Design: CAKE
The bar's monolithic structure of the Millennium Bridge House, meanwhile, winks at the Tate Modern's modern brutalist facade, bringing another one of the landmarks that informed its interiors inside. But how could die-hard caffeine fans aim to craft a similar setting for their own domestic coffee bar?
While not necessarily easy to reproduce nor inexpensive, porthole windows and kitchen skylights are your ace in the hole to draw attention to your cooking — and in this case, brewing — station. If the former introduces a sense of softness in a nook of the house traditionally inhabited by sharp edges, imbuing it with a sense of play, warmth, and comfort, the latter lets guests focus on the action as it unfolds by carving room out for light to shine through. So, which are you going for?
3. Layer in Warm Organic and Cool Metal Surfaces for a Balanced Effect
Together with the woody walls, the chocolatey palette of the coffee shop's seating adds a note of softness to its futuristic atmosphere.
Most contemporary design enthusiasts with a love of minimalist, chrome-clad decor wouldn't renounce their metallic finishes, not even at gunpoint. But at WatchHouse's latest hotspot, it's "a patchwork of materials, forms, color, and light" that, the team sustains, makes way for "varied spatial experiences." Rather than sticking to characterful yet, arguably, 'cold' surfaces, the Millennium Bridge House layers in cherry veneer panels, cream-tinted timber detailing, and a double-tone polished concrete floor to counterbalance for a more welcoming, less 'chirurgical' ambiance.
This interplay of permanence and transience informs a palette and spatial language that is both emotive and playful. Distilling the surrounding landscape through a blend of materials, textures, and forms, the House pays tribute to the rhythmic atmosphere of the river and city outside.
Despite the many cool metallic surfaces present in the space, the Millennium Bridge House still bathes in warmth, as you can see from outside.
This is especially evident in the seating, which varies from slender leathery stools for passersby enjoying their coffee (almost) on the go to one-piece sculptural banquettes paired with wooden tables and chairs, and more privacy-friendly booths for people wanting to get stuck in conversation.
"A distillation of the Thames Embankment, its monumental architecture, its shifting light, and its fleeting atmospheres," as CAKE's director, Hugh Scott Moncrieff, describes it, the newest cafe in the WatchHouse family captures London's two sides — one affable, welcoming, and inherently social, the other, style-obsessed and forward-thinking. While you browse more design additions to elevate your coffee counter, tell us: which is your favorite?
Got the coffee fever? From Moka pots, Italians' favorite way of brewing the beloved caffeinated drink, to the best pod machines for your at-home energy drinks and the most stylish French press options available on the market, keep reading for an extra shot of energy.
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