Reykjavik

Destinations

6 Aug

Written By NBH

DESTINATION GUIDE WITH STUDIO HAVN

Reykjavik Design City Guide: A Curated Journey with Studio Havn

Reykjavik's design story is usually told through its landscape, but sitting alongside the glaciers and lava fields is a quieter, no less deliberate culture of craft, material honesty, and reuse. In this Reykjavik Design Guide, Tanis Paul shares a personal edit of the city's most inspiring galleries, cafés, design hotels, concept stores, and cultural destinations, revealing a more layered perspective on one of the North Atlantic's most distinctive design capitals.
Moving between converted harbourside warehouses, ceramics studios, and remote fjordside villages, the guide highlights the places that define Icelandic design today. From the raw concrete of Hafnarhús and the restrained ceramics of Ker. Studio, to the fjord roads of the Westfjords and the turf-and-timber retreat of Eleven Deplar Farm, these destinations trace a country where landscape, craft, and design exist in constant conversation.
**AUGUST 2026**
**Words:** designeers

breakfast and coffee:

Mokka

One of Reykjavík's oldest cafés, Mokka feels timeless, with its mid-century interior, art-covered walls, and the scent of fresh waffles bringing the city's creative life and everyday rhythm together. It is a place built for slowing down: reading, sketching, or simply watching the world outside.

Raw concrete gallery interior at Reykjavík Art Museum's Hafnarhús building

favourite design museum:

Reykjavik Art Museum / Hafnarhú

Housed in a converted 1930s harbourside warehouse, Hafnarhús stands out among Reykjavík's design institutions for its honesty and adaptability. The building's raw concrete walls and expansive volumes retain their industrial character while feeling open and contemporary, echoing the city's maritime history. Each exhibition is considered and experimental, showing how design can evolve while staying rooted in place.

A FINE DINING EXPERIENCE:

Hosiló

On Ingólfsstræti, Hosiló offers Reykjavík's most compelling fine dining experience: intimate, ingredient-driven, and beautifully restrained. Its standout is the vegetarian course, a seasonal composition treated with the same seriousness and finesse usually reserved for more traditional centrepieces.

A place to Eat Lunch:

Kaffivagninn

Overlooking the old harbour, where fishing trawlers still come and go, Kaffivagninn captures the essence of everyday Icelandic life. The fish soup is the standout on a menu of honest, traditional cooking, and the room mixes locals and travellers into something that feels entirely unstaged. Cozy, warm, and unpretentious, it pairs good design with the kind of character that cannot be manufactured.

A Cocktail or Wine Bar

Kaldi Wine Bar

Full of locals rather than tourists, Kaldi has an easy, familiar atmosphere rare for central Reykjavík. Its small, warm interior of stone walls and soft lighting is designed for closeness and conversation, and on the right night, someone starts playing the piano and the whole room joins in singing, creating an authentic sense of community held within a beautifully understated space.

a design hotel to stay in:

The Edition

The Reykjavik EDITION offers a contemporary take on Icelandic hospitality, combining Nordic minimalism with the refined elegance of the EDITION brand. Set beside Reykjavík’s Old Harbour and Harpa Concert Hall, the hotel’s interiors celebrate local materials, warm textures and Icelandic craftsmanship, creating a sophisticated yet inviting retreat. With thoughtfully designed guest rooms, curated art, vibrant dining spaces and panoramic views of the surrounding landscape, the hotel provides a stylish base for discovering the city’s cultural scene and Iceland’s dramatic natural wonders.

favourite Collectible Design and Concept Store:

Epal

For furniture, art, and design objects, Epal remains the essential stop. Its selection is considered and quietly precise, bringing Icelandic and international pieces together in a way that feels both measured and effortless, offering a clear read on the country's design culture: material, restrained, and grounded in craft.

An Artisan Everyone Should Know About

Ker. Studio

Ker. Studio represents a kind of design practice that feels increasingly rare, grounded in material honesty and process rather than trend. Its ceramics carry the raw tactility of Iceland's landscape alongside a refined, contemporary sensibility, each piece bearing evidence of the hand, of time, and of intention. Ker. bridges craft and design so seamlessly that it becomes a reminder that functionality and artistry exist in dialogue, not opposition.

Colourful houses along Gréttisgata street in Reykjavík, Iceland

A Neighbourhood That Defines the City:

Gréttisgata, Stokkseyri and Eyrarbakki

Within Reykjavík, Gréttisgata stands out as a quietly expressive street, its scale, materiality, and the conversation between old and new design distilling the city's architectural sensibility. Beyond the capital, the coastal settlements of Stokkseyri and Eyrarbakki offer a contrasting, more contemplative view of Icelandic design culture, one shaped by landscape and atmosphere as much as by architecture, their vernacular forms and muted palettes framed by expansive horizons and the ever-present Atlantic.

Favourite boutique or concept store:

Fischersund

Fischersund is Reykjavík's most exceptional boutique for design inspiration, defined by restraint, material warmth, and scents created by the family of Jónsi from Sigur Rós. Everything about the space feels carefully composed yet quietly experimental, and its occasional performances combining scent and music are not to be missed.

Go-To Bookstore or Magazine Shop:

Eymundsson

Eymundsson is Iceland's best bookstore for design and architecture, combining atmosphere, accessibility, and curation in a way that feels distinctly Reykjavík. Cosy and centrally located, its thoughtful selection leans into Icelandic and Scandinavian design — from architecture and interiors to art and craft — available in both English and Icelandic, the kind of place where time slips away.

a place of adventure out of town:

Eleven Deplar Farm

Nestled in the remote Fljót Valley of northern Iceland, Eleven Deplar Farm transforms a former sheep farm into a retreat that merges luxury with landscape. Turf, stone, and blackened timber let the architecture disappear into the hillside, while the interiors are warm and tactile, understated yet meticulous, embodying the Icelandic ideal of comfort rooted in nature.

Iconic Architectural Landmark:

Sundhöllin

Beyond the obvious landmarks of Hallgrímskirkja and Harpa, Sundhöllin, Reykjavík's historic public pool, is the city's most compelling building: a rare blend of Brutalist clarity and Art Deco elegance, its interiors quiet and almost meditative. A recent renovation and extension expanded the facilities, but it's the original structure, precise and beautifully lit, that remains one of the city's most extraordinary public spaces.

IMAGE credits:

HOSILO: Hákon Davíð Björnsson

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