It’s hard to imagine feeling underdressed in the Jupiter, or anywhere in Portland, a deeply casual city. It’s an unprepossessing sort of hotel, a renovated Sixties motor inn attached to the Doug Fir Lounge, one of Portland’s top bars and live music venues. This makes for a lively atmosphere. Rooms are handsomely minimalist with bold wallpaper — photorealistic forest scenes, or vibrant cartoony florals.

The Berkshires are undergoing the sort of revival that travel trend pieces are made of. Thanks in part to the redevelopment that’s accompanied MASS MoCA, the formerly industrial town of North Adams is living a second life as a booming cultural destination. Outside the town center you’ll find TOURISTS, a Sixties motor lodge reborn as a very modern, very hip little country boutique hotel.

Saratoga Springs is undergoing a bit of a renaissance as city folk rediscover the charms of small-town life. It’s also famous for the Saratoga Race Course, which hosts horse races in the summer months. And just across the road from the racecourse’s paddock and stables is the reason we’re here: the Brentwood Hotel, designed and also owned by Studio Tack, a Brooklyn-based design firm.

Now that Liz Lambert, the boutique-hotel queen of Texas, has taken over the Austin Motel, all is again right with the world. The Austin’s distinctive sign has been drawing double-takes along South Congress since 1938, and now it’s backed up by some equally distinctive retro-themed interiors. It’s joins the Saint Cecilia and the Hotel San José as part of South Austin’s trifecta of exceptional lodgings.

In its new life, the masterfully reimagined 1940s motor in that’s now the Green Room Hotel is miles more attractive than the word “motel” implies. It’s decked out in a very photogenic bohemian-minimalist style, with low-frills but high-impact comforts and an eclectic approach to decoration that combines Moroccan rugs, mid-century modern furniture, and vibrant, well-chosen artworks.

Jackson Hole has all the ingredients for outdoor adventure, and it’s got the infrastructure to support it (the valley’s most notable lodgings tend toward the upscale end of things). The Anvil Hotel, in the town of Jackson proper, goes another way. This is a no-frills motel upgraded into something stylish, but rather than high gloss it aims for a retro unpretentiousness, and hits the nail right on the head.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, an undistinguished corporate chain hotel was found to have, beneath a layer of stucco, the bones of a fossilized Sixties Travelodge — and after an archaeological-grade restoration and a modernist-inspired redesign it’s back in business, this time as the Longleaf Hotel. Named, fittingly, for a classic-but-endangered emblem of North Carolina’s forests.

Set deep in the desert of Santa Barbara County, the Cuyama Buckhorn isn’t just any old motel — this mid-century classic was designed by the architect George Vernon Russell, who was responsible for a number of Los Angeles landmarks. It took a thorough restoration, but today’s Buckhorn features 21 guest rooms in a hybrid cowboy-Modernist style, while the restaurant, the self-titled Buckhorn, is pure cowboy.

A classic mid-century motor inn on Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona has found new life as the High Country Motor Lodge, and as motel restorations go, it’s a very thorough one. Inside you’ll find swanky beds with vintage-style blankets, modern bathrooms with quality products, and, in a quirky retro touch, tape decks complete with mix tapes.

A 1936-vintage motor inn on the legendary stretch of road once known as Route 66 is now El Rey Court, a beautifully reimagined boutique hotel that is, in its new incarnation, one of Santa Fe’s most stylish lodgings. Its original architecture remains intact, and its adobe-and-timber construction is memorable, to say the least; inside, it’s a very hip, very contemporary mix of local Southwestern color and modern art and design.