The Cambria Beach Lodge is in the tradition of the great restored American motels. Stylish yet simple and unassuming, it has a surf-shack chic that matches perfectly the chill of this semi-secluded town. The highlight is the hotel’s roof deck; the best position for watching Cambria’s all-world sunset. Or looking for whales.

Cambria is a place where you go to get away, not to see and be seen. And the brand-new White Water is a beautifully stylish place to do it. Creative director Nina Freudenberger took inspiration from Danish modernism as well as classic Californian design to create a seaside escape that’s both invigoratingly stylish and soothingly sedate.

A local couple — a contractor and interior designer in their professional lives — have turned an unremarkable motel into the Pacific Motel, an unforgettable seaside boutique hotel. Its 20 units include a couple of standalone bungalows as well as superbly renovated king and queen rooms, and the style throughout is impeccable: whitewashed, minimal, but warm and inviting all the same.

If you’re like us, what you’d want from a Malibu boutique hotel is something stylish but unpretentious, something comfortable but not extravagant, something a bit bohemian but not overly busy, maybe tempered by a bit of Modernist austerity. Until fairly recently you’d have been out of luck, but with the opening of the Hotel June Malibu, there’s finally a boutique hotel in town with personality and good taste to spare.

Palisociety hotels are a homegrown Southern California phenomenon, one that avoids easy clichés in pursuit of its own richly textured aesthetic. Each of their hotels is subtly unique, embracing each neighborhood it calls home, and Palihouse Santa Barbara is no different. Here you’ll find what they call “vintage preppy meets American riviera,” an apt description for the vintage-inspired, tweedy-yet-sunny décor and the elegantly casual atmosphere.

Not the Los Alamos of Manhattan Project fame, but Los Alamos, California, a mere speck of a place in the Santa Ynez Valley of Santa Barbara County, where a burgeoning wine culture has suddenly led to a substantial uptick in tourism. Hence the need for a hotel of Skyview’s caliber. Skyview Los Alamos joins the ranks of formerly undistinguished American roadside motels that have been rehabilitated into attractive and quietly luxurious boutique hotels.

To call it a bed and breakfast would be accurate, but frankly wouldn’t do it justice. San Luis Creek Lodge combines an intimate, low-key residential-style concept with the kind of design you typically only find in a proper luxury boutique hotel. And with 25 rooms divided among three distinct buildings, it’s larger and more varied than the typical B&B. The setting, right in the heart of San Luis Obispo, is as convenient as it gets.