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Red phone boxes in London: where to find them, and how to photograph them

There are still around a thousand red telephone boxes on London streets. This guide covers the nine worth crossing the city for, with the backdrop each one gives you and the hour it is empty enough to use.

AnatolyBy Anatoly, co-founder and editor · Routes and timings from Natalia’s London sessions · Updated

We photograph at the Westminster boxes most weeks, so the Parliament Square and Embankment notes come from standing there in every kind of weather. The others are scouted locations we send people to when they want something that is not Big Ben.

Couple kissing beside a red telephone box near Parliament Square, Big Ben behind
The box near Parliament Square, from across the road. Standing back is what puts Big Ben in the frame.

Part of our London photo guide: London photo spots, the 14 places we use.

Pick your box in one line

  • Big Ben behind you, and you do not mind a short queue: Great George Street, at the corner of Parliament Square.
  • No queue at all, five boxes in a row: Broad Court, Covent Garden.
  • Raining: the boxes under the arch at Burlington House on Piccadilly stay dry.
  • A dome instead of a clock tower: St Paul’s Churchyard and Festival Gardens.
  • Something that is not a landmark at all: South Molton Street or the Strand.

Nine phone boxes worth walking to

Two designs matter. The K2, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott in 1924, is the tall one with the deep crown and the heavy glazing bars. The K6, from 1935, is smaller and far more common. Both photograph well; the K2 looks grander and there are fewer of them left.

1. Great George Street, at the corner of Parliament Square

This is the one people picture when they say red phone box. Four boxes on the corner where Great George Street meets Parliament Square, with Elizabeth Tower rising at the end of the street behind them. It is the most photographed box in Britain and it behaves like it.

The trick is distance. Standing next to the box gives you a box and a sliver of sky; standing across the road with a longer lens stacks the tower right behind the roof. We shoot this as part of a Westminster session, usually first, before the pavement fills.

Best time: Weekdays before 9am. By eleven there is a queue of six or seven people and everyone is in everyone else’s frame.

2. Victoria Embankment, by Westminster Pier

A pair of boxes on the north bank, two minutes from Westminster station. Because you are on the Westminster side, the London Eye sits across the river behind them, which is a cleaner backdrop than the tower and far less busy.

In winter, with the plane trees bare, the whole wheel is visible from pavement level. In summer the leaves cut it in half.

Best time: Any time before 9am, or the half hour before sunset when the Eye lights up.

3. Broad Court, Covent Garden

Five K2 boxes in a straight line on a quiet pedestrian street behind the Royal Opera House, with Georgian brick behind them and the Young Dancer statue at one end. Photographically it is the best-value box in London: a repeating red rhythm that no single box can give you.

Shoot it square-on from the far end to get all five in a row, or stand at the second box and let the others fall away out of focus.

Best time: Almost anything. Mid-morning is fine. It is one of the few boxes where you are not waiting.

4. Covent Garden Piazza, corner of James Street

A pair of K6 boxes on the corner by the market building, with the Piazza’s arches and iron canopy behind them. Warmer and busier than Broad Court, two minutes away, and worth doing in the same walk.

Best time: Before 10am. After that the street performers draw a ring of people and the corner is gone.

5. St Paul’s Churchyard and Festival Gardens

Two options at the cathedral. A box on Ludgate Hill gives you the west front head-on but sits in shade for most of the day. The Festival Gardens corner, where New Change meets Cannon Street, gives you the dome over the trees and better light.

Best time: Early morning for light on the west front; late afternoon in summer for light reflected off the stone.

6. Burlington House, Piccadilly

Boxes under the arched entrance to the Royal Academy courtyard, off Piccadilly. They are the only well-placed boxes in central London that are properly sheltered, which makes them the fallback when a session runs into a downpour. Stone arch, deep shadow, red box: it reads as London without a landmark in sight. More wet-weather options are in our guide to a London photoshoot in the rain.

Best time: Any time it is raining. That is the point of it.

7. The Strand at Duncannon Street

Four K6 boxes on the corner by Charing Cross, with the spire of St Martin-in-the-Fields behind them. Traffic is heavy and the pavement is narrow, so this is a quick stop rather than a place to spend twenty minutes, but the row of four against the church is a strong frame.

Best time: Sunny mornings, when the light comes down the Strand from the east.

8. South Molton Street and New Bond Street

The box at the bottom of South Molton Street, near Brook Street, stands on a pedestrian lane lined with boutiques: no monument, just shopfronts, which makes it the most editorial-looking box on this list. The New Bond Street box outside Cartier is the one you have seen on Instagram, and there is usually somebody already standing in it.

Best time: Weekday mornings. Saturday is hopeless.

9. Albert Bridge, Chelsea

A K2 by the north end of Albert Bridge, near Cheyne Walk, with the bridge’s pink parapet and the old tollbooths behind. It is a twenty-minute detour from anywhere central, and it is the only spot on this list where the background is as good as the box.

Best time: Mid to late afternoon, when low sun catches the pink and white paint on the bridge.

Woman stepping out of a red telephone box with red buses and Big Ben behind
Two reds in one frame. The buses on Bridge Street pass every minute or so, which is long enough to wait for.

Four ways to photograph a box that is not a postcard

Everybody takes the same photograph: one person, front-on, door open, arm out. It is fine, and you will take it, and then these four are what make the rest of the set worth keeping.

Use the door, not the front

A door held half open gives you a diagonal, a second red edge and somewhere for a hand to rest. Front-on, the box is a flat rectangle. At forty-five degrees it has depth and the glazing bars start to do something.

Shoot through the glass

Stand outside and photograph the person inside through the panes. The reflections of the street land on the glass and you get two layers in one frame. It is the easiest way to make a phone box look like a photograph rather than a souvenir. Black and white suits it, because the reflections stop competing with the red.

Step back and make the box small

A box filling the frame is a box. A box at a quarter of the height, with the tower, the buses and the wet pavement around it, is London. Most of our favourite phone box frames are taken from the far pavement.

Let the box frame somebody else

Two people, one inside and one leaning on the outside, gives you a natural distance and a reason to look at each other. If there are three of you, put one in the doorway and two walking past. Nobody has to pose.

Black and white close-up of a couple inside a red telephone box in London
Through the glass, in black and white. The reflections do the work.

Two routes, an hour each

Westminster, before nine

Start at the Embankment pair by Westminster Pier with the Eye across the water, walk up to the Parliament Square boxes while they are still empty, then finish on Westminster Bridge or under the arches on the South Bank. Twenty minutes of walking, three completely different backgrounds. This is the first half of our Big Ben route.

Covent Garden and the Strand, mid-morning

Broad Court first, because it is quiet and you can take your time with five boxes. Then the Piazza corner on James Street, then down to the Strand at Duncannon Street for the row of four with the church spire. Fifteen minutes of walking, and none of it needs early light.

Fifteen frames from our own sessions

All of these were taken at the Westminster boxes, in sun, rain and flat grey, across couples, friends and solo sessions.

Loading Images
Close-up of a couple about to kiss seen through the glass of a red telephone box
Woman standing in the doorway of a red telephone box with Big Ben behind
Couple about to kiss framed by the red frame of a telephone box
Couple talking by a red phone box on a rainy street near Big Ben
Woman stepping out of a red telephone box, red buses and Big Ben behind
Couple embracing under a clear umbrella next to a red phone box, rainy London
Couple embracing against a red telephone box with Big Ben behind
Woman laughing on the phone inside a red telephone box
Black and white close-up of a couple inside a telephone box
Black and white photo of a woman by a phone box with Big Ben behind
Couple under an umbrella walking towards a red phone box and Big Ben in the rain
Friend in a cream suit standing in a red telephone box doorway with Big Ben behind
Three friends laughing by a red telephone box near Big Ben, friends photoshoot London
Woman leaning on a red telephone box in Westminster, Big Ben in the distance
Couple posing by a red telephone box near Parliament Square with Big Ben behind

Practical notes

  • Many of these are still working payphones. People do occasionally use them, and a lot of them now take contactless.
  • Some boxes have been sold off and turned into coffee kiosks, defibrillator cabinets or tiny libraries. They are still red and they still photograph.
  • Weekday mornings before nine are the whole game at the famous boxes. At weekends, add a queue to every estimate on this page.
  • Rain helps. Red against wet grey pavement is the strongest colour London gives you, and the crowds go indoors.
  • Keep the pavement clear. These are narrow footways, and the boxes on the Strand and at Parliament Square sit on busy commuter routes.

Questions people ask

The row on Great George Street, at the corner of Parliament Square, with Elizabeth Tower behind it. It is the most photographed telephone box in the country, which is also its problem: from mid-morning there is usually a queue. Go before 9am on a weekday, or use the pair on Victoria Embankment two minutes away instead.

Yes. Almost all of the boxes in this guide are unlocked public payphones and you can step inside, close the door and photograph from within. A few have been converted into coffee kiosks or defibrillator cabinets and those stay shut.

Many do. BT still runs working payphones inside a large number of the surviving red boxes, and a lot of them now take cards as well as coins. Others have been sold to local councils and communities under the adoption scheme and are now libraries, galleries or first-aid points.

Before 9am on a weekday at the busy ones, for the simple reason that you will be alone. For light, the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset are the best at Parliament Square and the Embankment; the sheltered boxes at Burlington House and the shaded ones at St Paul’s look the same all day, which makes them useful when the timing is fixed.

The boxes on Great George Street, where it meets Parliament Square and Parliament Street. Stand on the far pavement rather than next to the box and use a longer lens: from close up the tower disappears out of the top of the frame.

Photograph the boxes with us

Tell us when you’re in London and we will come back with a route that takes in the Westminster boxes at the hour they are empty, a start time and the price in the same message. Sessions start at £150.

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