No. 1 Lounge, Heathrow Airport Review

I recently flew from London to Los Angeles, and of course I wanted to relax before my flight by visiting a lounge! I was given a free pass to visit the No. 1 Lounge in Heathrow Airport as part of my premium Trusted Housesitters membership; this post is an overview of my visit and my experience within the lounge itself.

Just Gone Wandering is supported by readers! This post contains affiliate links. If you click on a link and buy something, I get a small percentage at no extra cost to you. Your support helps keep this blog running— thank you! Read full disclosure here.

What's In This Post

Lounge Info

Location: Terminal 2 airside, after Security Checks, across from Gate A18.
Membership accepted: Priority Pass, Lounge Key
Can also buy day passes for £40 GBP.
Open daily from 5:00 am – 9:00 pm.
You can stay in the lounge for 3 hours before your flight, and purchase extra time if needed.
Visit the website here

No. 1 Lounge Directions

This lounge just opened recently, so they don’t have a lot of official signage around the terminal yet. To make things more complicated, my pass documents had slightly incorrect directions! After getting through security, I wandered around a bit before finally spotting a sign pointing me to the right entrance.

To find the No. 1 Lounge, starting from the security area:

Head straight into the main part of the terminal until you see Louis Vuitton. Turn slightly left and go towards Gate A18.

You should see a set of elevators and a sign that says No. 1 Lounge. Take the elevator to Level 2.

The lounge entrance is there! You made it! Check in with the staff at the front desk and head into the lounge proper.

Lounge Review

This is the first lounge I’ve been to in Heathrow, and the first No. 1 Lounge I’ve ever been to! Unfortunately, it’s not my favorite lounge I’ve been to. (That would have to be the CIP Orchid Lounge in Da Nang.) Despite having very friendly staff, a clean buffet area, and a decent range of drinks, there were a few issues that made it hard to totally enjoy my time in the lounge.

Food

Pretty typical food selection, half hot food and half cold stuff. The hot stuff was mostly soup, and then they had cold finger foods like chicken sandwiches, two kinds of salad, cheese and crackers, cookies and small snacks.

I tried some of the chicken sandwiches. They put rocket in it, which made for a very unpleasant pointy feeling while chewing. And because the sandwiches were actually wraps, the whole thing fell apart as soon as I took a bite.

A few other things I tried were similarly disappointing: the cucumber salad was VERY astringent, and the cheese was a cheap white cheese that tasted like nothing. 🙁

So not very exciting choices, and overall kind of bland…but that’s almost to be expected in a lounge (unfortunately). They DID do a good job at refilling the plates of food and keeping things looking fresh, and I don’t think anything was sitting out for hours and hours. If you really needed something to fill your belly and didn’t want to pay airport prices for an overpriced McDonald’s then I suppose you’d be able to make do with the lounge food.

Plate of food…sort of. Chicken wrap, cucumber salad, a sad slice of cheese. I did like the scones and jam!

Drinks

I was flying early-ish in the day, so I didn’t get an alcoholic beverage. The lounge did have a nice staffed bar area, and as far as I could tell ALL the alcohol choices were over there.

For non-alcoholic options, they had soda (standard Coke products), a large selection of tea bags, and three very fancy coffee machines that made excellent lattes. They’re the kind that grind the coffee beans immediately before brewing, so it tastes very fresh!

Twinings tea selection, way more than I normally see.

Seating area

The seating area unfortunately was one of the things that I really didn’t like about this lounge.

It was a relatively huge space, with TONS of places to sit including some interesting semi-private nooks called “TV rooms.” There were tables, small couches, and armchairs to choose from in the main space (the TV rooms were all couches). Lots of different seating options for people and lots of space for travelers to hang out, and really it’s a pretty big space over all.

On the other hand, it felt weirdly crowded— even when the lounge was mostly empty– because of all the furniture. The tables were VERY close together and moving between them to find an open seat, especially if you have a carry-on suitcase with you, felt like trying to squeeze down a very narrow hallway. I can’t imagine what it’d be like when the lounge is nearly full, and you have to dodge everybody else’s luggage, too!

A note for digital nomads

This isn’t a business lounge so there aren’t any dedicated desks for laptop-users, and the tables are either slightly too high or too low to use comfortably while typing. It can do in a pinch for catching up on emails or doing some writing, but I wouldn’t expect to be comfortable if you really needed to buckle down and work hard for 3 hours.

On the positive side of things, there ARE plugs next to nearly every table so you can charge your laptop or other devices, too. And of course there’s free lounge-only wifi to connect to.

Other stuff

There’s a separate bathroom for lounge guests which was very nice and clean.

One thing that stood out to me was the lack of staff roaming around the lounge itself. My first impression was: lots of empty seats, then: LOTS of used plates and cups sitting on tables. Yuck!

It took about an hour for a staff member to start collecting dirty dishes from tables. I’m hoping it was just an issue of staff going on lunch breaks and temporarily leaving things messy, and not a standard practice for the lounge to only clean the area once an hour.

Final Thoughts

Overall, while I didn’t like the food and found the space a bit chaotic, it was great to have access to coffee and snacks while I worked on some blog posts before my flight. The staff were very nice, which is important as well.