Freehand Chicago

"Stayed at the Freehand February 2024 (premium queen room) and enjoyed my stay very much. The rooms are small but clean and comfortably furnished. Fun and friendly staff and Lydia at the front desk was awesome, and super helpful! The early and late checkout options are great also! ** At the time of my stay, there was no guest kitchen available as pictured in some of the older reviews."

"Freehand Chicago was my home for a few nights during a conference in Downtown Chicago. It was one of the affordable options I could see on a 3rd party website so I decided to go for it. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, some of the rooms here function as hotels (shared form spaces) and above are private rooms with its own bathroom. This was a definite must for me so I made sure my private queen room was crystal clear confirmed. The hotel itself is a vibe. It's warmly lit public areas and hallways create a chill atmosphere. I stayed on the tenth floor which meant battling for the two elevators, which I'd say were decent in terms of speed and response. I was given a corner room which was smaller than other queen rooms. The bed was comfortable and the shower had great water pressure and temperature. Not a lot of space to do much else inside the room but it was decent. It wasn't the cleanest (and some of our towels had some marks left behind), but affordable nonetheless. Walls are thin as we definitely heard our neighbor's arguments on some of the nights. I suppose it's good for the drama but can be annoying when trying to get sleep. Wifi is complimentary and is an open network, meaning it's a bit slower than other hotels that are private. I probably wouldn't stay here again unless it was the absolute most affordable option in town, but by no means did I have a bad stay either."

"First trip to Chicago 2021 trip ,we stayed at freehand Chicago hotel,four of us in one of the bedroom rooms ,was cozy for the all of us. Bed were great to sleep in. You don’t have the luxury of space but luxury of character just enough room is all you need!! Room also came with some edible amenities for sleep ! Great for adults definitely great experience. it was all-around, enjoyable, relax, fellas trip,For the weekend.!!"

"Good: the location is amazing and the price can’t be beat. It was really easy to navigate the city from this location and it was walkable to everywhere we needed to go. The bars inside look fun if you like to stay up late and drink, and the lobby is quite beautiful. Bad: this place has none of the charisma of other hostels I’ve been to. Everything smelled like pot, there were zero perks, and a cup of black coffee was $4. The nicest room they have, the premium king, was dingy, small, and stained. Halfway through our stay, our toilet broke and needed to be repaired. We had to move rooms late at night and were downgraded to a queen. They also went into our room while we were gone and lied when they said they tried to contact us. When we asked about compensation, the night manager offered us two free drinks, which was a joke. We couldn’t control the temperature in the room we moved to, which staff blamed on the old building even though it worked fine in our previous room. The main manager was kind enough to offer a partial refund the next day, but it was truly the bare minimum and the kindness and hospitality that hostels are known for was severely lacking. Neither the staff nor the other guests looked like they wanted to be there. We’ll shell out more for a hotel next time."

"They must have people do reviews for them because if you actually look at the bad reviews something just doesn’t add up. This place was gross. Maybe they have clean rooms but I didn’t see them. Seriously this room was DIRTY. The carpet was awful and the cushions on the furniture were gross. I bet the women’s rooms are better and they probably put the cleaning costs into the private rooms but seriously I'm talking health risk. Bar was cool I guess. Still smelled weird. Be skeptical of the 10 reviews you never see this many 2s alongside 10s."