Selfridges fills an entire block of Oxford Street, from Duke Street to Orchard Street, and it is easy to lose two hours in it without meaning to. The trick is to decide before you go in whether you have come for the food hall, the beauty hall, the fashion floors or simply the windows, and to orient yourself by the street door you used.
Our guide to London's department stores compares Selfridges with its rivals and says which one suits which shopper. This page deals with the store itself: the building, the entrances, how the floors are stacked, when to come and what is worth seeing if you are not buying.
The store opened in 1909. Its founder, the American retailer Harry Gordon Selfridge, arrived in London convinced that shopping should be entertainment, and built a shop with that idea in mind: goods out on the counters where customers could handle them, window displays lit after closing time, and a building designed to be looked at.
Selfridges Oxford Street: the essentials
- Address
- 400 Oxford Street, London W1A 1AB
- The block
- Runs the full street frontage between Duke Street and Orchard Street
- Nearest station
- Bond Street (Central, Jubilee and Elizabeth lines), immediately east
- Also close
- Marble Arch (Central line), at the western end of the block
- Opened
- 1909; built in phases between 1906 and 1928
- Listing
- Grade II*, with the Queen of Time sculpture above the main entrance
- Entry
- Free; no dress code; bag checks at busy times
The building: a Chicago idea on Oxford Street
Selfridge brought his architects from Chicago. The initial designs came from D H Burnham and Company, the firm of Daniel Burnham, and later phases involved Francis Swales, Frank Atkinson, Sir John Burnet, Thomas Tait and Albert Millar. Historic England, which lists the store at Grade II*, records that it went up in four main phases between 1906 and 1928 and that when it was finished it had the largest shop frontage in Britain.
That is why the building looks the way it does. The giant columns running the length of Oxford Street are a piece of American commercial classicism dropped into London, on a scale nothing else on the street attempts. Stand on the opposite pavement, ideally from the traffic island, and look at the whole thing rather than at the shop windows.
Above the main entrance is the Queen of Time, a sculpture by Gilbert Bayes installed in 1931, standing on the prow of a ship with a clock beneath her. Almost everyone who photographs the store photographs it without knowing what it is.
Photo: Simon Burchell · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
Finding your way around without losing an afternoon
The layout defeats people because the store is long rather than tall. You are not moving up a tower; you are moving along a block on each level, with lifts and escalators clustered at intervals rather than in one central core. Three habits make it manageable.
Remember which street you came in from. The Oxford Street doors, the Duke Street doors at the eastern end and the Orchard Street doors at the western end all land you in different parts of the same floor. If you go in one way and out another, you will come out a three-minute walk from where you expected.
Pick up the floor guide at the door, or photograph the board by the lifts. Departments move. Any list published by a guide, including this one, is out of date the moment a brand takes a new concession, so use the store's own current guide.
Decide on two destinations, not six. The broad logic of the building is stable even when the details change: food and drink at the lower levels, beauty and accessories on the ground floor where the footfall is heaviest, womenswear and menswear on the middle floors, home and children higher up. Restaurants and cafés are scattered across several levels rather than gathered in one food court.
Use the Duke Street entrance if you want the food hall and nothing else. It puts you at the eastern end of the block, nearest Bond Street station, and lets you reach the food and drink areas without crossing the beauty hall, which is the most crowded square footage in the building on a Saturday.
The windows, and the rest of what is free
Selfridge's original idea, that a shop window is a form of theatre, is still the best free thing about the store. The window schemes change several times a year and are designed to be looked at from the pavement rather than to sell the item on display. They are lit in the evening, which is the best time to see them, and the December scheme is the one people come for.
Also free: the ground-floor halls, which you can walk through end to end; the architecture, inside and out; and the seasonal installations that occupy part of the store at Christmas and around major cultural events. None of it requires you to buy a thing, and nobody will ask you to.
Personal shopping and styling appointments are usually free to book as well, which visitors rarely realise. If you have a specific purchase in mind and limited time, an appointment turns four floors of hunting into one conversation.
When to go
| Time | What it is like |
|---|---|
| Weekday mornings | The calmest hours; staff have time to help |
| Weekday late afternoon | Busy with office workers, but the fashion floors stay usable |
| Saturday | Extremely busy from late morning; queues for lifts and fitting rooms |
| Sunday | Six trading hours only, so the whole day's crowd compresses into them |
| Late November to Christmas | The busiest weeks of the year; longer hours, longer queues |
| Boxing Day and early January | Sale crowds from opening time |
Opening hours change with the season and with the Sunday trading rules, and the store's own website would not load for our automated checks in September 2026, so confirm them on selfridges.com before you set out. English law allows a shop this size to trade for only six continuous hours on a Sunday, which is why Sunday hours are short everywhere on Oxford Street. Our page on public holiday closures covers Christmas, Boxing Day and Easter.
Eating, toilets and sitting down
The store has restaurants, cafés and bars across several floors, and they are one of the more civilised places to eat near Oxford Street, which is otherwise thin on good food at street level. Expect to pay West End prices.
The toilets are among the best publicly accessible ones in this part of London, which matters more than it sounds on a long day's sightseeing; our guide to finding a toilet in London explains why department stores are the fallback. There are seats, lifts and somewhere warm to stand, which also makes the store a sensible refuge on a wet afternoon; see our list of indoor things to do when it rains.
Prices, VAT and getting purchases home
Everything in the store is priced including 20% VAT, and there is no airport refund for visitors. That scheme ended in Great Britain at the start of 2021 and has not returned, whatever older guidebooks say. The one remaining route to a VAT-free purchase is having the store deliver the goods straight to an address outside the UK, which is worth asking about for anything large or fragile. Our page on tax-free shopping and what replaced it has the detail.
For gifts that are easy to carry, the food hall and the stationery and accessories counters beat the fashion floors. Our shortlist of London souvenirs worth buying compares them with the museum shops and the markets.
Oxford Street outside the store is a working area for phone thieves. The pavement between Bond Street and Oxford Circus is one of the busiest in Europe, and snatch theft from the hand is the commonest crime there. Keep your phone away while you walk, especially near the kerb. Our page on how pickpockets and phone thieves work explains the patterns.
Getting there, and what to do next
Bond Street station sits at the eastern end of the block and serves the Central and Jubilee lines plus the Elizabeth line, which is the fastest way in from Paddington, Heathrow, Liverpool Street and the east. Marble Arch is at the western end. Both are busy enough to be closed briefly for crowd control on Saturdays, in which case walk one stop.
Bond Street station has step-free access; our guide to step-free travel in London explains how to plan a journey that avoids stairs.
From the store, the obvious next moves are east along Oxford Street towards Oxford Circus, south into Bond Street and Mayfair for the jewellers and arcades, or north into Marylebone, which is two minutes away and immediately quieter. Down at Oxford Circus, Regent Street and Liberty make an easy second half to the day. If you want the other department store that is a sight in its own right, see our guide to Harrods in Knightsbridge, and for the December version of all of this, Christmas shopping in London.
Frequently asked questions
Is it free to go into Selfridges?
Yes. It is an ordinary shop with no admission charge and no dress code, and you are welcome to look without buying. Bags are sometimes checked at the door during busy periods. The window displays outside are free to look at and are lit in the evening after the store has closed.
Which entrance should I use at Selfridges?
The main Oxford Street doors under the Queen of Time sculpture are the grand way in. The Duke Street entrance at the eastern end is closest to Bond Street station and to the food and drink areas, and the Orchard Street end is quieter. Remember which one you used, because the block is long.
How long should I allow for Selfridges?
An hour is enough to walk the ground floor, see the food hall and look at the windows. Half a day disappears easily if you are shopping seriously across several floors. Decide on two destinations before you go in and you will keep control of the time.
What is the sculpture above the Selfridges entrance?
It is the Queen of Time, by the sculptor Gilbert Bayes, installed above the main Oxford Street entrance in 1931. She stands on the prow of a ship above the store's clock. The store as a whole is listed at Grade II* and was built in phases between 1906 and 1928.
Can tourists claim VAT back at Selfridges?
No. The scheme that let visitors reclaim VAT on the way home ended in Great Britain on 1 January 2021. The only way to buy without VAT now is to have the store ship the goods directly to an address outside the UK, and not every purchase can be handled that way.
Sources
- Historic England - National Heritage List entry 1357436, Selfridges, Oxford Street (checked September 2026)
- legislation.gov.uk - Sunday Trading Act 1994, Schedule 1 (checked September 2026)
- GOV.UK - Tax-free shopping (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Transport accessibility and step-free stations (checked September 2026)
- Mayor of London - Crackdown on mobile phone theft (checked September 2026)