Dog-friendly places in Brighton

Dog Friendly places in Brighton to visit, stay at, eat & drink

Your bags are packed, you’re ready to go, spring is springing (well, soonish), and your four-legged best friend is aching for a trip to the seaside. So where are the dog-friendly places in Brighton to visit, stay at, eat & drink within?

Dog-friendly places in Brighton
Just don’t let your dog lose all their life-savings on the 2p machines on Brighton Pier

Dog-friendly places to stay in Brighton

We’re not just looking for dog-allowed places to stay at when we are off to our seaside escape! – we want hotels and accommodation in Brighton that positively welcome our pooches.

Your best place to start looking could be Airbnb – such as this wonderful Unique Retreat Cottage hosted by Sonia and Mike and tucked away in the quiet residential streets of Withdean, to the north of Brighton City Centre.

The cottage is in the corner of their garden but feels like a house in its own right; with a large bedroom complete with double bed and sofa bed, and open plan living room to kitchen, plus a small shower and toilet room. Above the living and kitchen space is a mezzanine floor that can hold an extra double bed for additional guests.

Best of all is the wicker basket in the main bedroom complete with dog blanket, dog toys, dog treats, and more! It was the first place that Copse Magazine’s own dog made a beeline for. Or a dogline, maybe.

Dog-friendly cafes in Brighton

Most of the tourist-friendly seaside cafes in Brighton have some form of outside seating space so it is relatively easy to find somewhere in the summer to sit with your dog, but if you are looking for a cafe that will let you and your dogs inside and you are happy to drive a little way out of town, then we don’t think you can do much better than Carats Cafe Bar on the beach in Southwick. Parking is pay and display.

Carats Cafe Bar lets dogs into the conservatory area, but not the main restaurant anymore. It’s a standard fare seaside cafe complete with big cooked breakfast options plus a range of smaller plates, sandwiches, and lunches.

The menu is fairly extensive – and it’s on a blackboard in the main cafe, so take your phone, take a photo, and return to the table to share the menu with your dining companions.

Outside of the cafe is Southwick beach – a gem of a beach tucked away from the thronging crowds and summertime dog restrictions of Brighton’s main beaches.

Set against an industrial wasteland backdrop, the juxtaposition of the beautiful sun reflecting off the light blue sea reminds us of a dystopian teenage novel series following the collapse of the international shipping trade. Maybe we’ve had too much caffeine today.

While you are in the area, make sure you visit the Cheese Hut, a wooden shed retail outlet tucked in the side of the warehouse of the larger cheese wholesaler – supplying a lot of the retaurants and pubs in Sussex.

Dog-friendly restaurants in Brighton

Again, there are a lot of dog-friendly restaurants in Brighton, but when we were looking for one with car parking as well, and now we were out of Brighton in Southwick, we looked towards the other side of the port (Portslade towards Shoreham) and found The Schooner.

The Schooner is one of those roadside pubs that you never really know what to expect from the outside. Sat alongside the main coastal drag, once inside, the pub opens up with natural light flooding through from the port side and reflecting off the marina waters, bouncing off the ceiling.

The owners were hugely helpful to us before we arrived, helping us to organise a large party of people for a birthday lunch. The pub was very dog-friendly and the more you looked around, the more you realised that more tables seemed to have a dog tucked underneath than not.


Help us complete our guide

If you know of more dog-friendly places to stay in Brighton or dog-friendly places to eat in Brighton, let us know and we will include them in this guide.