Proof that the French are great hotel connoisseurs is a term they coined to describe a certain category of them - hôtel de charme, connoting a one-of-a-kind place with a big but casually chic personality. Until recently, cabbage-rose wallpaper and shrewd flea-market finds have tended to define the quirky look at this Parisian species, but a fresh crop of properties is adding a major dose of design and creature comforts. The wild child is the Hôtel La Maison Champs-Elysées, housed in a Haussmannian mansion between Avenue Montaigne and the Grand Palais. Its lyrical ton-sur-ton design, done mostly in a scheme of ecru, black and white, evokes the building's aristocratic past while being resolutely modern. The Belgian designer Martin Margiela decorated 17 suites here, and they're spacious, comfortable and visually witty, with the occasional surreal detail - a bird's wing mounted on a brass base to create a table lamp, or picture lamps that illuminate the empty brown squares where paintings might once have hung. The hotel also has a sexy all-black fumoir, a terrific little garden for alfresco dining and proximity to many fashion houses and all the boutiques on Avenue Montaigne. In a similar vein, but ideal if you don't want to spend a fortune, is Hôtel du Ministere, a former two-star on a quiet street near the Élysées and Hermès. The French interior designer François Champsaur waved a clever wand over the property: rooms are snug but homey, with cobalt blue walls, blond wood paneling and good lighting. And the low-key but friendly service trumps the wearisome attitude at many of the city's other design hotels. Helmut Newton would have loved the workout room - a vaulted stone cellar with a mirrored wall facing the exercise machines. The 23-room Hôtel Jules & Jim (named after the 1962 François Truffaut film), in the northern Marais, is as style alert as the boutiques, galleries and design studios just outside its front door. Antoine Brault and Geoffroy Sciard - a graduate of the famous Lausanne Hotel School and a marketing specialist, respectively - have created a secret urban hamlet, with rooms dispersed between three different buildings that wrap around a pair of courtyards. For reasonable prices it offers a terrific book-filled bar, air conditioning, free Internet and flexible check-in and check-out times. Across the street from the renowned Opéra Garnier, the Rockwell Group has converted a triangular Haussmann-era building into the 91-room W Paris Opéra. Its centerpiece, a complicated wall of light called "The Spark," is overconceptualized, but its bar, run by Lionel Bensemoun of Le Baron, has taken off in a major way. Several of the best rooms have gorgeous views of the opera. Hôtel La Maison Champs-Elysees, 8 rue Jean Goujon; 011-33-1-40-74-64-65; lamaisonchampselysees.com. Hôtel du Ministère, 31 rue de Surene; 011-33-1-42-66-21-43; ministerehotel.com. Hôtel Jules & Jim, 11 rue des Gravilliers; 011-33-1-44-54-13-13; hoteljulesetjim.com. W Paris Opéra, 4 rue Meyerbeer; 011-33-1-44-77-10-68; wparisopera.fr.