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The brief arrived at 5pm on a Thursday. Shoot was Monday. The agency had spent four days getting the concept signed off, had their talent confirmed, had a client services person ready to attend — and nobody had thought about the studio. That job fell to me to sort.

I've been sourcing studios for brand agency jobs across London for about eight years. Not always as a producer — sometimes as the photographer who ends up fielding calls nobody else wants to take. And the problems that come up are, almost without exception, the same ones. The specs that never make it onto the studio listing. The questions that feel too basic to ask until you're standing on set at 8am wishing you'd asked them.

This is what I actually check before I commit to a room for agency work.

The client area — and why most studios fail it

Nobody mentions this in listing descriptions. An agency job means a client in the room. Sometimes that's one person from the marketing team. Sometimes it's four — marketing director, head of comms, a junior they brought along, the brand manager who has opinions and isn't afraid to share them. They need somewhere to sit that isn't a folding chair pushed against the cyclorama. They need Wi-Fi that actually works. They need to be able to review tethered selects on a proper screen without squinting at your laptop three metres from the strobe.

I've had clients sitting on apple boxes. Once, a senior marketing director stood for most of a six-hour studio day because the studio's listed “client lounge” was a camping table and a kettle with a dead HDMI cable going nowhere useful. That client didn't come back to the agency. And the agency quietly suggested we don't use that studio again.

What you're looking for isn't a green room — just a table, chairs, a monitor or decent-sized TV for tethered review, and enough distance from the shooting floor that the client conversation doesn't appear in the audio of any behind-the-scenes content your creative team's capturing. Studios in Dalston and Hackney Wick that cater to proper commercial clients tend to have this. A lot of the smaller portrait studios don't — and won't tell you unless you ask.

Ask. Specifically: “Is there a separate client table with seating and a monitor we can connect for tethered review during the shoot?” If the answer involves anything about “we can move the desk”, keep looking.

Power spec

Agency jobs typically run bigger rigs than editorial work. Key light at 1,200Ws or higher, secondary fill, hair, background separation — by the time you've got five heads on stands and a practical or two in the set, you're pulling a lot of current. Add the tethering station, laptop, monitor, the crew's phones, and a kettle someone will boil at the worst possible moment, and a 13A ring main looks very optimistic.

I won't book a commercial studio for agency work without confirmed 32A single-phase minimum. For anything involving continuous lighting alongside strobes — an Arri SkyPanel S60-C draws around 420W nominal, and you're rarely running just one — you want more. For larger productions with multiple continuous rigs, I ask about three-phase access.

The question to ask: “What's the maximum amperage on the shoot floor, and is that on a dedicated circuit or a shared ring main?” Studios with a 100A three-phase supply on a dedicated circuit don't make you apologise for running the rig you actually need. Those tend to be the larger East London commercial spaces — the Park Royal belt, out along the A10 corridor in Tottenham — and you pay for it, but the alternative is tripping the board at 2pm in front of the client.

Ceiling height

For full-length fashion with a boom arm above the model, 3.2m starts to feel tight. 3.5m is where I can work without watching the viewfinder for light-stand tops. Anything below 3.0m and I'm making compromises I'd rather not make.

Studios advertising “high ceilings” without specifying a number — I always call and ask. The number of times “high ceilings” turns out to mean 2.7m in a converted Victorian railway arch is not zero. Not embarrassing for me — embarrassing for the listing. But I'm the one explaining to the creative director why the overhead boom doesn't work.

Agency work often involves large props. Last spring I produced a furniture campaign in Shoreditch where the hero piece was a 2.4m shelving unit. We needed around 4.5m of working height to light it from overhead without a lightstand in the frame. That spec eliminated most of what I looked at. The rooms that worked were all over £850/day. Which is the cost of actually being able to execute the brief.

Floor area — what “100 sqm” actually means for an agency day

The brief says “product on white background”. What it means is: two hero looks on seamless, one lifestyle setup on a practical surface, a flat-lay station in the corner, and somewhere for the client to spread out their reference prints without anyone stepping on them.

I won't go below 120 sqm usable floor for a four-setup agency day. Not total studio footprint — the floor that isn't already taken by the fixed lighting rig, the prop area, client seating, and a changing space for talent. Some studios quote total footprint; the usable shooting area is noticeably smaller. Always ask to clarify.

Infinity coves are ideal for the clean-background looks. But if you have lifestyle setups — even something as simple as a styled surface — you need flat floor around the cove curve, not the transition zone. How much flat floor exists outside the cyc? It's worth asking before you commit.

Parking, loading, access

Agency days mean more vehicles than editorial days. Camera van, lighting hire van if you're not bringing your own kit, the stylist's estate, the props runner's car. I've managed mornings in Dalston trying to coordinate four vehicles before 8am with nowhere to put any of them.

A loading bay changes the day. A goods lift changes it further if you're above ground floor. Parking within 100m of the loading door changes the mood of everyone on crew from the first minute. Studios in Hackney Wick and the E3 belt tend to have proper production access because the buildings were designed for it. Studios converted from retail units in EC1 — less so.

Specific question: “Is there off-street parking at the studio, and what's the van clearance on the loading door?” Get the answer confirmed. Not because studios lie — but because on the day there may be someone new on the desk who doesn't know the loading bay is blocked on Monday mornings.

The booking window agencies always leave too late

For a Monday shoot, you need the studio confirmed by the previous Tuesday. Not Wednesday. Tuesday. Good London commercial studios — the ones with proper client areas, 32A circuits, and loading access — aren't sitting empty on Mondays. The seven-to-ten-day booking window is the reality for weekday commercial slots, and leaving it to Thursday-for-Monday means you're booking whatever's left.

I've watched agency producers try to book studios on Friday afternoon for Monday shoots. Twice. Both times they ended up with a room that didn't quite fit the brief and spent the first two hours of the shoot renegotiating the setup. That's not a production problem. It's a procurement problem. The fix is early confirmation — which sounds obvious and isn't.

Same-day availability exists in London. But you're choosing from studios that haven't been booked for a reason, at full rate, with no room on overtime. Not the position you want on a client-attended job.

Platforms, direct booking, and what's happening with Peerspace

Peerspace is the platform most agency producers reach for first. Convenient search, decent listing quality, enough London commercial stock to usually find something. Worth knowing: Peerspace filed for Chapter 11 restructuring in August 2026. They've stated that bookings and payouts continue normally during the process — but it's something to factor in if you're booking a significant production date well ahead. Checking directly with the studio on confirmation is a reasonable belt-and-braces step.

Giggster takes 19% from hosts. Both platforms are fine for one-off discovery. For repeat use — running the same agency client through a studio three or four times a year — calling the studio directly after the first platform booking usually yields a better rate and more flexibility on overtime and setup time. Studios don't love giving platforms a cut of their regulars.

For commercial agency work in London, the rooms I keep returning to are in the Hackney Wick production belt, Park Royal for the power and space, and a couple of Tottenham spaces that the production community knows about but that don't show up prominently on platform searches. Day rates for proper commercial studios with client areas, loading, and 32A circuit start at around £450 and go up sharply from there.

The brief to send a studio before you book

Send them an actual brief. One page. Not a treatment — literally: date, crew headcount, number of setups, lighting rig approximate size in heads and wattage, any large props, vehicle access requirements, client attendance yes/no, and whether you need a monitor for tethered review. That's it.

Studios that come back with clear answers are the ones I rebook. Studios that reply with “sounds great, see you on the day” are the ones that usually have a problem they haven't mentioned.

For first-time use of any studio for agency work: view it in person. A twenty-minute walk-through before committing changes what you know about ceiling clearance, floor quality, loading access and client area viability. It looks different in person than it does shot at 16mm wide open.

Find London studios with commercial production infrastructure — loading access, client areas and proper circuits — on creativestudiohire.com.

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