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Cyclorama ceiling height is the thing everyone talks about. 4.5m for cars. 3.5m for fashion with arms up. 2.8m for tabletop. You've read those numbers a hundred times. I've written them myself.

But here's what almost no one says: ceiling is usually not what kills the shoot. Floor is. You can shoot a car in a 4m ceiling studio if the floor is right. You can't shoot a car in a 6m ceiling studio if the cyc sweep is too shallow for the car to sit on without wheels in the cove. I've watched both scenarios. One worked. One turned into a £3,400 rebook.

So. Let's get into it. What floor dimensions you actually need for different work, and how to work out whether a listing's cyc is big enough.

The three dimensions that matter

When you're measuring a cyc floor, there are three dimensions you need to think about — and only one of them ever gets quoted in listings.

1. Cyc width. The horizontal dimension of the cyc wall itself. Quoted in listings usually as "cyc width: 8m" or similar. This is the easy number. It matters, but it's the least limiting.

2. Floor depth from cyc base to back wall. This is the measurement almost no one publishes and it matters most. It tells you how far back your subject can stand from the cyc before they're uncomfortably close to whatever wall or truss is behind them.

3. The cove radius. The curve where floor meets wall. Measured in terms of how far back from the wall the cove flattens out. A tight cove (30-50cm) gives you more usable floor but reads more obviously as a cyc on camera. A generous cove (80-120cm) sells the seamless look but eats flat floor depth.

The interaction between these three is where the real answer lives. Let me walk through the typical subjects.

Car photography on a cyc

Let me start with the hardest case. Cars.

For a typical family saloon — call it a Golf, a Civic, something 4.6m long and 1.8m wide — you need:

Cyc width: minimum 8m. 9m is better. Anything under 7m and you'll see a wall edge in wide shots.
Floor depth: minimum 7m from cove flat-point to back wall. Because the car itself is 4.6m long, plus you need 1.5m of flat floor behind the car for cove to clear, plus 1m minimum in front for camera and lens.
Cove radius: not less than 80cm. Otherwise the curve will cut into the car's front or rear wheels in the shot.

For an SUV or luxury car — Range Rover, G-Wagen, bigger saloons — add 1m to floor depth and 1m to cyc width. For a sports car or supercar — Ferrari, Porsche 911 — you can get away with slightly less, but not much. 7m depth is the absolute floor.

If you're doing 360-degree turntable work, everything changes. You need a circular cyc or near-it, with flat floor extending at least 3m from the car edge in every direction. That's a 10m+ square minimum. Rare in the UK — Park Royal has two studios that properly do it. A couple out near Milton Keynes. Not many.

Furniture and large homewares

Sofas, dining tables, beds, wardrobes. The usual catalogue work for furniture brands.

A three-seater sofa sits at around 2.1m. A six-seat dining table at 2m–2.4m. A super-king bed at 2m x 2m. Add working space around them and you need:

Cyc width: 5m minimum, 6m comfortable.
Floor depth: 5m minimum. This gives you 2.5m for the piece, 1m behind for the cove flat, and 1.5m for camera.
Cove radius: 50-80cm is usually fine. Furniture tends to sit square-on and the cove curve rarely intrudes.

What kills furniture shoots on undersized cyc floors is the need to shoot dressed sets. A bed with nightstands on both sides and a styled rug extending in front needs an extra 1.5m of depth. A dining table with six chairs pulled out and a runner extending toward camera needs the same. Always add dressing space to the piece's footprint before you calculate.

Large product — appliances, exercise equipment, bikes

Dishwashers, ovens, treadmills, road bikes — all the awkwardly sized product that sits between tabletop and furniture.

A Peloton is 2m long, 0.6m wide. A top-end espresso machine is 0.5m x 0.6m. A washing machine 0.6m x 0.6m. These are all manageable in smaller cycs, but you need room for the lighting rig.

Cyc width: 4m minimum, 5m preferable.
Floor depth: 4m for single product, 5m if you're shooting pairs or with a stylist walking through shot.
Cove radius: 30-50cm is fine. Tight coves work well for hard product because you can get closer to the wall without visible curve in-shot.

The bike question deserves its own note. A road bike is 1.8m long, which isn't a problem. But photographing it from side-on with enough angle to show the drivetrain means you need 3m of camera-to-subject distance minimum, and that's where smaller cycs get tight.

Fashion full-length on cyc

Most fashion shoots use seamless paper, not a cyc. But some campaigns want the seamless cyc-floor look. For full-length fashion with a single model, you need:

Cyc width: 3.5m minimum. Enough for a model plus some margin either side.
Floor depth: 4m minimum. Model stands 1m from cove flat, you're at 3m with an 85mm, that's your full-length shot without distortion.
Cove radius: 30-50cm preferred — tight cove gives you cleaner floor edge.

Multiple models in shot — group editorials, campaign work — add 1m to width per additional model beyond the first two.

Tabletop on a cyc floor

Occasionally you'll see tabletop product shot on a full-sized cyc rather than a tabletop sweep. It works fine if the cyc is the right size, but the cove becomes irrelevant because you're shooting onto a raised surface.

What matters here isn't floor depth — it's ceiling height above the tabletop. If you're shooting top-down with a boom at 2m above a table at 1m off the ground, you need 4m minimum ceiling. Which is why most people don't bother with a cyc for tabletop and just rig a 2.7m seamless on a stand.

The lighting rig eats space

Numbers above assume camera-only. They don't include your lights.

A big softbox — 1.5m octa, say — needs 1m of space behind its front face to mount properly. A boomed HMI or Arri SkyPanel S60 typically sits on a C-stand with 1.5m of base footprint. A 4x4 diffusion panel needs about 2.5m of clear floor behind the subject to be useful without cutting the back of the frame.

So to the numbers above, add at least 1.5m of floor space around each lighting position. If you're running a 4-point light setup, you can lose 2.5m of your effective floor width and depth just to stands and modifiers. This is why a "4m x 4m cyc" is often not enough for anything you'd actually want to shoot on it.

What the listings don't tell you

Listings almost always quote cyc width. Occasionally the ceiling height. Rarely the floor depth. Almost never the cove radius.

When you enquire, these are the six numbers to get in writing:

Cyc width (flat wall, not including wraps).
Floor depth from cove flat-point to opposite wall.
Cove radius — where does the curve end?
Ceiling height at cyc centre, and at lighting truss (if there's one above).
Floor material — painted resin, seamless paper, self-levelling, etc.
Floor load rating in kg/sqm if you're bringing anything heavy.

That last one matters for cars and heavy product. Driving a 2-ton car onto a studio floor that's not rated for it is how you crack a cyc curve. Ask the question. Good studios have the rating on file.

The optical illusion of the wide shot

Here's one of those things that seems obvious but catches people out. The cyc width you see in a hero listing photo is almost never the usable width.

That's because the photographer shooting the listing stood at the opposite corner and shot diagonally with an ultra-wide. The distance between the photographer and the cyc corner, plus the wide focal length, makes the cyc look two-thirds bigger than it is.

Rule: if a listing photo looks like a stadium, the actual cyc is probably 60-70% of the apparent size. Book a site visit for anything serious.

When the cyc is too small: workarounds

If you've booked and realised on the day that the cyc is too small for what you need, here's the escape sequence.

1. Shoot tighter. Switch from 35mm equivalent to 50mm or 85mm. Compresses the scene, less background needed. Works for some shots, not others.

2. Fake the wrap with seamless. If the cyc is too narrow, extend it with a seamless roll dropped from a background stand on one side. You won't get a true cove on that side but for a lot of e-com product work, close enough.

3. Lose the cyc. Paint the wall later in post. Shoot it clean and composite. More work in grade and you lose some of the cyc's lighting benefit — but it gets the shot.

4. Move the subject closer to the wall. Risks cove curve in frame. Sometimes acceptable for lifestyle work where a soft floor gradient looks natural anyway.

None of these are as good as having a cyc that's the right size to start with. Which is why I've become a broken record about asking for the six dimensions above before booking.

A last word on Manchester and Bristol

UK-wide, there's a split worth noting. London has more cycs than anywhere else in Britain but also the most undersized ones marketed as "large." You pay a premium and get 6m x 5m. In Manchester, particularly around Ancoats and New Islington, you get properly large cycs — 9m or 10m wide — for about 60-70% of London rates. Bristol has a couple of excellent large cycs in the harbourside area, again at better rates than equivalent London spaces.

If your shoot allows you to travel, and you've got big subjects, seriously consider going north or west. I've shot a car campaign in an Ancoats studio for about two-thirds of what I'd have paid in Park Royal, in a cyc that was objectively bigger. Crew travel adds a cost, but on a big day it's usually still the right call.

If you want to find properly-sized cycs across the UK with real dimensions listed up front, come browse creativestudiohire.com. Every cyc listing on the site has floor depth and cove radius published, not just width. Because knowing your subject fits is the one job a listing actually needs to do.

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