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Right, so what are we actually talking about?

Dry hire vs wet hire is one of those distinctions that bites photographers who've only ever booked through Peerspace or Giggster. You see a price, the studio looks great in the photos, you turn up on the day and discover the lights aren't included. That's dry hire. It's not a scam — it's a completely different product from what you assumed you'd booked. Knowing the difference before you hit checkout will save you a morning of panic calls to a kit-hire house.

So. Dry hire: you're paying for the space. Wet hire: you're paying for the space plus the gear. Simple enough in theory. In practice, the definitions bleed into each other, the marketing copy is often vague, and what counts as "fully equipped" varies so wildly between studios that it's almost meaningless as a search term.

Here's how to think about it.

What dry hire covers — and what it doesn't

Dry hire means you're renting the four walls, the floor, and the power supply. In most London dry-hire studios in 2026, that includes:

The studio footprint, as advertised in square metres
Mains power — usually 13-amp BS 1363 sockets, sometimes 16-amp or 32-amp commando sockets, occasionally 3-phase (100-amp) if the studio supports it
Basic utilities: heating or air-con, wi-fi, running water, toilets
Sometimes a white cyclorama or seamless background infrastructure — the actual paper or vinyl may be extra
Sometimes a changing area or green room, sometimes not

What you won't get: flash heads, continuous lights, light stands, modifiers (softboxes, octaboxes, beauty dishes, scrims), grip equipment, C-stands, sandbags, cables, backgrounds beyond the cyc. Nothing that counts as kit, basically.

If you shoot e-commerce with a Profoto B10X Plus and you own your full setup — heads, modifiers, stands, the lot — dry hire is almost always the right call. You're paying purely for floor space. That's often the best use of your budget, because you know exactly what you're getting and you're not paying for someone else's ageing Elinchrom kit that you wouldn't choose to shoot with anyway.

What wet hire actually adds

Wet hire puts a gear package on top of the floor rate. The contents vary enormously — and this is where the confusion lives. A wet-hire package at a budget studio in Walthamstow might mean two Godox AD600 heads, a 60cm softbox, and a roll of white seamless. A wet-hire package at a properly equipped Hackney Wick or Shoreditch studio might mean:

Three or four Profoto Pro-11 or Profoto D2 heads with a full modifier suite — Profoto 3ft Octa, 5ft Octa, RFi strip lights, a beauty dish
A boom arm and multiple C-stand setups
Arri SkyPanel S30-C or S60-C LED panels on a ceiling rig for fill and background work
Multiple seamless paper rolls in white, grey, and black
Grip: sandbags, flags, frames, scrim frames

That's wet hire done properly. And it genuinely changes what you can shoot without bringing a full gear car across London.

The maths — what UK studios are actually charging

Rough London benchmarks for the second half of 2026:

Dry hire, 100–200 sqm studio: £80–£120/hour. Half-day (four hours): roughly £280–£420. Full day (eight hours): £500–£750.

Wet hire — a studio's in-house basic kit package on top: expect to add £40–£90/hour on a standard package. A premium wet-hire setup (Profoto D2 or Pro-11 heads, full modifier suite, LED panels, grip) can add £120–£200/hour to the floor rate.

So a full-day dry hire at £550 becomes a full-day wet hire at £700–£900 depending on the studio's kit quality.

Compare that with renting externally. A two-head Profoto B10X kit from a UK kit house in 2026 runs about £150–£220 per day. If you need HMI or heavy-duty LED — an Arri SkyPanel S60-C is roughly £180–£260/day from most hire houses — you're stacking costs fast. Wet hire from a well-equipped studio, at the right price point, can undercut separate kit hire by a meaningful margin.

For car photography, automotive shoots, or anything requiring 6kW+ of flash power, it's a different calculation. Studios that do proper car work rarely include that level of kit in a wet-hire package. You'll almost always bring your own or hire it specifically.

It's not just about the gear

This point gets missed. Wet-hire studios that run properly tend to have a studio manager on-site. Not just a keybox code and a WhatsApp number. An actual person who knows the kit and can deal with problems as they occur.

I've had a Profoto head go into a fault mode mid-shoot on a dry-hire self-access job in Tottenham. Eleven in the morning, client in the room, nowhere near the end of my half-day slot. The studio's response time on the mobile was forty minutes. In a properly staffed wet-hire studio, someone swaps the head in five minutes and the shoot continues.

That on-site manager is part of what you're paying for in wet hire. It's not always worth the premium. But on a commercial job with a client present and a one-day window, it's worth factoring in.

The flip side is that wet-hire studios with staff often have more rules. No smoke machines. No glitter. Strictly no confetti. The self-access dry-hire space in Park Royal has no one watching the door — useful if you're shooting something experimental that a staffed studio might push back on.

Which platforms tend to list which

Peerspace and Giggster are both weighted towards dry hire and self-access bookings. The marketplace model — where hosts list independently and manage their own spaces — doesn't translate well to managing kit packages at scale. A Peerspace host listing a studio with their own Godox kit is a different proposition from a managed wet-hire operation, and the fee structures reflect that: Peerspace charges hosts 20% on each booking, Giggster takes 19%. Both charge guests a separate processing fee on top.

That margin is baked into every platform booking on both sides. It's one reason why going direct to the studio — particularly for half-day or full-day wet-hire bookings — can save meaningful money. A studio that would list at £120/hour on Peerspace might offer the same space at £98/hour direct, knowing neither party is giving the platform a cut.

If you specifically need a wet-hire studio, I'd start with a direct enquiry rather than a platform booking. Email or call ahead of time, ask exactly what's in the package, and ask what happens if something fails during the shoot. The answers tell you a lot.

Questions to ask before you commit

Whether you're going dry or wet, there are things to confirm before you hand over a deposit:

Is the kit package current and in working order? Not all studios maintain their gear to the same standard. Ask when the heads were last serviced. Ask if there's a spare head on-site. If they can't answer those questions, that's a signal.

What's the power situation? For dry hire, ask specifically about socket types and maximum draw. 13-amp sockets only? That limits you to around 3kW per circuit. Commando sockets or 3-phase means you can run heavy HMI or tungsten without tripping the board.

Are consumables included? Seamless paper, gels, gaffer tape — some wet-hire studios include these, some charge per roll. Find out before you're standing in front of a torn backdrop twenty minutes into a shoot.

What's the loading situation? Dry-hire jobs with your own kit often involve a gear car, trolleys, cases. Is there a loading bay? Is there a lift? Car parking? These aren't small things when you're moving 200kg of equipment.

What happens if something fails mid-shoot? The answer reveals how the studio actually operates. "We have a spare head on-site and a manager here all day" is very different from "You can call our technician and they'll try to get there within the hour."

Hybrid arrangements — more common than you'd think

Here's something that doesn't get mentioned much: you can often negotiate a partial kit inclusion on a nominally dry-hire booking. Some studios will throw in light stands and a reflector kit, or one or two modifiers, without charging the full wet-hire premium. Particularly if you're booking a longer slot or coming back regularly.

Ask. The worst they can say is that the kit isn't available on dry hire. But I've had studios in Deptford and Dalston include their full grip department — C-stands, sandbags, flags — for nothing extra on a full-day booking, just because I asked and they weren't using it for anything else that day. There's no menu for this kind of thing. It's a conversation.

The studios that are willing to do this are usually the ones that genuinely understand what photographers need, rather than the ones running a rigid pricing structure off a booking platform.

The honest version

Dry hire is not worse than wet hire. It's not a budget compromise. For photographers who own their kit, dry hire is almost always the cleaner arrangement — you control the gear, you know exactly what you've got, and you're not paying for lights you wouldn't choose anyway.

Wet hire makes sense when you're travelling without kit, when the studio's package is genuinely well-specified, when you're on a tight turnaround and can't organise a kit hire separately, or when you're producing a client quote and an all-in number makes the booking simpler to approve.

The mistake people make is booking a wet-hire studio assuming the kit package matches the quality of the space. It often doesn't. Always ask for the spec before you commit, always confirm what the backup plan is if something fails, and always clarify what's included in the price vs what's charged extra.

Get all of that right and the distinction between dry and wet is just a logistics question, not a gamble.

Browse dry-hire and wet-hire photography studios across the UK at Creative Studio Hire — filter by kit included, power supply, and location before you book.

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