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Southampton has a genuinely odd studio scene. Big enough city — half a million if you count the conurbation — to support proper production. Far enough from London that the Soho-spillover hasn't really happened. The result: a handful of decent studios, a lot of half-conversions in industrial estates, and almost no honest information online about which is which.

I've shot down here maybe a dozen times in the last three years. Cars at the docks. A skincare brand in a daylight loft near Ocean Village. A short doc piece in a converted warehouse out toward Eastleigh. Each booking I've had to start from scratch, because the search results are dominated by marketing puff and Hampshire's wedding venues filtered in for SEO reasons.

So here's the working list — what's good, what's mid, what to skip, and where Southampton is genuinely competitive with London on price.

Why book in Southampton at all

Three reasons, in order of how much they actually save you money:

One. The £/sqft is genuinely lower. Not Manchester-low, but a 200sqm cyc room that'd be £140/hr in Park Royal lands at £75–£95/hr in Southampton's industrial belt. For multi-day shoots that's the difference between hitting budget and not.

Two. Loading is easier. Most of the studios are in low-rise estate units with their own forecourt. No multi-storey lift queues, no Westway congestion charge, no parking-and-load-from-50-yards-away nonsense. You can drive a Luton van through the door at most of them.

Three. The crew pool is small but real. Camera ops, gaffers, stylists — all here, all competitive on day rates because there's less work locally than in London. If you're producing a one-day commercial, you can crew it without dragging anyone down the M3.

The downside: catering, prop houses, hire shops are thin. If you need a rare lens or a dressing rail at 10am, you're either driving to Bournemouth or Reading, or you're driving to London. Pre-light kit lists matter more here.

The studios I actually use

Around Ocean Village and the waterfront

There's a small cluster of daylight loft-style spaces in the converted dock buildings. Big windows, mostly south-and-west facing (so harsh midday in summer — bring scrim or shoot mornings). Ceilings of 3–3.5m. Good for fashion lookbooks, lifestyle, small-team commercial.

Pricing as of early 2026 sits at £55–£85/hr for a roughly 80sqm space, with full-day rates landing at £400–£550. Half-days are usually four hours and run £200–£300. Most places do a one-hour minimum but bigger commercial bookings get a four-hour floor.

The catch: parking on the waterfront is a nightmare. Factor in £15–£25/day per crew vehicle in NCP, or pre-book the studio's allocated bays where you can.

Industrial estates: Nursling, Eastleigh, Millbrook

This is where the bigger production work happens. Drive-in units, 5–7m ceilings in some of them, three-phase power, decent floors. The Nursling and Millbrook estates have at least three units I'd happily shoot a car or motorcycle in.

You're paying £75–£120/hr for a properly-kitted unit with a small infinity cyc and basic grip. Day rates of £600–£950 are realistic. The £/sqft economics suddenly make sense when you compare to Park Royal — about 35–40% cheaper for similar space.

Power is the question worth asking. A typical industrial unit gives you 32A single phase as standard. If you need to run an Aputure 600d Pro plus a hair light plus monitors plus a coffee machine, you're at the edge. The 600d Pro draws up to 720W on its own — call it 3A — but stack three of those plus modelling lamps plus heaters in winter and you'll trip a 32A circuit faster than you think. Anything bigger and you want 100A 3-phase, which a couple of the Eastleigh units do offer.

Eastleigh and the airport edge

Slightly cheaper again because you're basically in Hampshire countryside. Useful for car shoots that need outdoor backdrops as well as a workshop space, and for any production that needs to fly crew in via Southampton Airport.

The flight angle is real — I had a Berlin DP for a watch piece last summer and we worked out it was cheaper for him to fly direct into Southampton than Heathrow plus a train. Shaved half a day off prep.

What Southampton isn't good for

Big-cyc fashion. The biggest cyc I know of locally is around 9m wide — fine for a single figure or a pair, useless for an editorial group of six. For that you're going to London or Bristol.

Anything that needs a serious prop house. Studio props is mostly a London game; the local hire shops here are camera and grip, not lifestyle objects. For a kitchen shoot you'd be schlepping props from London and that ruins the cost saving.

Late-night work. Most of the industrial estates have lease conditions that limit out-of-hours noise and access. A 10pm wrap is fine. A 2am wrap with a generator running outside isn't going to work in Nursling.

Booking direct vs platform

Same dynamic as anywhere — most of the better Southampton spaces are listed on Peerspace at a 20% commission-loaded rate. The host service fee comes out of their payout, but they price for it, so you're paying it indirectly.

About half of them have a direct website. Worth a five-minute search. Last year I got a 12% discount on a four-day booking by emailing the owner with the dates and asking if there was a direct rate. Took thirty seconds and saved enough to cover one day of crew lunch.

For genuinely tiny one-off owners — somebody's converted boat-shed in Hamble, that kind of thing — you're going to find them via Instagram, word of mouth, or a regional listing site. Not via Peerspace.

Costs at a glance

Rough 2026 numbers from my last six bookings down here:

A 60sqm daylight loft for a fashion lookbook, six-hour minimum: £420 plus £30 cleaning fee plus parking. Came out at about £75/hr all-in.

A 180sqm drive-in unit with a 6m white cyc for a car shoot, full day with overtime: £950 for ten hours, plus a £200 cyc repaint at end of shoot (we marked it). About £115/hr.

A small product table studio with strobes and a tethering desk, half-day: £180 for four hours. £45/hr.

Compared to equivalent London bookings I was running last year, that's roughly a 30–40% saving on space cost alone. Crew rates are similar — the day rate for a competent local gaffer is £350–£450, basically London-equivalent — but the savings stack.

The case for and against

For: cheaper space, easier loading, less travel for any south coast clients, good airport connections, a small but real crew pool.

Against: thin prop and hire ecosystem, limited big-cyc options, you'll burn time chasing kit that'd be a 20-minute Uber in central London.

For most one-day commercials, lookbooks, product days, and smaller car shoots, Southampton works. For a multi-day fashion campaign with a fifteen-person crew and a prop house refresh every morning, you're still going to London. That's the honest split.

What's coming

There's been talk of a bigger production complex going into one of the disused docklands sites — I'll believe it when I shoot in it. Until then, the city's studio scene is what it is: small, useful, often invisible if you're searching from London.

If you're trying to find something specific in Southampton or the wider south coast, the studio listings on creativestudiohire.com cover the area with direct contact — no platform commission baked in, and you can actually filter by ceiling height and load-in access. That's the bit the big platforms still don't do well outside London.

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