2b:I[31964,["5953","static/chunks/app/blog/%5Bslug%5D/page-940075dea53b52c0.js?dpl=dpl_7wTZEAozwjNKEr629g33EVN598L1"],"ViewTracker"] 2c:I[2197,["5953","static/chunks/app/blog/%5Bslug%5D/page-940075dea53b52c0.js?dpl=dpl_7wTZEAozwjNKEr629g33EVN598L1"],"SafeImage"] 2d:T1fee,

I shot a small brand campaign in Brighton last autumn — client was based there, wanted everything local — and I went in expecting to settle for whatever was available. Came out genuinely impressed by two of the studios I found, and mildly baffled by a few others that seemed to exist primarily to confuse people searching online. Brighton's not London. The studio inventory is small. But there are good rooms here, and if you know which postcodes to look in, you'll find kit-ready spaces at rates that would make Hackney weep.

Here's the honest picture for 2026.

Where the studios actually are in Brighton

There's a loose geographic split in Brighton's studio scene. The industrial parts of the city — Portslade, Moulsecoomb, the Ellen Street area — tend to house the larger, purpose-built spaces. Better power, loading access, sometimes a proper cyclorama. These are the spaces that attract commercial photographers and small production companies. The creative quarters — Kemptown, North Laine, parts of Hanover — have smaller, more lifestyle-oriented studios: daylight rooms, lifestyle sets, the kind of spaces that work brilliantly for portrait and editorial but don't have the infrastructure for a full lighting rig.

The mistake I see people make is booking a North Laine studio when they need a commercial setup — then discovering on the day that the power's two 13A sockets and the ceiling's 2.6m. And the reverse: booking a Portslade industrial unit when they're shooting intimate editorial portraits and finding themselves in a 400sqm warehouse with no ambience whatsoever.

Portslade: the commercial end of the market

Portslade is where Brighton's production infrastructure lives. Converted industrial units, mostly — the kind you'd recognise from Hackney Wick or parts of Park Royal, but cheaper and with significantly easier parking. Access from the A27 is straightforward, which matters for kit deliveries and grip trucks that won't fit down North Laine's side streets.

Rates for well-equipped Portslade studios in 2026 are running at roughly £55–85/hr depending on size and kit included. For context: a comparable room in Hackney Wick runs £80–120/hr. Day rates in Portslade tend to start around £350–500 for an eight-hour booking at smaller studios, up to £700–900 for the larger cyclorama-equipped rooms. Those day rates include the space; kit hire, if available, is extra.

Power is generally more usable here than in the central Brighton creative spaces. Most of the converted industrial units I've looked at have at least 32A single-phase available in the main studio area, and some have three-phase supply, particularly those in the Port of Shoreham industrial cluster just west of Portslade proper. If three-phase matters for your shoot — and for any serious lighting package, it does — ask specifically, don't assume.

Loading access is genuinely good in Portslade. Multiple studios have either drive-through access or at minimum a level rollout from an accessible car park. I've managed to deliver and rig a full lighting package to a Portslade studio in under ninety minutes, which is not something I can say about every Hackney address I've worked at.

Kemptown and the creative quarter studios

Kemptown's studios are a different world from Portslade. Smaller, almost always daylight-first, frequently with lifestyle props and furniture — kitchen sets, living room areas, that sort of thing. Ceiling heights are typically 2.8–3.4m, which is fine for portrait and lifestyle work, tight for anything involving overhead rigging.

Rates here start lower: £35–60/hr for the smaller rooms, £50–80/hr for anything with a genuine lifestyle set or a reasonably proportioned daylight space. But you're usually buying the aesthetic and the natural light rather than technical infrastructure. If that's what the shoot needs — and a lot of Brighton client briefs, particularly the D2C and lifestyle brands clustered in the city, do need that — then these are genuinely lovely rooms to work in.

The catch with Kemptown studio access is parking and loading. It's a residential and tourist area. Parking on shoot day is a logistical exercise. For anything involving more than a couple of bags of kit, I'd budget time for finding a loading space or arrange a parking permit through the studio in advance. The studios that've been running there for a while know the workarounds — ask.

What Brighton has that London doesn't

A few things genuinely stand out about Brighton for studio bookings. First: the booking process at smaller studios is much more human. You're generally dealing directly with the studio owner, not a booking platform, and there's flexibility in how you structure the day — a two-hour pre-light the evening before at a reduced rate, say, or a prop-prep hour on the morning before the full booking starts. In London, studios large enough to bother with that tend to have fixed block pricing and no flexibility whatsoever.

Second: if your client or talent is based in Brighton and south-coast adjacent, the logistics of a Brighton shoot are just simpler. No commuting into London with kit. No parking logistics in Zone 2. Crew from Brighton and Hove, talent who can walk to set — that changes the mood of the day.

Third: some of the Portslade industrial studios have access to sea-facing exterior space. Not many. But for brand content that wants a coastal aesthetic without the planning chaos of an actual beach, having controlled studio space five minutes from the seafront is a real thing. I've used it twice for automotive and lifestyle content. It works.

Where Brighton struggles as a studio market

Honestly: the top end of what you can get here doesn't match what London's best commercial studios offer. There's no Brighton equivalent of a 20m wide cyclorama with 100-amp three-phase and a motorised grid. The infrastructure just isn't here for productions needing that level of specification. For large-scale car photography, broadcast commercial work, productions requiring the kind of rigging that needs a proper structural survey — Brighton is not the right answer. Drive the hour and a half to London and do it properly.

Also worth knowing: the studio ecosystem here is small, so when busy periods hit — Christmas content season, summer lifestyle campaigns — availability dries up fast. Book early or plan around it. A studio that had open availability in February might be fully booked by April for every Saturday through August. That's a relatively new problem; the demand has grown faster than the supply.

My honest 2026 assessment

Brighton works well for: portrait and editorial shoots, lifestyle and D2C brand content, anything where the client is south-coast based and you want to avoid the London logistics overhead, product work that doesn't need a large cyclorama, and any brief where a slightly rough-round-the-edges industrial aesthetic plays to your advantage rather than against it.

It doesn't work as well for: large commercial productions with serious lighting package requirements, any shoot where you need a 20-amp minimum per circuit in multiple positions, car or large-product photography that requires a proper cyc, or anything where you need the talent and crew talent pool that London concentrates in one city.

For the right brief, a well-chosen Brighton studio is a genuinely good day. I'd book back. I would just pick the studio the way I pick studios in any city — not by Google impression, but by calling the manager, asking the right questions, and going to look before I commit.

You can browse Brighton studios listed on Creative Studio Hire to get a sense of what's currently available and at what rates. It's a useful starting map, though inventory here is thinner than in London — which is an accurate reflection of the market, not a gap in the listing.

20:["$","div",null,{"className":"container mx-auto px-4 py-8","children":["$","div",null,{"className":"grid grid-cols-1 lg:grid-cols-3 gap-8","children":[["$","article",null,{"className":"lg:col-span-2","children":[["$","$L2b",null,{"postId":"f442fc8d-229f-4329-8ff8-279bb5720c19"}],["$","div",null,{"className":"relative w-full h-96 mb-8 rounded-lg overflow-hidden bg-gray-100","children":["$","$L2c",null,{"src":"https://zleegsldkizzjytljdor.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/blog-images/photography-studio-hire-brighton-2026-1780895999273.png","alt":"Photography studio hire in Brighton: Portslade, Kemptown and 2026 rates","fill":true,"priority":true,"className":"object-cover","fallbackClassName":"w-full h-full flex items-center justify-center"}]}],["$","header",null,{"className":"mb-8","children":[["$","div",null,{"className":"flex flex-wrap gap-2 mb-4","children":[["$","$L15","5c376041-5bd3-4e0d-8a5a-24f7d319c901",{"href":"/blog/categories/location-guides","className":"text-xs font-medium bg-indigo-100 text-indigo-800 px-3 py-1 rounded-full hover:bg-indigo-200 transition","children":"Location Guides"}]]}],["$","h1",null,{"className":"text-3xl sm:text-4xl font-bold text-gray-900 mb-4","children":"Photography studio hire in Brighton: Portslade, Kemptown and 2026 rates"}],["$","div",null,{"className":"flex flex-wrap items-center text-sm text-gray-600 mb-4","children":[["$","time",null,{"dateTime":"2026-06-10T08:00:00+00:00","children":"June 10, 2026"}],["$","span",null,{"className":"mx-2","children":"•"}],["$","span",null,{"children":[0," views"]}]]}],["$","p",null,{"className":"text-xl text-gray-600 border-l-4 border-indigo-500 pl-4 italic","children":"Brighton's studio scene is thinner than London but sharper than you'd expect. Here's where I'd book in 2026 — with honest rates and a few surprises."}]]}],["$","div",null,{"className":"prose prose-lg max-w-none prose-headings:font-bold prose-h1:text-3xl prose-h2:text-2xl prose-h3:text-xl prose-h4:text-lg prose-p:my-4 prose-a:text-indigo-600 prose-a:no-underline hover:prose-a:underline prose-img:rounded-lg prose-li:my-2","children":["$","div",null,{"dangerouslySetInnerHTML":{"__html":"$2d"}}]}],"$L2e","$L2f"]}],"$L30"]}]}] 23:null 27:[["$","title","0",{"children":"Photography studio hire in Brighton: Portslade, Kemptown and 2026 rates | Studio Directory Blog"}],["$","meta","1",{"name":"description","content":"Brighton's studio scene is thinner than London but sharper than you'd expect. Here's where I'd book in 2026 — with honest rates and a few surprises."}],["$","meta","2",{"name":"author","content":"CreativeStudioHire"}],["$","meta","3",{"name":"keywords","content":"photography studio rental, video production studio, creative studio space, studio rental near me, photo studio for rent, film studio rental, podcast studio, content creation space"}],["$","meta","4",{"name":"creator","content":"CreativeStudioHire"}],["$","meta","5",{"name":"publisher","content":"CreativeStudioHire"}],["$","meta","6",{"name":"robots","content":"index, follow"}],["$","meta","7",{"name":"googlebot","content":"index, follow, max-video-preview:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-snippet:-1"}],["$","link","8",{"rel":"canonical","href":"https://creativestudiohire.com"}],["$","meta","9",{"name":"format-detection","content":"telephone=no, address=no, email=no"}],["$","meta","10",{"property":"og:title","content":"Photography studio hire in Brighton: Portslade, Kemptown and 2026 rates | Studio Directory Blog"}],["$","meta","11",{"property":"og:description","content":"Brighton's studio scene is thinner than London but sharper than you'd expect. Here's where I'd book in 2026 — with honest rates and a few surprises."}],["$","meta","12",{"property":"og:image","content":"https://zleegsldkizzjytljdor.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/blog-images/photography-studio-hire-brighton-2026-1780895999273.png"}],["$","meta","13",{"name":"twitter:card","content":"summary_large_image"}],["$","meta","14",{"name":"twitter:creator","content":"@creativestudiohire"}],["$","meta","15",{"name":"twitter:title","content":"Photography & Video Studio Rentals | CreativeStudioHire"}],["$","meta","16",{"name":"twitter:description","content":"Find and book creative studios for your next project. Direct booking with studio owners. No platform fees."}],["$","meta","17",{"name":"twitter:image","content":"https://creativestudiohire.com/twitter-image.jpg"}]]