Why a lighting fee is not one number
People often ask for a single figure for lighting a studio, and the honest answer starts with a question back: what is being lit, and by whom? A single news desk with one presenter is a different job from an interview set that changes between guests, and both differ from a live show with a band, an audience and a moving presenter.
At nativelo, Lighting Design covers lighting plans for news desks, interview sets and live shows, balancing look, power and crew time. Those three things carry the price. Look is the design effort. Power is the survey and the load calculation. Crew time is the part most clients forget, because a plan that takes two people an afternoon to rig and strike every day quietly costs far more than the fee on the quotation.
The fee we quote is therefore built from the size and complexity of the set, the state of the room, and how much of the plan must be handed over so your own crew can maintain it without us.
- Look: how many camera positions and how many looks the set needs
- Power: what the room and the supply can actually carry
- Crew time: how long the rig takes to set, adjust and strike
The size and shape of the set
The first driver is the set itself. A fixed news desk against a single backdrop can often be solved with a compact plan: key, fill, back light and a wash on the background, positioned once and left alone. Cost stays modest because there is little to decide and little that moves.
Add a second location in the same studio, a standing interview area or a sofa position, and every addition needs its own balance against the others. Lights spill, shadows from one area land in another, and cameras see more of the room. The design work grows faster than the floor area does.
Live shows push this further. Presenters walk between positions, guests arrive mid-programme, and the director may want a wide shot that shows the whole floor. Each of those wishes has to be lit without harming the others, and that is where drawing time, test time and rehearsal time accumulate. We ask for a rough floor sketch and the camera positions early, because they tell us more about the price than any description in words.
Power, rigging and the room you already have
The second driver is the building. Lighting rigs draw real current, and a studio with a modest supply may force a choice between more lamps and fewer. Part of our work is a power survey: how many circuits, what each can carry, and what else shares them, such as monitors, air conditioning and the gallery equipment.
Ceiling height and rigging points matter just as much. A room with a proper grid lets lamps hang where the plan wants them. A room with a low ceiling and no grid needs stands, clamps or a purpose-built bar, and each of these changes both the look and the labour. Cable runs add to it, particularly where they cross walkways.
If the room is new to us, a site visit is included in the quotation as a separate line, so you can see what the survey costs apart from the design. Clients who send photographs, the electrical supply details and ceiling measurements beforehand usually shorten that visit and keep the total lower.
- Available circuits and the load they can safely carry
- Grid, bars or stands: what the ceiling allows
- Cable routes and trip hazards on the studio floor
Existing lamps, new lamps and who rigs it
Many clients already own lamps, and a good plan uses them. Designing around existing fixtures lowers your spend on equipment, but it can lengthen the design, because we must work within what those lamps can and cannot do. Colour temperature, dimming and beam control vary between fixtures, and mixing old and new needs care so skin tones stay consistent across cameras.
Where new fixtures are advised, we set out the options and the reasoning, and you decide. We do not sell lamps, so the advice does not depend on what is in a catalogue. The purchase is yours, and we can check the delivered equipment against the plan.
The last question is who does the rigging. Some clients want the plan on paper and rig it with their own crew. Others ask us to attend the first rig and adjust on the day. Attendance is priced by the day, and a handover session for your crew is a separate, fixed item rather than something that stretches the design fee.
What a quotation from us contains
After you contact us through the form, we reply in writing, usually asking a few questions about the set, the room and the programmes. We then send a written quotation that lists each part separately: survey or site visit, design and drawings, any attendance on the rig day, and the handover session. You can remove a part and see what the total does.
The plan itself normally includes a lighting layout, a fixture list, a power summary and notes on levels for each camera position. We would rather you could read it and challenge it than receive a tidy folder you cannot adapt later.
Payment follows the usual route on this site: you confirm the quotation in writing, we issue an invoice, and you pay by bank transfer. Cancellations and refunds follow the payment and refund policy. The price page shows current figures for each service, and the quotation is what binds us to a number for your job.
- Itemised lines so each part can be added or dropped
- Layout, fixture list, power summary and camera notes
- Written confirmation, then an invoice paid by bank transfer
Keeping the cost sensible without cutting the result
Most savings come from decisions made before we start, not from rushing the design. Fix the number of looks you need and resist adding one for a single programme. Tell us which camera angles are non-negotiable, and which are a nice idea. Decide early whether the set stays up or is struck each day, because daily rigging changes almost every other choice.
It also helps to light for the room you will have in a year, not only today. A plan with a clear way to add a position later usually costs less than a redesign, and it keeps the crew from improvising lamps that undo the balance.
What we advise against is trimming the survey. A lighting plan that ignores the power supply or the ceiling tends to come back as extra site time, which is the most expensive way to find out. Spending a little on understanding the room first is usually the cheapest part of the job.
The price of lighting design follows the set, the room and the crew who will live with it, not a flat rate. Share a floor sketch, photographs of the ceiling and the supply details, and say how often the set changes. With those, a written quotation can be itemised and understood line by line, and you can decide what to keep, what to drop and what to leave for later.