What a studio design plan covers
Our broadcast studio design service produces three linked documents: a floor layout, an acoustic treatment plan and a cabling schedule. They are written to be read together, because a decision in one nearly always changes the others. Moving a presenter desk by a metre alters camera positions, which alters where floor boxes need to sit and how far a microphone feed has to travel.
The work scales from a small news set with two cameras to a multi-camera floor with a separate control room. In every case we begin from the programme you actually make, not from a standard template. A daily bulletin, a weekly discussion show and a studio audience entertainment format place very different demands on the same square footage.
- Floor layout with camera, set and crew positions
- Acoustic treatment plan for walls, ceiling and floor
- Cabling schedule with routes, labels and spare capacity
Layout begins with the schedule, not the drawing
Before anyone draws a wall, we ask how a typical production day runs. How long does the set take to turn around between programmes? How many people are on the floor during a recording, and where do they need to stand? Answers like these decide whether the studio feels calm or cramped once it is in use.
From there we place cameras, set pieces and lighting positions with proper clearances for operators, cable runs and movement during live transmission. We mark sight lines between the presenter, the autocue and the floor manager, since a layout that looks neat on paper can leave a floor manager unable to see talent during a live link. Doors, loading routes and escape paths are drawn in from the first sketch rather than added at the end.
Acoustics: controlling the room before the microphones
A studio that sounds poor cannot be rescued by better microphones. Our acoustic plans look first at reverberation, then at isolation from outside noise and from the building's own services such as ventilation and lighting dimmers. We describe the treatment in plain terms: where absorbent panels go, where the ceiling needs attention, and which surfaces should stay hard for the sake of the set.
We also consider what is audible at the microphone positions, not just the room's overall character. A news desk, a music corner and an audience area can sit in the same room and still need different treatment. Where an existing space has fixed limits, we explain what can realistically be achieved and what would need a larger change to the building.
- Reverberation and absorption targets by area
- Noise from air handling and lighting equipment
- Separation between studio and control room
Cabling plans that stay readable for years
Cabling is the part of a studio nobody sees, and the part engineers curse when it is done badly. Our schedules give every run a route, a label and a purpose, with video, audio, data and power kept apart where interference would otherwise cause faults. We include spare capacity, because a studio that is fully patched on the day it opens has no room to grow.
The schedule is written so that someone who did not take part in the installation can follow it. Labelling conventions are agreed with your technical staff early, and the final document records what was actually installed rather than what was first drawn. That habit saves long afternoons of tracing cables when a fault appears during a busy week.
What we ask you to settle before we start
A short list of decisions makes the design work faster and the result better. We ask for the programme formats you expect to make, the number of cameras now and in the near future, the rough size of the crew on the floor, and any fixed constraints in the building such as ceiling height, structural columns or existing cable routes.
It also helps to tell us who will maintain the studio afterwards. A plan written for an in-house engineering team looks different from one written for a facility that relies on visiting technicians. If some answers are not yet known, that is fine; we note the open points in the plan and show which parts of the design depend on them.
- Programme formats and how often each is recorded
- Camera count now and planned
- Building constraints and existing infrastructure
How the work is delivered
Delivery is a written pack: drawings, the acoustic plan and the cabling schedule, with a covering note that explains the main decisions and the reasons behind them. We go through it with your producers and technical staff in a call or a meeting in Norwich, and revise it where the discussion turns up something we had not understood.
Pricing for studio design depends on the size of the floor, the number of cameras and the amount of existing infrastructure we need to survey. The prices page gives the figures and explains what changes them. Enquiries come through the contact page, and we reply with a written quotation before any work is agreed.
Good studio design is mostly careful listening followed by clear documents. If you are planning a new floor or reworking an existing one, send us a short description of your programmes and your building through the contact page, and we will tell you what a design pack would cover and what it would cost.