Staging & Drapes

Truss, decks and draping, with the UK safety rules built in.

About Staging & Drapes

Staging and draping decide what an audience sees before anyone plays a note. These guides cover building a platform that feels solid underfoot and dressing a room so it reads as a stage rather than a function suite.

Portable staging covers modular deck systems: how decks and legs go together, choosing heights for sightlines rather than habit, surfaces and finishes, access including steps and rails, and the practical questions that decide whether a stage gets used, such as how long it takes two people to build and how it stores between jobs. It also covers where a build stops being a straightforward assembly job and becomes work for a competent person.

Pipe and drape covers room dressing. Telescopic uprights and crossbars, base plate weights, and the fabric decision that surprises most first-time buyers: how much fullness a drape needs to hang properly, and how that multiplies the metreage you order. Serge and molton behave differently under light, and the difference matters more than the price gap suggests.

A note on scope. We supply truss, rigging hardware, decks and drape systems, and we publish product specifications and manufacturer documentation with them. We do not publish load figures, span tables or rigging instruction, because those are specific to the structure, the ground and the job, and belong with the rigger or structural engineer signing for the build. Buy the hardware here and take the design decisions from the person responsible for them on site.

The staging, truss, clamps, rigging and drape ranges themselves sit in the Trussing & Staging section of the shop.