The empty set of a doctor's waiting room is just four walls and a door. By the next morning there are plastic chairs with one wobbly leg, a stack of old magazines, a dying plant and a poster about flu jabs that has been there too long. Nobody in the audience will look at any of it consciously, but they will believe the room. The set decorator is the person who chooses, finds and places everything inside a set.
What a set decorator does
The set decorator works for the production designer and starts in pre-production, once the sets and locations are known. For each space they build a picture of the people who live or work there and then source the dressing (furniture, lamps, curtains, rugs, pictures, clutter). Some of it is hired from prop houses, some bought, some made, and some borrowed.
The decorator leads a team of buyers and set dressers. The dressers move everything in, place it to the decorator's plan and take it out again after the shoot. The decorator stays in close contact with the director of photography, because lamps and windows on a set are often also light sources, and with the location manager when a real house has to be emptied and redressed.
Responsibilities
- Research the period, place and characters for every set
- Source furniture and dressing through hire, purchase or making
- Lead the buyers and set dressers
- Dress each set before the shoot day and keep it consistent between takes and days
- Agree with the props master which objects are dressing and which are props the actors use
- Return hired items and keep track of damage and losses
- Manage the set dressing budget
How the role touches the budget
Clearly. Set dressing is usually its own line in the art department budget, and the decorator spends it. Hire fees, purchases, transport, storage and the dressing crew all come out of it. Hire is charged per week, so a set that stays up longer than planned costs more. A good decorator keeps a running list of what is hired, what is bought and what has been returned, because losses and late returns show up later in the cost report.
How people become set decorators
Most start as set dressers or art department assistants and become buyers before they decorate their own productions. A background in interior design, antiques, theatre or styling is common. A sharp eye for period detail and a large network of prop houses and dealers matter as much as formal training.
Set decorator or set dresser?
The titles are close but different. The decorator decides what goes in the room. Set dressers carry it in and place it. On smaller productions there may be no separate decorator, and the art director or production designer takes on the dressing as well.