ITV News Virtual Set: Thirteen Years of a Single Design

The Brief

‍The colour palette was absolute - two closely related shades of green-blue, specified to precise Pantone references, which had to be translated into convincing architectural materials lit by virtual lighting. That is a considerably more complex proposition than it sounds. A Pantone reference on a flat graphic and the same colour rendered as a real surface under architectural light are entirely different things. Getting them to read as the same required careful calibration of material properties, reflectivity, and lighting intensity across every surface in the studio.

The Design Concept

‍The studio places the physical desk and rostra within a virtual atrium interior - a generous, column-framed space with deeper control room areas visible along its perimeter. With no exterior windows or views, the design relied entirely on architecture and light to establish atmosphere and a sense of scale. The two Pantone shades were deployed deliberately: a subtly warmer version for daytime programmes, shifting to the cooler of the two tones for evening and night broadcasts - a quiet, effective way of marking the rhythm of the news day without changing the fundamental character of the space.

Underlying the entire design was a strict architectural grid - a framework of cladding panels, structural joints, and integrated lighting details that organised every surface in the studio. That grid was not merely decorative. It was the organising principle that made thirteen years of adaptation possible.

A Design That Evolved

‍The original design launched in 2013. Over the years that followed, it was updated and extended multiple times — upper and lower levels were added to support changing show formats, and the space was adapted for major events including national elections, where the additional levels provided the spatial variety and visual interest that extended coverage demands. Each adaptation was made possible by the architectural rigour of the original design. Because every element was organised on a consistent grid, new elements could be introduced, existing ones modified, and the studio reconfigured without the overall coherence of the space being compromised. A less disciplined original design would not have survived a single significant update, let alone more than a decade of them.

A Technical Solution for a Pre-Unreal Engine World

‍The project pre-dates the advent of real-time engines such as Unreal Engine. To achieve both high visual fidelity and strong performance within the technology available at the time, Lightwell developed an innovative approach to building the scene — combining camera reprojection with fully pre-rendered lighting, shadows, and materials embedded directly into the textures mapped onto the geometry. It was a technically demanding solution that produced results indistinguishable from a physically based render, running reliably in a live broadcast environment for over a decade.

The Result

‍The ITV News virtual set broadcast its final programme in January 2026, thirteen years after its launch - a lifespan that speaks for itself. That the original design remained credible, adaptable, and on-air for so long is a direct consequence of the architectural thinking embedded in it from the start. It is perhaps the clearest demonstration in Lightwell's portfolio of what it means to design a virtual set as a real space rather than a decorated backdrop. The design's enduring quality was recognised when the 3D model was subsequently repurposed to provide the animated content now running on the video walls of the new ITV News studio.

Client

ITN/ITV News

Virtual Set Design

Jim Mann, Lightwell

Studio Integration

ITN

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On Air

‍2013 — January 2026

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