Dearest gentle reader, allow AD to reveal how the Regency-era romance came to life
Bridgerton is back and bigger than ever. After the third season of the Shondaland hit wrapped in 2023, it was time for an upgrade. For season four (which drops its final four episodes February 26), the binge-worthy Netflix series was given an expansive, two-acre backlot at Shepperton Studios outside London. But before cameras began rolling, “there was so much to do,” production designer Alison Gartshore tells AD, “and it really pushed the team right to the very limits.”
For starters, the new backlot at Shepperton—which has been operating as a hub for feature films since the early 1930s—had to be intricately designed and constructed to transport actors back in time to Georgian-era England (think horse-drawn carriages trotting down worn cobblestone roads). The task was huge, says Gartshore: “Then we also had to design the Queen’s World set of rooms, which was an absolutely enormous undertaking.”
Bridgerton’s beloved gossip columnist, Lady Whistledown, pulls no punches during social season, when society’s elite bop around to balls and banquets in search of meeting their perfect match, so Gartshore had to prepare for a masquerade like the ones found in fairytales. “I think we increased the number of florals that we used in seasons three and four because they just become part of the language,” she says.
Below, AD reveals other secrets from set, including how hand-painted optical illusions throughout the whimsical Bridgerton universe will have you doing a double take.
Benedict Bridgerton’s bedroom walls were drawn by the production designer herself
Lady Violet Bridgerton (Ruth Gemmell) is determined to marry off her second son, Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson), this social season—and judging by the looks of his disorderly bachelor pad seen at the top of the fourth season’s first episode, that’s going to be quite the task. “He’s never settled on anything,” says Gartshore. “He doesn’t know which way his life is going, and that’s part of the Benedict conundrum—and I think part of his charm as well.”
Gartshore wanted everything about Benedict’s Regency-era man cave to speak to his carefree personality, right down to the wall paneling. After looking through “hundreds and hundreds of paintings” that were cleared for use for the backdrop of Benedict’s bedroom, Gartshore came up empty—so she decided to draw it herself. “I used pastels because they’re quite wild and expressive,” she says. “We blew it up to massive 10-foot-by-4-foot panels, and those are the panels that are behind his bed. I think it worked beautifully well.”
Love is quite literally written in the stars at the masquerade ball
In this season’s Cinderella-like fairytale, Benedict meets Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha) at Lady Bridgerton’s masquerade ball, and while Gartshore wanted the evening to feel mysterious, she didn’t want it venturing off into the macabre. Inspired by William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Gartshore envisioned a whimsical social gathering with plenty of flowers and foliage where the guests appear to be dancing on air.
It wasn’t uncommon for decorative floor cloths to be used in stage productions during the 1800s, so Gartshore felt painting the floor of the Bridgerton ball to depict a sprawling midnight sky was rooted in history. “In the center of the floor you have Cassiopeia painted in stars,” says Gartshore, “which of course is the constellation for love.”
The view from the windows at Queen’s World is actually a photograph of Blenheim Palace
When actors look outside the windows of the “long gallery” at Queen’s World—the spaces owned and occupied by Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel)—they can see a view of Blenheim Palace, a country house in Oxfordshire that has served as a Bridgerton filming location and the exterior of Buckingham House. The landscape of Blenheim was photographed and reprinted as a trans-light backdrop that lights for both night and day, so that scenes can take place at any time.
Trompe l’oeil–style painting is used throughout the set to create optical illusions everywhere
According to Gartshore, showrunner Jess Brownell told the Bridgerton creative team that the theme of the show’s fourth season is “fantasy versus reality,” or daring to dream. “I took that literally into the sets and used a lot of trompe l’oeil work,” says Gartshore.
Directly translated from French to mean “deceives the eye,” trompe l’oeil painting style takes 2D surfaces and transforms them into ones that appear three-dimensional. The long gallery in Queen’s World had each of the 220 panels hand-painted by the team’s in-house illustrator. “It nearly drove everyone mad,” says Gartshore. “The number of pieces that the construction painters had to paste up the columns were so difficult to do because they taper.” Gartshore describes the process as “an absolute nightmare,” but in the end, she says, “They all stood back and went, ‘Wow, now we see the vision.’”
It takes about three months to make a carpet!
Over 30 graphically designed carpets were made for Queen’s World, and the turnaround time to make a carpet for the show is about three months, so Gartshore says it’s one of the first things they design if the space they’re working on requires a carpet.
The fireplaces actually work
While all of the fireplaces on the Bridgerton sets work, Gartshore says they can’t emit noxious fumes. Therefore, the special effects team designed a system for the fireplaces that specifically uses a biofuel that doesn’t give off harmful vapors.
Penwood House’s cream color palette shows just how evil Lady Araminta Gun is
Upon the Earl of Penwood’s death, Lady Araminta Gun (Katie Leung) ordered his illegitimate daughter Sophie to work as a maid at Penwood House, where Gartshore says the countess maintains her “reign of terror.”
The Bridgerton team designed the house in very pale cream colors because Araminta is “such a perfectionist,” says Gartshore. “To portray her stepmother ‘badness,’ as it were, we wanted to give her an entirely cream environment, which would’ve been an absolute nightmare back in the Georgian times to keep clean,” she says, pointing out that’s how and why Araminta has a very busy staff of servants.