Open-Air vs. Enclosed Photo Booths: Which Fits Your Event?
There are two basic shapes of photo booth. An enclosed booth is a box or a kiosk with walls or a curtain, and guests step inside to have their photo taken. An open-air booth is a camera and lighting on a stand facing a backdrop, with nothing around it, so guests stand in the open with the room behind them.
Every booth we run is open-air, so we have a point of view. We will still tell you where an enclosed booth has the edge, so that you can pick the right one for your event rather than the one we happen to own.
Group size
This is the biggest practical difference. An enclosed booth can only take as many people as fit inside it, which is usually a few friends squeezed onto a bench. An open-air booth takes as many as fit in front of the backdrop, and at a wedding or a company party that number grows as the night goes on.
Our backdrops are 7.5 feet square, and we regularly print groups of eight or more when a whole table decides to go in together. Everyone in the frame gets their own print as well, so a big group is never a problem at the printer either.
What ends up behind your guests
An enclosed booth usually comes with whatever is on its back wall. An open-air booth can stand in front of anything, which turns the backdrop into a real choice rather than a fixed feature.
With us, White and Black come with every booth, and the Glam Booth, the AI Booth, and the Keychain Booth include your pick of the whole collection, from White Marble and Champagne Toast to Garden Escape and Rustic Glow. Tell us your colors and your room, and we will send back a short list that suits them. They are all on our backdrops page.
The light
Light is what separates a photo people post from one they delete, and it is where the two shapes can differ the most.
In an enclosed booth the light sits close to the faces in a small space, which can suit two people and struggle with a crowd. An open-air setup has room to place proper lighting at the right distance from the people being photographed. Ours uses studio lighting and professional equipment, which is the reason guests come out looking well rather than washed out, and it lets us light a group of eight evenly instead of lighting the two people nearest the camera.
Privacy, and the nerve to be silly
Here is where an enclosed booth has a genuine advantage. A curtain gives people privacy, and some guests are sillier when the room cannot see them.
An open-air booth works differently. The people waiting in line and the friends watching become part of it, and a group laughing in front of the backdrop is the best advertisement the booth has, because it pulls in the next group. What gets the shy guests to go in is not a curtain but a person. Our attendants walk guests through it, suggest a pose when a group freezes, and make them comfortable enough that they come back for a second and a third round.
Space and setup
Both kinds need a real spot rather than whatever corner is left over. Ours needs eight feet wide, eight feet deep, and eight feet high on level ground, and it runs off battery packs, so there is no outlet to find and no cord across the floor. Some enclosed booths fit a smaller footprint, and if your room is genuinely tight, that is worth weighing.
If you are not sure whether your spot works, send us a photo of it or the floor plan, and we will tell you before you promise it to anyone. Our article on how much space a photo booth needs goes through the details.
Who can use it
An open-air booth has no step, no bench, and no doorway. A guest in a wheelchair, a grandmother who does not want to squeeze onto a seat, a bride in a full gown, and a parent holding a toddler all walk straight in. It sounds like a small thing until you watch three generations of one family step in together and come out with the only photo of all of them from the night.
Can an open-air booth go outside?
Yes, with conditions. Because there is no box around it, an open-air booth depends on the setting more than an enclosed one does. We take outdoor events when there is cover overhead, such as a tent or an overhang, and an indoor backup we can move to if the weather turns, because sun, wind, and rain are hard on the equipment and on the photographs. Tell us the spot you have in mind and we will tell you honestly whether it works.
Questions to ask if you are comparing the two
Whichever shape you are leaning toward, these five questions tell you most of what you need to know about a particular booth.
- How many people fit in one photo?
- Which backdrops are included, and do we get to choose?
- Does everyone in the photo get a print, or is it one per session?
- Is someone with the booth for the whole booking?
- How much floor space and height does it need, and does it need an outlet?
When an enclosed booth is the better call
We would point you toward an enclosed booth when privacy matters more than the size of the groups, such as a party where guests want to be ridiculous without an audience, or when the only space available is too small for an open-air setup and a backdrop. We do not run enclosed booths, so in those cases we would rather say so plainly than try to talk you out of it.
Why we chose open-air
We chose it because of what comes out of it. Big groups in one frame, a backdrop that suits the room, lighting good enough that people post the photo before the night is over, and a booth that feels like part of the party rather than a box in the corner.
Which of ours fits your event
All four of our booths are open-air, and they differ in what your guests walk away with.
- The Keychain Booth. A second station seals each guest’s photo into a real keychain while they wait.
- The AI Booth. Guests can be redrawn as a watercolor, a pencil sketch, or a caricature, and they keep the real photo either way. Here is what an AI photo booth actually does.
- The Glam Booth. Studio lighting and a skin smoothing finish, in color, black and white, or both.
- The Classic Booth. The 2×6 strip on a black or white backdrop.
Each one starts with three hours, an attendant for the whole booking, a print for every person in the photo, and a print designed for your event. See them side by side on our pricing page, or tell us about the event and we will tell you which one we would put in the room.
