Alternatives To Traditional Scaffolding & Gantry (With Photo Examples)

When people think of scaffolding, they often imagine heavy, industrial metal poles, dark walkways, and restricted street space. While functional, traditional scaffolding and gantry can block storefronts, limit accessibility, and diminish the overall customer experience.

Urban Umbrella™ offers a completely new and different approach - one that combines safety and practicality with aesthetics, brand visibility, marketing opportunities, and customer convenience. Designed to replace outdated, unsightly structures, Urban Umbrella’s city-approved scaffolding alternative has transformed high streets and landmark locations across the US and is now available in the UK with an office location in London alongside support teams working across all major cities including Glasgow, Manchester, Edinburgh, Leeds, Birmingham, and more.

Our Headquarter city of New York has earned a reputation for setting the bar high when it comes to scaffolding regulations. With millions of people navigating its streets each day - including locals, tourists, and professionals alike - safety and accessibility are a non-negotiable. As such, we continue to work to these high standards across all of our locations, making us one of the safest solutions on the market today.

What Makes Urban Umbrella™ Scaffolding Different?

Urban Umbrella scaffolding is engineered to be welcoming, attractive, and functional: making it ideal for retailers, hospitality venues, event spaces, and any business looking to maintain visibility during renovations. Our architectural design not only complements its surroundings but also creates a brighter, more open experience for pedestrians which can be branded and recoloured on request, alongside offering upgrades such as lighting, heating, and a range of signage styles to suit any street positioning and highlight the main entrance. 

Rather than covering your store, Urban Umbrella scaffolding becomes an Instagram-worthy feature - allowing your entrance to remain visible and inviting while providing full safety compliance for construction works to take place. 

Upgrades & Enhancements Compared To Traditional Scaffolding 

Urban Umbrella’s bespoke scaffolding and gantry can be customised with a range of enhancements designed to elevate both brand presence and customer comfort, including:

• Main parapet signage: Choose from printed, 3D, 3D illuminated, steel banner, or hanging styles to make your brand impossible to miss.

• Secondary hanging and banner signage: Perfect for additional promotions, directional signs, or seasonal campaigns.

• Custom colours: Match your scaffolding to your brand palette or the building’s architectural style.

• LED lighting: Available in unique shapes such as circles, half-circles, stars, diamonds, arrows, or waves, creating a striking visual effect by day or night.

• Heating & cooling options: Integrated fans and heaters ensure a comfortable pedestrian walkway and work site, whatever the season.

• Adjustable legs and feet: Ranging from 8’ (2.43m) to 20’ (6.09m), allowing installations to adapt to varying street levels, building heights, and to the required load capacities. 

• Premium decking finishes: Choose from glossy opaque, translucent, or white fluted for a refined, polished look that remains sturdy and functional. 

A Proven Alternative To Traditional Scaffolding In High-Footfall Locations

From high-end, world-renowned fashion houses to entertainment venues, restaurants, and more, Urban Umbrella’s alternative to traditional scaffolding is already a proven success in high-footfall locations. Our unique design has even been used as a central feature in marketing campaigns, such as the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child launch at the Lyric Theatre in Manhattan, where the structure itself became part of the event’s visual storytelling and attracted audiences and sparked online conversations. 

See some of our latest installations below:

How A Typical Installation Works (What To Expect)

Following an initial enquiry and high-level requirements, we’ll visit you on-site to do a walk-through and take some additional notes, including related to entrance heights, pavement widths, layers required, number of workers on site, and more. Alongside this, we’ll work with your marketing team to ensure we capture your brand and ongoing campaigns in our designs and colour palette to make your Urban Umbrella installation a part of your storefront instead of an external construction element. 

We’ll then provide you with some initial concepts and walk-through options so you can visualise how the end result will look, including signage formatting, lighting shapes, colours, decking finish, and more. 

From here, we’ll advise you on local permissions to ensure all permits are in place and partner with a local certified installer to ensure a safe and compliant setup ahead of your renovation date. Once this has been set, we’ll begin the manufacturing process and provide the installer with the delivery date. 

Once installation is complete, we’ll ensure safety checks are completed and all on-site work site teams have been briefed on the safety and maintenance guidance. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Learn more about our offering and see some of the commonly asked questions we’ve seen online about our patented scaffolding alternative and scaffolding more generally: 

What can be used instead of scaffolding?

Urban Umbrella’s luxury scaffolding system is a city-approved alternative to traditional scaffolding, designed to prioritise safety, aesthetics, and brand visibility.

What is similar to scaffolding?

At Urban Umbrella, we offer the same (and enhanced) structural safety and access as traditional scaffolding but with a visually appealing, customisable and modular design. This allows us to be flexible and versatile whilst adhering to local load capacity restrictions and other regulations as set out in the locations in which we work.

What are the alternative uses of scaffolding?

Our scaffolding installations can double as marketing platforms, event backdrops, or even seasonal display spaces - turning essential construction works into an opportunity for customer engagement or creating a temporary structure or pop-up space in a location of your choosing!

Is scaffolding worth it?

If your project requires safe access and public walkway protection, yes, and we also ensure you get those benefits without sacrificing your store’s appearance or customer accessibility. Our prices can be tailored based on your needs and the modular nature of our product means it can be reused. Speak with our team to find out more and get a bespoke quote.

Why do builders use scaffolding and gantry?

For years, traditional scaffolding has been the only way to safely get builders to the elevation they require to carry out the work they need to do, as well as ensure their tools and work gear can be placed within reach. Scaffolding also secures the area for pedestrians - providing a ceiling to protect passersby from debris without closing off sections of the pavement. Urban Umbrella delivers on all these essentials and adds design, comfort, visibility, and even intrigue into the mix - making for a more welcoming high street experience whilst ensuring construction and repair works can proceed without compromising the feel of the area. 

Choose Urban Umbrella™ for an alternative, luxury scaffolding solution 

Contact our team in London to discover more about luxury scaffolding options in the UK. Whether you're protecting a landmark building or launching a flagship store, our luxury scaffolding turns necessity into opportunity. Use Urban Umbrella™ to maintain your brand visibility during renovation or even as part of your campaigns.