The largest set, of course, ended up being the Colorado Lounge, in which Wendy (Shelley Duvall) would often find Jack typing away into oblivion. Stretching over 90 feet long, the set has pretty much filled Elstree to its full capacity. Crew hands had to be on deck at all times, which led to equipment for the London film industry becoming increasingly sparse (via “Stanley Kubrick: A Biography”):
“Any interior filmed during a snowstorm demanded an army of grips outside the windows strewing expanded polystyrene snow, large quantities of which, carried on the breeze, ended up in Borehamwood High Street. ‘The Shining’ finally took up every square centimetre of space at the studio, and its hunger for equipment strained the capacity of London’s rental companies.”
The Colorado Lounge is such a magnificent set that you might have thought Kubrick had commandeered an actual location, but knowing that it’s all a facade inside a studio, it’s no wonder why he needed everything he could get his hands on. It wasn’t a short shoot either, as it lasted just about a year. On top of that, in 1979, one of the sets burned down, so not only did “The Shining” send a bunch of London productions in a panic over the equipment they needed, but it nearly took down “The Empire Strikes Back,” which also happened to be shooting there around the same time.
It wouldn’t be a Kubrick film if its production didn’t cause trouble for everyone else.
“The Shining” is currently streaming on HBO Max.