Fitting Multiple Games in One Room
Walking clearance may overlap between games; playing clearance may not. That single rule is what lets a normal basement hold three or four games. Pair games whose clearance points in different directions, use walls for darts and corners for arcade cabinets, and let folding games time share the same floor.
Most people plan a game room by adding up the space each game needs and concluding that only one fits. That arithmetic is wrong, and correcting it is the difference between a room with one game in it and a room with four. The correction is a single rule about which kinds of clearance are allowed to overlap.
Walking clearance may overlap between games. Playing clearance may not. The walkway between two games can serve both. The space a player occupies while actually playing, whether that is a cue drawing back, a foosball rod travelling or a dart being thrown, belongs to one game only.
The three kinds of space a game uses
- Footprint. The object itself. Fixed and non-negotiable.
- Playing clearance. Where a player stands and moves while playing. This is exclusive: nothing else may occupy it, including another game's playing clearance.
- Walking clearance. Space to get past, retrieve a ball or stand and watch. Shareable, and this is where the savings come from.
The published clearance figure for any game is the sum of the last two, which is why the naive addition overstates what a room needs. Splitting them out is the whole technique.
Which pairings work
| Pairing | Why | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Pool table and Dartboard | The dartboard hangs on a wall inside the pool clearance band, which is space nothing else can use. The only rule is that the throwing lane must not cross the table. | Excellent |
| Pool table and Arcade cabinet | A cabinet needs a corner and almost no side clearance. It fits outside the pool band in a corner that would otherwise hold a plant. | Excellent |
| Pool table and Shuffleboard | Different shapes of floor. The shuffleboard runs along a wall that the pool clearance band could not use anyway, and the walkway between them serves both. | Good, in a large room |
| Air hockey and Foosball | Clearance points in opposite directions: air hockey at the ends, foosball at the sides. At ninety degrees to each other they share a walkway. | Excellent |
| Table tennis and Air hockey | Table tennis folds and rolls to a wall, so the same floor is a ping pong hall on one evening and an air hockey room on another. | Excellent, by time sharing |
| Pool table and Table tennis | A conversion top puts table tennis on the pool table itself, taking no extra floor at all. Check the pendant is not in the rally path. | Excellent, with a conversion top |
| Pool table and Golf simulator | Both want large committed floor areas and the simulator needs a ten foot ceiling. Genuinely difficult below about 600 square feet. | Hard |
| Two pool tables | Two clearance bands that cannot overlap at all. This is a commercial floor plan, not a domestic one. | Effectively impossible at home |
Games that use walls rather than floor
These are the ones that make a room hold more than it looks like it should, because they consume space that is already unusable.
- A dartboard, which needs a wall and a lane of about 5 ft by 9 ft 9 in. Mounted on a wall inside a pool table's clearance band, it uses space nothing else can. A combined cue rack and dartboard cabinet is the highest value square foot in a pool room for exactly this reason.
- An arcade cabinet, which needs 3 ft 2 in by 7 ft for a home cabinet or 3 ft 10 in by 11 ft for a four-player, with essentially no side clearance because cabinets stand shoulder to shoulder. A corner that would hold a plant holds a cabinet.
- A pinball machine, 3 ft 9 in by 10 ft 7 in, all of it in front and a little behind for service access.
- A shuffleboard, 5 ft 6 in by 16 ft for a 12 ft board, which is a strip along a wall rather than a band in the middle of a room.
- A bar, which is a wall with stools in front of it and no clearance requirement of its own beyond the stools.
Games that time share
The other lever, and the one the family buildout is built around. Anything that folds or rolls does not need permanent floor.
- Table tennis. A folding table halves and stands against a wall in under a minute, taking about two feet of depth and five feet of wall. In play it needs 11 ft by 19 ft, which is the same floor an air hockey table uses on a different evening.
- Arcade basketball. Folds down and rolls out of the way.
- Poker. A drop-on octagon top turns an existing table into a poker table for an evening and stores flat.
- Table tennis on the pool table. A conversion top uses the pool table itself, which is the purest form of time sharing available.
- Cornhole. Stacks flat and goes outside in summer.
Tape it out before ordering
One hour with a roll of painter tape prevents the mistakes that cost hundreds. The procedure:
- Tape the anchor game's full clearance band on the floor. For a 7 ft pool table that is a rectangle of 13 ft 6 in by 16 ft 9 in. Nothing goes inside it, ever, including a stool.
- Walk it. Stand at each rail and mime drawing a cue back. This is where you discover the column, the soffit and the door that swings the wrong way.
- Tape the second game's band and check that it does not intersect the first. Overlapping walkways at the edges are fine and overlapping playing zones are not.
- Mark the wall games. The dartboard position and its lane, the arcade cabinet corner, the bar run. Check the dart lane does not cross either table or the main walkway.
- Mark the storage positions for anything that folds, at full size.
- Then mark the seating, in whatever is left, entirely outside every band.
- Last, mark where the pendant goes, centred on the table rather than the room, and drop a plumb line before anyone cuts a ceiling.
A worked example in a 14 by 20 ft basement
About 280 square feet, which is a common finished basement. A 7 ft pool table takes 13 ft 6 in by 16 ft 9 in, roughly 227 square feet, centred with its band clear. That leaves a strip along one long wall and one end.
- The dartboard goes on the end wall, with the lane running along it rather than across the table.
- An arcade cabinet goes in a corner outside the band, using about 22 square feet.
- A bar cabinet and four stools run along the long wall, outside the band.
- Table tennis lives on a conversion top on the pool table, using no floor at all.
That is four games in a room most people would say holds one, and it works because only one of them needs a floor band. What will not fit in that room is a second table game: a shuffleboard needs 5 ft 6 in by 16 ft, an air hockey table needs 8 ft by 13 ft, and a foosball table needs 6 ft 10 in by 10 ft 8 in, none of which coexists with a pool clearance band in 280 square feet.
Related
Every game's requirement is in how much space each game needs, and your own room goes into the calculators. For complete rooms with multiple games already laid out and priced, see the full buildout and the family buildout.
Frequently asked questions
Can two games share the same floor space in a game room?
Walking clearance can overlap between games. Playing clearance cannot. The walkway between a pool table and a shuffleboard can serve both, but the space a shuffleboard player steps back into and the space a pool player draws a cue back into must not be the same square foot. That single rule is what lets a normal basement hold three or four games rather than one.
How many games can fit in a basement?
A typical 14 by 20 ft finished basement will comfortably take one anchor game plus two or three supporting games, because the supporting games use walls, corners and time sharing rather than floor. A 7 ft pool table plus a dartboard on a wall plus an arcade cabinet in a corner plus a bar along the far wall is a realistic and common outcome in that footprint.
What games pair best with a pool table?
A dartboard, because it hangs on a wall inside the clearance band that nothing else can use. An arcade cabinet, because it needs a corner and almost no side clearance. And table tennis on a conversion top, because it uses the pool table itself. Those three add three games to a room and take almost no additional floor between them.
Can you put a dartboard near a pool table?
Yes, and it is one of the best uses of a pool room wall. The board hangs inside the pool clearance band, which is space nothing else can occupy. The one rule that matters is that the dart throwing lane must not cross the table or the walkway around it, because a person walking through a lane while somebody is throwing is the only genuinely dangerous configuration in a game room.
How do I plan a game room layout?
Mark the anchor game clearance band on the floor with painter tape first, at full size, before ordering anything. Everything else in the room fits around that band and nothing may sit inside it. Then place the games that need walls, then the ones that need corners, then seating and storage in whatever is left. Doing this in tape takes an hour and prevents the mistakes that cost hundreds.
Which games time share the same floor?
Anything that folds or rolls. A table tennis table halves and stands against a wall in under a minute, taking about two feet of depth. An arcade basketball unit folds down. A conversion top lifts off. Cornhole boards stack flat. Two folding games can occupy the same floor at different times, which means the room only has to be sized for the larger of the two rather than for the sum.
Measuring your own room before anything is delivered? The Game Room Layout Planner is the paid version of these pages: 8 printable worksheets you fill in with your own numbers, plus the full PDF, $29.
How we work: we compare published manufacturer dimensions, the governing playing standards for each game, and reviews from owners who live with the equipment. We do not test games in person, and we say so on every page. Clearance figures here are researched guidance for planning a room, not professional advice: measure your own space, and have a slate table delivered, assembled and levelled by an installer rather than moving it yourself.